Building Critical Thinking Skills in Your Business

Building Critical Thinking SkillsBusinesses that want to stay competitive and successful need to hire employees who can think critically. It’s not enough to hire someone with a college degree. New hires need to be curious, analytical and adept at problem solving. Critical thinking is the most valuable characteristic to seek in those who would work for you, more important than innovation or increased information technology.

The business landscape is rapidly changing, forcing employees into new job roles. Employees can no longer rely on others to make key decisions, and they need to be able to make those decisions quickly and independently. Good decisions require focus on the most relevant information, asking the right questions, and making correct assumptions, skills that too few employees possess. Surveys have found that a full 70% of employees with high school degrees were deficient in critical thinking skills; 36% show no major gain in critical thinking skills even after four years of college.

Flexibility and adaptability are crucial to meet real-world conditions, and these are skills that HR professionals and recruiters will need to screen for in interviews. It is also important to develop the critical thinking skills of your existing employees. One approach is to use assessment tests as part of the preliminary hiring process. Organizations that include both critical thinking and personality tests as part of the hiring process will have a greater overall understanding of candidates’ potential.

To help current employees improve their strategic thinking skills, introduce questioning techniques. Better questioning helps the learner visualize and synthesize information more effectively. With practice, this process can become automatic, with the ultimate goal of transferring the skills learned to new situations and scenarios. Most educational programs teach students to be good listeners rather than good thinkers or questioners. Passive learning does not necessarily develop cognitive management skills or changes in behavior. Actively participating in the process of learning is more effective and provides better long-term results.

Information learned and processed through higher-order thinking is remembered longer than traditional memorization. Knowledge is easier to transfer and apply to other situations, which leads to better problem solving. Questioning then becomes a vital part of the teaching and learning process. Encourage interactive discussion and participation from all employees.

When training employees, think about situations that can build upon what they already know. It can be as simple as reading a policy or giving a real-life example of a particular circumstance. Then, model the correct thought process for problem solving. Propose a problem that may be solved collaboratively or by talking the scenario through. Practice your questioning technique with exploratory questions. What would happen if? Explain to me what just happened? What strategies worked well or didn’t work at all? What would you do next time? What can we assume? Maybe have a debate. At the end, provide feedback or create the opportunity for self assessment. Utilize this feedback to build upon your next lesson and never forget to reward creative thinking. Learners won’t want to repeat behavior if they don’t feel that it is valued.

You will know that there is higher-order thinking taking place when the problem is visualized and can be described and explained. The learner will also be able to distinguish between relevant and non-relevant information and will look for the root cause of the problem. They will rationalize or provide reasons why a solution will work and can see the problem from different angles. Remember to capitalize on real-world situations. This not only helps the student use information in the right frame of reference, but also helps you solve real-world problems in your business.

If recruiters and managers start to look for employees with these abilities and utilize the art of questioning to increase the abilities of existing employees, critical thinking will become invaluable to the future success of your organization. Companies that develop critical thinking skills have a competitive advantage.

Need help improving critical thinking in your organization? Pamela Finnesand, The Business Maximizer can assist you! Schedule your complimentary Business Breakthrough Strategy Session today.

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