Robert Ennis defined critical thinking as “reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.” At the workplace, critical thinking forces employees and managers to look at a situation and weigh all possible solutions before coming up with a final answer. As is often the case with soft-skills though, we need to follow the right ways to implement them and for example in this case learn how to practice critical thinking skills!
But before we share a few pointers on that, starting from the start, there are various benefits of critical thinking at the workplace. Some of them are enlisted here:
Why is it important to practice critical thinking skills?
- Brings new ideas: Critical thinking forces employees and managers to look beyond conventional solutions and look for new ideas that can help to efficiently address problems.
- Fosters teamwork: Not only does it give a reason for people of diverse backgrounds to work together on product solutions, it also encourages teamwork and gives each employee a chance to impact the future of the organization.
- Promotes options: Critical thinking helps develop multiple viable solutions to the same issue. This allows your company to offer a range of solutions to clients, and it also assists in workplace innovation.
- Uncovering spinoffs: Once you get started asking questions in a critical thinking exercise for one topic, you begin to address other unresolved topics.
- Appropriate emotional appeal: Critical thinking can help you effectively use emotional appeal, letting your feelings influence, but not control your reasoning.
So can critical thinking be taught? We provide some steps on how managers can practice critical thinking skills.
Key steps to practice critical thinking skills
- Understand your own biases: Understand what your biases are and where they may affect how you deal with information.
- Question your assumptions: Asking questions is perhaps the quintessential act of critical thinking. If you don’t know what questions to ask, or don’t ask the questions in the first place, you may as well not get the answer.
- Don’t take information on authority until you’ve investigated it yourself: Use your instinct to investigate questionable pieces of information. If your gut isn’t satisfied with an explanation, ask the person to elaborate. If you don’t question a fact, read about it or test it yourself.
- Think several moves ahead: Record your observations so that you are forced to spell out details and be explicit in what you recognize and see. As time passes, you will notice patterns in your thinking.
- Put yourself in others’ shoes: Putting yourself in others’ shoes will help you imagine their motivations, aspirations, and turmoils.
- Improve your brain function: Solve a problem a day, walk or exercise for about 30 minutes daily, and eat the right kind of food.
- Analyze the pressures you are facing: Discover what pressure you are bowing to and think explicitly about whether or not to reject that pressure.
- Deal with your ego-centrism: Once you identify egocentric thinking in operation, you can then work to replace it with more rational thought through systematic self-reflection.
- Re-shape your character: Notice when you refuse to admit you are wrong, even in the face of glaring evidence that you are in fact wrong. Notice when you become defensive when another person tries to point out a deficiency in your work, or your thinking. Notice when your intellectual arrogance keeps you from learning.
- Analyze group influences on your life: Closely analyze the behavior that is encouraged, and discouraged, in the groups to which you belong.
We hope these tips on practicing critical thinking skills help you become a more effective manager!
