Making a Case for Critical Thinking

Fifteen years ago when I was introduced to Critical Thinking as a skill I thought to myself, “Who cares about learning how to think. Isn’t thinking like going to the toilet and eating: you do it. You don’t have to learn it”

I was dead wrong! Just like me in the past. Most people are complacent about critical thinking. Actually as a human race we have done nothing about critical thinking outside mathematics for roughly 2,400 years since the Greek Philosophers.

Critical thinking is a collection of skills we use everyday that are necessary for our full intellectual and personal development. The word “critical” is derived from the Greek word Kritikos which means “discernment”, “the ability to judge” or “decision making”

Critical thinking requires learning how to think rather than simply what to think.

In my trainings I give a hypothetical scenario: Jane works on the fourteenth floor of the building. Everyday after parking her car, she enter the elevator, gets out of from the seventh floor and walks up-to the fourteenth floor. In the evening she enters the elevator and gets out from the basement then goes home.

Question- Why does Jane get out from the seventh floor?

Most people give answers ranging from: she exercises, she’s a manager who loves to walk around blah blah.

The correct answer is; Jane is a midget whose hand can only go reach the seventh button in the elevator. Have you got it. In that critical thinking scenario you can see that most people know what to think but are poor in discerning non-obvious options. By and large they depend on opinions. In this case most people’s opinion is that everyone who enters the elevator of normal height.

Uninformed opinions can lead you to make poor decisions in your life and act in ways that you later come to regret. Sometimes these very negative options impact society negatively. A boss rewards Tom who is a chronic over-timer. If the boss was a critical thinker he would ask himself why Tom has to work overtime five days a week despite having thirty other people in the department. She would also know that chronic overtime compromises the effectiveness of team not to mention his children who never get to see him for weeks.

In my past life as a Sales and Marketing Manager, I was confronted with Critical Thinking issues daily: Do I reward a sales person who pays bribes to hit his targets or the one who never pays bribes but sometimes misses the target? How do I convince management that a sales culture void of bribes is the way to go when bribes can get us short-term wins? Who cares about integrity as long as you hit the numbers? All these were issues I grappled with and they forced me to learn critical thinking.

Mental health breakdowns are as a result of Poor quality thinking. Inconsistent quality work due to poor quote thinking. A failure to make profit and inspire people is as a result of poor quality thinking.

An improvement in critical thinking would solve all the above problems and more. Nothing is more fundamental than thinking.

Learning critical thinking is one of those skills you think you don’t need yet you need most.

On a personal note, the purpose of critical thinking is to enable you deliver and enjoy your values.Values without thinking are highly dangerous and have been responsible for wars, persecutions and appalling behavior in the past. Thinking without values is pointless-for then thinking has no purpose.

Join we this month’s master class as I share the Ying and yang of critical thinking.