What is critical thinking?

Procedures for developing critical thinking capacity, in turn, are comprised of placing before the student’s power of attention a mass of fact or information and training that power of attention not to think, but simply to concentrate without allowing anything to creep in by way of additional arguments or conclusions. Thinking critically is thinking through the substance of the incoming information before you; it is not letting the ‘glaze’ descends on your eyes if you’re working with data, with facts, with facts of manifolds, with the results of some research, and so forth; it also entails thinking up an inference based on that body of information, on that mass of facts, sifting the wheat from the chaff so that we might move a little further towards a solution to a problem, towards some decision.

Critical thinking helps you remove your emotional response to a situation and make a decision on the basis of what you actually know or, at the very least, what you’ve been told. You can always become more skilled at critical thinking, but you might be better at it than you think. If you can identify with the statements below, you are probably well on your way to becoming a great critical thinker.

• I have a tendency to think before I act
• I use solid information to inform my decisions
• I don’t base decisions on feelings
• I am happy to change methods
• I find it easy to explain the reasoning behind my decisions

You do not need to be able to store information in your brain to be a critical thinker. Either way, good problem solving requires the ability to utilise information to deduce probable conclusions. There are careers that require more obvious instrumental qualities than others. Accountancy (in finance) requires very good organisational skills, as well as a good problem-analysis ability.

In short, most roles require some degree of critical thinking ability; consider the role of marketing manager. Creativity and communication skills might be the two biggest needs that jump to mind, but in order to do their job well, marketing managers need to have the ability to evaluate and respond appropriately to changing practices in their function.

So, while it can be said that training in critical thinking is valuable for those seeking to occupy senior management positions, the truth is that no one should be exempt from learning how to make sure that our decisions are informed ones.

Let’s say the job that interests you is in aged care: it consists in providing assistance (often in the person’s home) to elderly people. This would involve making decisions and acting independently. As a good critical thinker, you would do this in light of all the relevant information, including existing medical knowledge and professional advice, as well as the day-to-day changes to your knowledge of the situation and of your client’s priorities and needs.

There are a variety of uses for critical thinking in the workplace. Here are some that are common to most occupations:

• Ensuring you always have your eye on the end goal
• Talking to other people and collecting relevant information
• Using information and facts to inform your actions
• Making sure your own preconceptions don’t influence a situation
• Building solutions that are individual to each situation
• Anticipating both the long and the short-term consequences of decisions

The most important critical thinking skills

Analysis

The act of independent critical thinking as it applies to the individuality of the mind asks the yet unexamined question of being able to ‘break down’ an issue, an informational particle, a text, and examine it in a sober way. And this is the analytic person par excellence. She can recieve information, and break it down into bits of information; this is called unpacking, and the process is necessary to reveal the meaning that an item carries. At a later stage and as part of the same exercise, she can uncover the purpose of that thing, and finally present it to the larger audience that has interest in that same thing, together with a clear explanation of what the thing entails and conveys.

Communication

You will likely have to report your findings to line managers or a group of others – sharing knowledge is essentially engaging with people. You will likely need to think critically within a group of people.

Creativity

Critical thinking is often also linked with creativity and innovation. Perhaps you need to see a pattern in the mass of ideas you’re wallowing through, or perhaps you need to solve a problem in a way that nobody has ever conceived the solution beforehand.

Open mind

To think nonjudgmentally, however, you have to suspend judgment, to look at things without all of that baggage. It’s the capacity for objectivity – the ability to look at an idea and evaluate it, without bringing any prejudices to the table – that tests the limits of good judgement.

Problem Solving

Another exemplary critical thinking skill is problem solving. It involves recognising that you have a problem, identifying an appropriate solution, implementing that solution, and then evaluating whether it worked.

Why is workplace critical thinking so significant?

Business decisions could be big or small. Nevertheless, irrespective of the magnitude, not invoking the thinking-skills within the working place can cause a lot of complications such as:

• Poor decision making
• Unhappy colleagues
• A lack of necessary action
• Dysfunctional systems
• Financial losses
• Wasted time and effort

Perhaps one of the most serious ramifications of poor, or even absent, critical thinking isn’t a checklist item but rather a hard-earned esteem: repeated mistakes. One-time errors can be rectified but errors ingrained repeatedly in the culture of a workplace are expensive.

These can be as significant as entirely preventable expenditure, a shrinking talent base and a tarnished company reputation. In any case, any corporate entity that fails to embed critical thinking skills into the culture and the training of its workers is on a costly road to failure.