Critical thinking stars are balanced thinkers. They practice moderation to insure against the perils of overthinking or underthinking. They are devotees of appropriateness and walk a path of situational awareness.
Real critical thinkers are disciplined in their craft of issue resolution. They honor work rigor and those routines and habits that yield them the outcomes they want. They exercise emotional intelligence through self-awareness and self-regulation.
Accomplished critical thinkers focus on destinations, not dramas. They don’t leave their people with answers, they give them opportunities to solve problems.
The elegant art of critical thinking has much in common with the characteristics of strategic brilliance. While both produce tangible and touchable results, each remains in itself, invisible to the eye. The renowned Chinese general and military strategist, Sun Tzu, known for The Art of War, understood this nuanced subtlety when he stated, “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” The same is true for the art of critical thinking.
To better understand the hallmark of a consummate critical thinker, think of the movie Star Wars and the Jedi characters within the plot. Much of their mysterious power is cloaked and shrouded from sight. How Jedi-like critical thinkers produce their results reflects their state of even-mindedness and thoughtful intentionality.
Critical thinking gurus can be seen, though. It is up to us to look more closely, to sense the presence of a disciplined process at play behind an outcome. We can uncover this in two ways. First, look for repeatable patterns behind graceful solutions. Second, identify a critical thinker you respect. Ask them to show you their thinking process. When you look more sensitively for mentors, they will magically appear before you.
Here’s a key to improve your seeing: True artists always hide in their work. Other artists place greater value on the artistry of self-promotion than in work integrity.
Self-promotion is often nuanced and difficult to detect by untrained eyes. Take, for example, the all-too-frequent occurrence of a powerful executive leadership team, acting more as a group of sole contributors and superstars. As such, they step up to provide and show off their own solutions rather than provide opportunities to cultivate those same skills in their direct reports. This is one major reason succession plans fail and organizations lose rising star talent to competitors.
Critical thinking masters understand that excellence in critical intelligence is the result of finely tuned habits designed for repeatable success in the direction of their goals.
Here are six practices to develop your critical thinking mastery:
1. Practice balanced thinking. If you underthink, it could reflect laziness and arrogance and lead to poor focus. Meanwhile, overthinking can reflect caution and fear, leading to rigidity and biased judgment. Unbalanced minds will more easily trip and fall over problems and issues they face in the workplace, in the world around them and even in the world inside them. In time, an overdependence on over/under thinking will cause you to miss seeing what’s critical and what’s complex.
2. Exercise mental and emotional moderation. Try varying your approach to issue resolution. Just because you relied on certain approaches before doesn’t mean they always will continue to serve you in the future and under all situations. To vary your approach (and when you’re not sure what another approach might be), encourage others around you to step up and contribute. You may be surprised by what you discover.
3. Practice situational awareness. Grow your ability to recognize core relevancies inside complex situations and issues. Train yourself to develop a better sense of proportion when evaluating personal, practical and theoretical situations in your workplace. You can get quite adept at this by listening not only for the context of what’s being said or your judgment of what you’re hearing, but more for the approach and logical construction behind how it is being expressed. Ask others to express the foundations that they’ve built their conclusions on. Often, a one-to-one breakout request is the best way to learn. There’s less of a chance of your request being misunderstood.
4. Exercise and promote disciplined, effective and efficient thinking. Try training your people to think more effectively and efficiently in meetings. Hold burst meetings where everyone stands instead of sitting. Shorter meeting times will serve to discipline your team to stay on point and not wander off into the proverbial weeds of an issue. To create a burst meeting, try using a hurried and disciplined structure.
• Define an issue in two minutes.
• Allow three minutes to state the desired outcome.
• Clock four minutes to list obstacles.
• Catalog action items to overcome those obstacles in four minutes.
• Assign action steps to people in two minutes.
Follow this timeline, and voilà, the issue is resolved and everyone’s back to work in 15 minutes!
5. Express richer emotional intelligence. Real leaders are self-aware leaders. They practice knowing themselves and others. They seek to understand others first over a need to be understood. Expressing empathy and a belief in others is a great way to understand others better. You can also practice greater self-regulation and control over your moods. This will help you to control disruptive impulses rather than be controlled by them.
6. Focus on destinations, not dramas. Learn to keep your eye on workflow to bring your goals in on time. With more focus on the destination, dramas will distract less.
Star contributors shine in critical thinking acumen. They see themselves as humbly doing what’s functionally required to resolve problems through elegant solutions.
Are you a rising critical thinking star? Great! If not, practice and perfect this invisible craft that unifies wisdom, method and action to the delight, wow and wonder of those around you.