A physician and a hospital administrator sit across from one another certain they understand the other’s intentions. But can either of them actually know what the other is thinking?
The physician believes the administrator only cares about meeting revenue projections. The administrator believes the physician is resistant to change, unwilling to work within the financial realities of running a hospital. Each builds a story in their head about the other side’s intentions and the conflict between them grows.
In this situation we struggle to see how the data in front of us can support any conclusion other than our own. That is how our brains work: we believe a thought, and our minds spin stories and seek out evidence to support it. We pay attention to data that confirms our thinking and overlook data that refutes it. To address this thought pattern, mediators use the ladder of inference as a framework to help parties recognize and challenge that type of thinking..
The Ladder of Inference
Chris Argyris of Harvard Business School and Don Schön of MIT developed the ladder of inference to encapsulate how people move from observing facts to forming beliefs and taking action, often without realizing how many assumptions they added along the way. It helps explain why intelligent well-intentioned people can look at the same situation and arrive at completely different conclusions. In mediation and navigating conflict we use the ladder of inference to help identify and address the root causes of conflict.
At the base of the ladder is a pool of facts, actions, and words. From there, as a result of our different backgrounds and perspectives, we select certain pieces of that data: usually the pieces that confirm what we already assume. We let the rest fall away and often we are not aware we are doing this. Then we make inferences that support our view and draw conclusions. And from those conclusions, we form beliefs.
Once we’ve settled on a belief, that belief determines what data we accept and what we reject. The ladder loops back down on itself and becomes what we call confirmation bias: where we select evidence that confirms our beliefs while filtering out information that may challenge them.
The conclusions we reach become emotional. Once we believe someone doesn’t respect us, isn’t listening, or doesn’t value our work, frustration, disappointment, and defensiveness emerge. Those emotions then reinforce the very beliefs that created them, making it even harder to see the situation differently.
The Physician and the Administrator
Take the physician and the administrator. The physician is diligent, combing through the data with every patient. She values providing safe, thorough, and quality care. Observing the administrator’s focus on efficiency and cost savings, the physician arrives at the belief that administration doesn’t understand what good patient care requires.
The administrator looks at the productivity data and notices a pattern of patient volumes being consistently below target. To maintain the hospital’s financial stability, meeting the productivity measures matters. He infers from the data that the physician is operating at a slow pace and doesn’t understand the pace required to hit the financial goals. Those inferences cause him to arrive at the belief that the physician is not willing to work to meet her targets within the system.
Both are standing at the top of the ladder, with access to the same data. The source of tension is the differing beliefs, interpretations, and selected data that they carry with them on their different ladders: one focusing on clinical judgment; the other on operational reality.
How the Ladder Applies in Mediation and Conflict
The ladder of inference is a valuable framework for mediators. Parties to the mediation often start off standing at the top of the ladder. A mediator helps parties climb back down to consider the observations behind their conclusions, to help them understand what they observed, what they inferred, and the meaning they attached to it.
Mediators also help parties surface and become aware of the data available to them and the reasoning driving each other’s beliefs. That allows parties to better understand competing perspectives. Once that happens, conversations become less about defending positions and more about solving problems together.
Often the disagreement isn’t really about the position each person is defending. When we look under the surface, there are usually shared interests that overlap. The physician wants excellent patient care. The administrator wants a financially sustainable organization that can continue serving patients. The shared interest is that the physician and administrator both want the hospital to succeed and both understand quality patient care and financial sustainability are important to making that happen.
Mediators facilitate forward movement by helping parties understand each other’s perspectives and then work towards shared interests. Looping back down the ladder takes time, effort, and communication. It often takes many conversations before “the hospital doesn’t understand medicine” becomes “let’s redesign this together.” To help get there, mediators know the right questions to work through with the parties.
Questions explored include:
What did each party actually observe?
What meaning did they attach to it?
What did they infer from it?
Is there other data we might be missing?
How and why did others arrive at different beliefs?
After working through those questions, they are in a position to go back to the shared pool, and build from there with a deeper appreciation of each other’s perspectives.
Go slow to go fast
Next time you are certain you are right and you know exactly what is driving someone’s actions, or exactly who someone is, pause. Entertain the possibility you may be wrong. Ask yourself: what if I’m only 95% right, and what if the other 5% matters?
Then look at what data is feeding that belief, and what assumptions and inferences are you making from it. How might the other person interpret the same information?
Conflict grows from the meaning we attach to data. The work of mediation involves helping people understand different perspectives, climb back down the ladder together, and discover that the distance between them is often smaller than either imagined. From this place we can open up possibilities of choosing a different path.
So if you had access to everything the other person knows, would your story change?
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