Lift up your team's results with critical thinking

Since the introduction and accessibility of Generative AI to everyone, we are seeing more people use the tool within their work processes. Unfortunately though, it doesn't always produce better results. 

This new technology has generated an increased need for people to engage their critical thinking skills - to assess and analyse the output for accuracy and reliability, as well as presenting the opportunity to provide value-added analysis over and above the production of the output. 

However, engaging critical thinking skills is not something that tends to happen automatically at the moment - it needs a leader to set this up in their expectations of "what good looks like". 

And this makes sense right? We have a history of standardising everything to be able to churn through our work with speed and consistency (and less need to think mentally process it). Now, we are asking people to pause in the midst of that process and think deeply about it.  For this to happen, employees need to know this is expected of them, and to understand how to do it. 

So what is "Critical Thinking"?

Critical Thinking is about looking at the work that’s in front of you, whether it’s a metric or document that you’ve just created and being able to think about the message it sends as well as how it fits within the coherence of what you know.

So, when you engage your critical thinking skills you are engaging a series of thought processes about how things work together and how they don’t work together.  When doing this, a number of different elements come to play - objectivity, analytical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving (or optimising), and reflective thinking.

Here are 7 thought processes to help your team work through, to encourage critical thinking (and higher quality, value-add).

How do you do "Critical Thinking"?

When you are next presented with a metric, report or document with the opportunity for your team to add their own analysis and reflection - encourage your team to engage their critical thinking skills with the following 7 thought processes:

1. Make Connections

Can they link the information to things they already know or have experienced? What do they know is happening in the business, in the team, or in the environment that might impact or relate to this? What could be driving or causing this? 

2. Contrast and Compare

How this is different from what they have seen last month, this time last year or last week? What parts are different? What parts are the same? What might be causing the differences?

3. Make a Prediction

Based on what they have seen (or heard about) in the past, what do they expect will happen next? Do they expect to see a change and why (what activities are they expecting to happen that will influence this)? What do they need to do next given this information and how will that impact it going forward? If you changed one of the variables that are driving the results or output, what do you expect to see change?

4. Check assumptions

When they look at the information, what is assumed to be true? Can they verify the assumption is correct - how do they know this is true? What happens if the assumption is false - how does this impact the outcome?

5. Look for Incongruence

What do they see that is incongruent with what they would expect to see? What doesn’t fit with their expectations? What new and unexplored areas does this open up their curiosity for - “I want to know more about X”?

6. Evaluate

Is this good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse - or do they need to stay judgment free (objective)? As their leader, are you expecting them to have an opinion?

7. Add Diverse Perspectives

How would a different team interpret this outcome? Who could they ask that would give them a different viewpoint?

To help you build critical thinking skills in your team (or in your own toolkit), we have a set of products you can access and download for free.

Critical thinking checklist - with 5 extra thought processes to ensure your team are excelling in their critical thinking skills! (Download now)

Critical thinking cheatsheet - the 6 things you can do to build critical thinking skills in your team, right now (download)

Critical Thinking Skills (Podcast episode)