Week 4 Coaching Assignment - Abhinav Shrivastava

The Ladder of Inference

At my previous work place, the client that we worked for was British Telecommunication. I was once given a challenging assignment to be delivered within a short time-frame  I was asked to form a team of four people – to perform different roles and complete the project. As we were already three, there was a requirement for just one resource.

Below is the elaboration of the scenario in terms of The Ladder of Inference.

Observable Data: As mentioned in the definition, at the bottom of the ladder is the observable data – It is everything we might capture the situation as we do through camera.

As we began the recruitment process, we received many (around 11) CVs (Curriculum Vitae) of people, having a diverse experience, different levels of competences, and people who did handle different tasks in the past. Everything was mind boggling at the start. I found it difficult to understand and figure out - whom to select, who was most appropriate and for which positions.

Select Data –It was a big piece of data to process, therefore I filtered out the not so impressive CVs based on our selection criteria. I chose the six best CVs out of 11. This selection of data is very difficult to explain, I selected based on what I observe.

Meanings – I started relating my stored thoughts, about the six best CVs that I picked up. I began to relate the situations with culture, nationality, pervious experiences, and level of competences, how long they had worked in different projects and other background related information etc.

Assumption – From there I moved to the next round which is assumption. I feel this was the trickiest stage among all other stages. I started adding meaning, thoughts and ideas about their personalities. I don’t know how much I succeeded in building my own assumption. To what extend theses “Assumptions” were valid and whether these assumptions added value to my actions and beliefs.

Conclusion – From there I moved to conclusion, a step higher in the ladder close to beliefs. I planned interviews and questioned candidates. I tried to find out the data that one would not want to say or share in the resumes. To do this, I got better insight of the personalities of the individuals. Also, my preconceived thoughts were clarified and the image about each candidate was now more transparent.

Beliefs – Now after questioning for couple of times, I decided to revisit my selected data, upon which my beliefs were formed. I clarified many thoughts about the way they handled the situations at work place and in personal life. Below are some of the question is enquired:-

·         What are their short and long term goals?

·         Questioned about skills and experience to do the job.

·         Enquiry about enthusiasm and interest in the job

·         Whether they will fit in

·         What are your strengths and weaknesses?

·         How they helped resolve or improve a difficult situation?

·         Were resilient in adverse conditions?

·         Explain any situation where they had demonstrated emotional intelligence and cool-headedness?

·         What motivates you to do a good job?

I did a recursive process of relating the observable data and beliefs. Asking more questions leads to situations, where I look for observable data to get a complete picture of the candidate. This is a reflexive loop, where belief affects what data I would select the next time. Performing these activities several times lead me to a final conclusion. I decided to recruit that person for our team.   

Action – Even if I was not satisfied with the responses from the candidate, I tried to ask more number of questions. I tried to draw as much information as I could from the candidate, then I began to look at the data which I selected at the initial stage. Since, this was the last stage to make final decision. I did the recursive loop processing for the data that was selected and the meaning and beliefs was added to it. Do not get into the recursive loop, where you act based on your assumption.

Later, we didn’t find the person suitable for our team. He also left the project in the middle that had made our project in jeopardised. I think my assumptions are not appropriate. During the re-iteration I found myself wrong many times.

So to conclude – I must move down the ladder following the simple rules of questioning my assumptions and conclusions. Also, if I wanted to inquire more, I asked myself what data I selected what was my assumption.

Thanks for reading!

Have a nice day! 

Best regards,
Abhinav Shrivastava