Critical Thinking: Just what the heck is it and how do you get better at it?

Fisher & Scriven define critical thinking as "Skilled, active, interpretation and evaluation of observations, communications, information, and argumentation." -- huh? In simpler terms, critical thinking generally requires the ability to recognize problems and to find workable means for meeting those problems.  To be a good critical thinker you need to:

• marshal pertinent information 
• recognize assumptions and logical fallacies
• appraise evidence and evaluate arguments
• draw warranted conclusions and generalizations
• test conclusions and generalizations 

and ultimately to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life. Bottom-line: critical thinking is about being both willing AND able to evaluate your own thinking and the thinking of others.

At the very heart of critical thinking is questioning. As a supervisor, your best tool for teaching critical thinking skills is the strategic use of questions. When your folks bring problems to you to be solved, resist the tendency to give them the answer or collect the information you need to solve the problem yourself. Using questions will get a better solution to the problem, build critical thinking skills, and help people feel empowered and successful. The critical thinking project at Washington State University has identified seven dimensions of critical thinking. If you want to learn more about Washington State University’s rubric for rating critical thinking, including examples of different levels of critical thinking, check out their “Guide to Critical Thinking.  

Deliberate Practice for Critical Thinking 
You can use the Guide to Critical Thinking to create deliberate practice activities that will build your own critical thinking skills.  Start by assessing your current level of competency on each of the seven dimensions.  Pick one (and only one) that you need to improve.  Every day for at least 10 days find a problem that you can use to practice that one dimension of critical thinking.  The problem doesn't have to be one that you need to solve, just one that allows you to exercise the skills listed in the mastering column on the rubric. 

Practice for 2 or 3 days then ask someone who is good at critical thinking to review your work and give you feedback.  You could also get feedback by practicing with a peer and comparing your answers.  If you are doing it correctly, keep practicing that one step until it begins to feel easy and effortless.  If you are not doing it correctly, make adjustments and continue to practice. Remember learning is about changing your brain and that takes repetition.   Repeat this process for each of the seven steps.  

When you have mastered all the steps individually, put them together and practice using all the steps until that feels easy and effortless.  Again ask for feedback periodically to make sure you are on the right track. Try to incorporate all this into your regular work as much as possible.  You can use problems that present themselves in your daily work and practice during down times, like waiting for a meeting to start. 

This doesn't have to take a lot of extra time and it is a great stretch skill to keep your overall performance off of auto-pilot and continuing to improve.