Becoming Aware of How we Think
One of the crucial first steps in any process that allows us to learn how to think differently is to begin with questioning our own assumptions and the mental models we employ.
What are we taking for granted?
What are the “facts” we are interpreting to reach our conclusions and why?
Is 1 and 1 really 2, or could the answer — based on different assumptions — not also be 11?
How do the mental models and metaphors we use influence our understanding of the situation we are faced with?
Most people think that perception is the simple act of opening your eyes and seeing what is out there — a world made up of the clearly observable facts constituting ‘reality’. This is not actually the case. Neuroscientists and quantum physicists agree that every act of perception also contains an act of conception. That is to say, in Heisenberg’s famous words: “What we observe is not nature, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
Imagine you are an anthropologist coming across a tribe hidden in a remote corner of the world, meeting people who so far had no contact with modernity. Most of the equipment you are carrying like a camera, your mobile phone, or the glasses you might be wearing would not be seen as what we call them. The glasses would simply be ‘something strange sitting on your nose’, and might be interpreted as an ornament that denotes your social position in your tribe.
The words, mental models, and worldview we employ act as ‘organizing ideas’ that help us to structure what we see and pay attention to. The mental models and metaphors we employ can stop us from seeing systems properly!
Most of us will have been in situations where we found ourselves disagreeing with someone over how to assess a certain situation or interpret a certain reaction by someone else.
If you take the time to pay attention to and make explicit the basic assumptions that people are applying in the process of interpreting a given situation, such conflicts can more easily be resolved. At the very least, it becomes possible to ‘agree to disagree’ and accept that there are different perspectives or interpretations depending on the core believes, worldview and value system we employ to interpret a given situation.
Many processes of mediation and conflict facilitation are based on slowing down the process through which we jump to interpretations and conclusions, and invite the conflicting parties to return to what they observe, how it makes them feel, and what needs they might have with respect to the situation at hand. If we can get people to first agree about some level of ‘consensus reality’ of the a given situations, it is much more likely to make them aware of their core beliefs and assumptions and how these lead them to interpret or judge the situation in different ways.
Being able to question your own assumptions and paying attention to how you think and interpret situations is a crucial skill for anybody in a leadership position, and will help you to be a more effective agent of the change towards a more sustainable world.
The Ladder of Inference
The ladder of inference illustrates how our assumptions shape the way we see the world and how we form conclusions about causality based on our assumptions. It explains in a simplified way how we select certain data out of the observable facts in front of us, how we add meaning to these facts that in turn influences the assumptions we make and how we draw certain conclusions that shape our believes about the world.
These beliefs, in turn, guide how we respond to situations and act in the world. Most importantly, the ladder of inference highlights that there is a often ignored ‘reflexive loop’ through which the beliefs we formed based on past experiences and cultural conditioning actually influence what facts we choose to pay attention to in the first place. Our dominant belief system and worldview critically influences which alternative, possibly important, fact or interpretations we chose to ignore.
Take a quick look at this brief video (3 min.) explaining why ‘The ladder of inference creates bad judgement’. It is not that the ladder of inference always creates bad judgement, but if we become more aware of the different step we are taking on the ladder, we can question our own assumptions, conclusions and beliefs and those of others.
This awareness may help us to find common ground, or at the very least to understand how different perspectives arise from different beliefs and worldviews that define how we see the system in question and hence what kind of ‘problems’ we indentify and how we go about finding ‘solutions’ to them.
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Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.
Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures
