In a world that is transforming and evolving at a rapid pace, we are increasingly confronted with information overload, the danger of paralysis by analysis and a raft of urgent decisions to make on a daily basis. Scientists have studied the impact of decision-making on the human brain, and it seems that we can in fact only handle a certain amount of decisions daily. If we push beyond our brain’s limit then our ability to make these decisions diminishes regardless of their importance.
Why is critical thinking important?
Critical thinking is the ability to reason at the highest level of quality in a disciplined and self-guided manner. These skills are regarded by business leaders as an essential and key part of workplace success.
In a recent Dale Carnegie Survey, 55% of UK respondents said critical thinking was amongst the most important skills for the future of work. These results tally with a 2020 report by the World Economic Forum that found senior executives across the globe viewed the skill as essential and increasingly important.
Some examples of critical thinking are as follows:
- Your department has set a target they want to reach. By reasoning through different ways to improve your performance, and evaluating the activities and contributions you currently make, you would be demonstrating critical thinking.
- A new product launches and the sales and marketing team need to collaborate to create a new plan and allocate resources.
- In training and teaching it’s common to practice self-reflection following the delivery of a lesson or training. This valuable critical process shows the practitioner is able to assess what worked well and where improvement is needed.
Five phases of Critical Thinking:
- Problem Identification Clarify the problem, consider the goals and objectives and then visualise the ideal outcome. Gather information through fact-finding to determine the root causes for the gap between the current situation and the ideal outcome.
- Creative Thinking Possible solutions to the root causes are invented or identified through brainstorming and the use of “green light thinking”, which suspends judicial thinking to focus exclusively on generating ideas rather than evaluating them.
- Logical Analysis, which involves recognising and testing assumptions, thoroughly evaluating options, controlling for biases, and ensuring that conclusions are not drawn from incorrect beliefs and mistaken observations.
- Decision Making Methods and criteria for deciding on the path forward are determined through team consensus taking advantage of its collective knowledge and experience to assess risks and the likelihood of success, building commitment to the proposed solution.
- And finally, when the solution involves others, the Coordination/Implementation phase is when timeframes are set, roles are clarified, and expectations are established. In this phase, Dale Carnegie’s advice from his book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living is particularly relevant: “Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.”
How Leaders Can Support Critical Thinking
In order to boost critical thinking skills within their organisations, business leaders need to firstly develop the technique themselves, enabling them to practice it within their teams.
Ensuring that new projects contain elements of critical thinking also helps embed the skill within a company, making it part of the problem-solving process. Finally, as with all new skills that are being learnt, accept that mistakes will occur and they are in fact learning experiences that will guide you and the people who make them to a long-term better outcome.
To learn more about this topic download our latest whitepaper, ‘Critical Thinking: The Essential Skill for Navigating the Future’.