ENCOURAGE CRITICAL THINKING IN THE WORKPLACE

Business leaders and managers talk about the importance of critical thinking but they rarely try to encourage it in their own teams. 

Critical thinking is the ability to make informed decisions by evaluating several different sources of information objectively. As such, critical thinkers possess many other essential skills, including analysis, creativity, problem-solving and empathy.

Employers have always found critical thinking extremely valuable – after all, no boss wants to constantly handhold their employees because they are unable to make their own judgements about how best to proceed.

By definition, critical thinking is the ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgments on the basis of well-supported reasons. It's one of the factors of emotional intelligence that can determine an employee's contribution to the company. 

This phenomenon is one of the essential preconditions of a successful business. As an entrepreneur, you can’t do everything by yourself. You need to feel confident that you can rely on your team members in everyday work and also during times of evolving challenges. 

Here are 7 tips to encourage critical thinking in the workplace;

1. Encourage Employees to Express Opinions

Help boost inspiration in your team by allowing everyone to have a voice. Give your team the opportunity to express their opinions because critical thinking and difficult conversation skills are a crucial aspect of decision making.

Encourage employees to make decisions alone, review outcomes and support and train them to consistently make good choices to support desired outcomes and results.

2. Brainstorming – Solutions and New Ideas

Recognise the benefits of brainstorming sessions. Give your team the chance to express their ideas, draw from their diverse backgrounds and experience to start meaningful team conversation. It’s a great way to encourage creativity, focus on business critical matters and gain valuable innovative ideas and thoughts.         

3. Data-driven Analysis

Critical thinking is not only about intuition, personal experience and inspiration. On the contrary, individuals who perfect this skill rely mostly on data-driven analysis to support their claims. Just like you can use data for employee engagement, using it in decision making is something that you as an employer need to teach your team members. They should be careful enough not to take information for granted as this is the most common cause of business mistakes. 

Encourage employees to analyse every detail of their work before taking action to ensure successful outcomes.

4. Be a Problem Solver

Spend time to identify the challenges and issues affecting your business, internally and externally, and focus on fixing problems as a team. Highlighting issues encourages the need to put your problem solving caps on. Every business has its fair share of problems to fix and it’s fair to say that there will always be challenges, problems and issues in every business, large or small. Encourage your team to embrace issues with a new level of energy and determination to find solutions and reduce reoccurring problems. 

5. Invest in Training and Development

According to the research, the generation of Millennials is really struggling with critical thinking in the digital age. They receive tons of false information and don’t know how to determine what is right and what is wrong, which is why you need to help them to overcome this issue.  

Further internal coaching and external training should focus on the basics of business methodology and logical reasoning. Secondly, employees need to know where to find reliable information and how to draw meaningful conclusions out of it.  

6. Review and Analyse Outcomes

Critical thinking is all about analysis. You can encourage critical thinking among your employees by analysing results and the decision making process that contributed to the outcome. Provide employees with positive feedback for good decisions, making sure to recognise their efforts and share good news stories with the rest of the team.

Also be brave enough to learn from poor decision making. Talk openly about what worked well and what didn’t and identify new ways to improve future outcomes and eliminate reoccurring challenges. Constructive feedback is important.    

7. Be a Role Model

The best way to inspire your employees is to be a good role model. If they see you constantly coming up with alternative solutions to business challenges, it is highly likely that they will start behaving just like you. Therefore, you should be one of their main motives to embrace critical thinking in the workplace.