Everything we hold as true is a belief. Beliefs are formed by our past experiences, so they may not always be accurate or helpful in the present context. Maybe something happened to you that made you form a limiting belief about yourself. Perhaps you believe something is impossible, or doomed to fail, because you've seen it tried and fail before. Maybe you believe someone is doing that annoying thing on purpose, just to irritate you. The list is endless. Just because you may believe it, doesn't mean it's true.
The Ladder of Inference is a useful model that shows us how our beliefs are formed:
The good news is that beliefs can be changed. As a manager, you can help people to challenge and change their beliefs in the service of helping them achieve their goals. The Ladder of Inference tells us how: contrary data.
A great example of this can be found in the famous poem Footprints in the Sand where the author cleverly changes the protagonist's belief about the single set of footprints.
Thought provoking questions are another powerful way of helping yourself and others to challenge an unhelpful belief. For example:
- What evidence do you have to support this belief?
- What is the cost to you of holding onto this belief over time?
- What value are you getting from holding onto this belief; how well is it serving you right now?
- What other possibilities are there that you may be overlooking?
- How certain are you that this is true; how do you know?
With a little curiosity and practice, it gets easier to spot when someone is holding onto a belief that may be holding them back or limiting their performance. I hope this brief post has shown that it isn't too difficult to help people consider contrary data and perhaps change their perspective.
You may not be successful, and that's OK too; it's quite literally the thought that counts.