Why Critical Thinking Matters in the Workplace

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Critical thinking skills are essential in the workplace. Critical thinking requires the cultivation of core intellectual virtues such as intellectual humility, perseverance, integrity, and responsibility. Critical thinking can be defined as the ability to objectively evaluate the facts to make a logical decision. This skill set helps employees gather the information required to analyze a situation, obtain feedback from everyone involved, and generate optimal solutions to the problem.

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If critical thinking skills are so great, why is it so difficult to get employees to use those skills? People assume that everyone in their workplace is too busy, but it's also because critical thinking isn't a priority in today's society. Schools are no longer routinely teaching basic thinking processes, such as rhetoric or the scientific method, Employers have discovered that they need to provide training in critical thinking skills.  Steve Siebold stated that individuals are trained to think with their emotions instead of using logic and reason (Fallon, 2014). Siebold stated that "Society fosters emotion-based thinking and decision making" (Fallon, 2014).  Critical thinkers are usually open-minded, decisive, confident, and able to move past their emotions when making decisions. Teams can be encouraged to think critically by having the team evaluate how the decision was made. Did the team make the decision on facts or a gut feeling? Can the decision be justified by anything that is not emotionally related? If the answer is yes, the team is engaging in the critical thinking process. 

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Anyone is capable of learning and improving his/her critical thinking skills, but teaching an employee critical thinking skills isn't always an easy task.The best way to encourage critical thinking is to lead by example. Executive coach Dave Gambrill stated that every employee need to have the ability to think critically (Brooks,2013). "Leaders don't want to micromanage their employees, but often they are forced to because the employees lack critical thinking skills," Gambrill said (Brooks, 2013). 

References:

Brooks,C. (2013). The 10 Job Skills Employers Want. Business News Daily. Retrieved 21 April 2016, from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4125-job-skills-employers-want.html

Fallon,N. (2014). Is Your Team Missing This Important Business Skill?. Business News Daily. Retrieved 21 April 2016, from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7532-critical-thinking-in-business.html