Cultivate your critical thinking skills
Leaders with strong critical thinking skills can be readily characterised as being quick and decisive, resourceful and creative, systematic and organised.
Well-cultivated critical thinkers are able to express themselves clearly and precisely, use abstract ideas to interpret information and think objectively using alternative systems of thought, putting aside our natural human tendencies towards egocentricity and socially accepted groupthink.
In a world of big data and information overload, being able to ask the right questions so that you can objectively discern message and meaning is of increasing importance to everyone in the workforce. This is why critical thinking is an important counterpart to complex problem-solving skills in your future skills set.
Critical thinking skills sit at the heart of the enterprise mindset set of skills that require each of us to combine analysis and creativity in an agile manner.
Developing critical thinking skills involves us acquiring a range of abilities:
1. A greater awareness of our own attitudes, bias and values when receiving information.
2. An ability to define problems or situations and what causes them to occur
3. A desire to research and investigate different options, opinions and arguments
4. Objective evaluation.
5. Assigning significance.
6. Reflect but don’t procrastinate, the world won’t wait for your decisions.
7. Communicate why decisions have been made.
Melius works with leaders and managers in client businesses to help them develop their understanding of these processes and the underlying principles of logic, causation, rational argument and scientific method.
This activity enables better critically assessment of how our own beliefs, attitudes and values impact on behaviour. As well as improved understanding of the behaviour of colleagues, customers and suppliers in a range of business situations.
This can be particularly valuable when working with those from different backgrounds and cultures where these assumptions can be profoundly different to our own. Delivery is undertaken through coaching or as part of a formal management development programme.