Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to correctly understand information, a situation, or problem from different perspectives in order to take or suggest the best possible action. In business, it's truly an essential skill for success-and a proven way to distinguish yourself and your organizational contributions. Critical thinking skills provide ways to arrive at better decisions with greater confidence and can help you clearly determine what matters in the face of any business challenge.

Utilizing models, application, and skills practice, this seminar gives you the knowledge and tools you need to effectively apply critical thinking in your organization. Rather than focusing on the science of critical thinking, the course explores the art of applying critical thinking skills in a business setting and gives you hands-on practice and feedback so you can use it immediately when you return to work.

This blended learning course combines instructor-led training with online pre- and post-seminar assessments, tune-up courses, and other resources to provide a compelling and more comprehensive experience for you, maximize your training goals, and produce a greater return-on-investment for you and your employer.

How You Will Benefit

• Understand critical thinking and receive feedback and a roadmap to help you develop your critical thinking skills
• Learn and practice critical thinking skills and techniques
• Use critical thinking skills when making business decisions and taking action
• Select specific techniques to improve how you recognize assumptions, evaluate arguments, or draw conclusions
• Know how to take abstract ideas and make them more tangible
• Distinguish between fact and opinion more readily
• Be more aware of how emotion, time pressure, style, and limited resources affect your thought processes and decisions
• Recognize how critical thinking relates to other cognitive processes
• Promote critical thinking as a valuable practice in a high-performing workplace

What You Will Learn

• The value of using critical thinking in business
• Components of critical thinking
• How to obtaining feedback on critical thinking skills
• Use critical thinking in business situations

Audience

All business professionals who want to enhance their thinking processes to achieve better results in business

Prerequistes

Completion of the online Watson Glaser®II Critical Thinking Appraisal (You will receive a link before class.)

Course Outline

1. Recognizing the Value of Using Critical Thinking in Business

• Defining critical thinking
• Characteristics of effective critical thinkers
• The role of critical thinking in meeting business challenges

2. Understanding the Components of Critical Thinking

• Using the Agile Critical Thinking™ Framework to relate critical thinking to business challenges
• Critical Thinking using the R (Recognize Assumptions) E (Evaluate Arguments) D (Draw Conclusions) Model
• Positioning the RED Model within the ACT framework
• Practices and techniques in each part of the framework

3. Obtaining Feedback on Critical Thinking Skills

• Recognizing the value of gaining insight into one's critical thinking skills
• Relating critical thinking skills to other business skills
• The purpose of the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal
• Contents of the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Development Report
• Interpreting a sample Watson-Glaser Profile
• Your personal Watson-Glaser Development Report

4. Using Critical Thinking in Business Situations

• Personal situations where critical thinking has been and could be used
• Techniques for using critical thinking skills in the ACT framework and RED model
• Relating insight from Watson-Glaser feedback to a personal critical thinking situation

5. Applying Critical Thinking in Business Situations

• Practicing using critical thinking skills and techniques in a real business situation
• Creating an initial action plan for developing critical thinking skills

Course Labs