Critical Thinking in the Workplace, Surveying the Landscape

This is the third post in a four-part miniseries on critical thinking in the workplace.

We started this series in response to a survey that we sent to our readers, some of whom indicated that they wanted employees who could engage in critical thinking. Our second post detailed a working definition of what the term ‘critical thinking’ means. In this post, we’ll survey and summarize five online articles that propose ways of encouraging employees to engage in critical thinking. In our last post, we will identify some common threads among the five articles, some overarching principles that can inform changes in the workplace that teach and nourish critical thinking.

Five How-to Articles

Not being ones to needlessly reinvent the wheel, we started with a simple Google Search with the term How to encourage employees critical thinking. Listed here are the first five search results after the ads (as of this writing) along with a brief summary of each article’s main points:

9 Ways to Encourage Employees Critical Thinking in the Workplace (proskey.com)

In this article, Eva Winslow posits that critical thinking is a skill that can be taught and encouraged just like any other skill. She lists nine ways that business executives and company managers can encourage employees to think critically:

1. Allow them to express opinions
2. Brainstorming
3. Data-driven analysis
4. Role-playing
5. Invest in employee training
6. Analyze good decisions
7. Analyze the bad decisions also
8. Don’t be too judgmental
9. Be a role model

How to Encourage Critical Thinking in the Workplace (bobtheba.com)

Paul Crosby writes that critical thinking is forgotten in the workplace and blames what he calls toxic work environments. Examples that limit critical thinking are:

1. You’re Too Busy
2. You’re Set In Your Ways
3. You Assume the Worst
4. You’re Too Focused on Your Own Department

He goes on to list how managers can become critical thinkers:

1. Thoroughly Evaluate New Situations
2. Look at the Problem From Different Angles
3. Reflect on Your Emotions Before You Act
4. Focus On the Best Possible Outcomes
5. Understand the Effects of Easy Solutions

Finally, he describes how managers can Grow their employees’ critical thinking skills:

1. Invite Questions and Open Discussions
2. Work On A Different Critical Thinking Element at a Time
3. Encourage Employees to Think Differently

4 Ways to Train Employees to Be Critical Thinkers (Joel Garfinkle on LinkedIn.com)

Joe Garfunkle also believes that critical thinking is a teachable skill and recommends the following:

1. Provide critical thinking skills training
2. Use critical thinking questions
3. Practice critical thinking through simulation
4. Encourage discussion and debate

How to Hire and Develop Critical Thinkers (Forbes.com)

Brook Manville takes a broader perspective on critical thinking skills and its place in society by interviewing William T. Gormley, Jr., author of the book, The Critical Advantage: Developing Critical Thinking Skills in School. He proposes a roadmap for applying the lessons from Gormley’s book in this way:

1. Begin by understanding what critical thinking actually is
2. Mindset matters as much as intellect (Meaning that attitude is important, not just intellectual capability.)
3. The real challenge today is forging collaborative thinking
4. Use simulation to job screen candidates for the skill
5. Use your own leadership practice to model and shape the capability
6. Don’t just hire for the skill—build a longer-term talent pipeline (Meaning: start teaching critical thinking at a young age and reinforce it in our academic and professional institutions.)
7. Strengthening the capability strengthens our society too

What Great Bosses Know about How to Encourage Critical Thinking (poynter.com)

Jill Geisler wants bosses to do some self-assessment before looking at whether or not their employees are critical thinkers. She contrasts “controlling bosses” with “coaching bosses:”

“I fear that some bosses confuse critical thinking with ‘read my mind and do things just as I would.’ Or they confuse thinking critically with criticizing. It takes no skill to shoot down ideas, but plenty of talent to develop them well.”

She lists these ways that bosses can encourage their employees to think critically:

1. Model critical thinking yourself
2. Don’t assume that your way is the only way of doing things
3. Deconstruct good decisions
4. Invest in staff training
5. Don’t simply demand compliance with the rules
6. Support responsible staffers

Five articles on how to encourage your employees to think critically, each with different perspectives on the subject. You want to encourage your people to think critically, but you might be asking yourself, What are the most important things to consider, here?

If you look at each of these articles, some overarching principles about critical thinking in the workplace start to emerge. Three things are required to nurture critical thinking in the workplace: skill, time, and trust. These three components are necessary for critical thinking in the same way that all three legs of a three-legged stool are necessary to the stool. In our next post, we’ll look more closely at each of these three legs more deeply.

Leave a comment with your thoughts or questions, below. If you need help with encouraging your people to engage in critical thinking, contact us. We can help.