A Process for Developing Critical Thinking Skills within Your Business
The world is driven by the knowledge economy and critical thinking is a part of it.
A Process for Developing Critical Thinking Skills within Your Business
Part one
The knowledge economy is relatively new in some senses and has come around over the last two decades as a result of the internet and our immediate access to information. This has led to clear benefits and some problems along the way; such as fake news, fake information and a distinctive cognitive dissonance between what is right as a result of opinion and what is factually correct.
Why is this important? We can pretty much find anything to support an argument in any debate online. Especially with the way we can manipulate a search enquiry to help a search engine show us information relative to our Point of view.
An example of this was on Twitter between two marketers who questioned whether having no fans at games due to the coronavirus pandemic, had had an impact on performances. Both provided links to articles that supported their argument. Both had points. Both were technically right in some ways. However, both had a confirmation bias, and the debate on the impact of fans was a battle of ego’s and who’d win.
This is an example of why critical thinking is important. Critical thinking allows you to gather information, analyse it and make an objective judgement without unconscious bias. Critical thinking doesn’t need to be individual specific, it can be developed in conversation, through multiple people, through information analysis and interrogation.
For businesses, critical thinking ability is clearly important. Business practice, direction or actions can be impacted if employees are unable to glean information and avoid judging it based upon subjective opinion, or through ego. Critical thinking ability tests like the Waston Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test can and are often used by HR teams when interviewing prospective talent into their business; they give insight into prospective employees ability which, it has been proven has links to leadership quality and creativity/innovation. Key sought after skills.
The process doesn’t need to stop there though - testing your current talents critical thinking ability is also valuable, although often a slight afterthought for businesses. But, this only solves part of the cycle. Businesses must also develop an internal process that helps to develop the core teams’ critical thinking. A process known as the RED Model.
Please don’t hesitate to Contact Us or visit our Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal page to learn more about how you could benefit by testing your team or candidate critical thinking skills.