Maintaining a critical thinking mindset is an essential factor for living a successful life. It helps you create logical conclusions and solutions, and it also helps you gather, assess, and interpret relevant information. Lastly, it also helps you ask questions that matter and develop solutions for these questions.
Most, if not all, organisations look for applicants with a critical thinking mindset. Because of this, you must develop critical thinking mindsets to succeed in life. Developing a critical thinking mindset has numerous benefits. For one, it promotes creativity, curiosity, and independence. It also helps you become an effective problem-solver.
This chapter will review the decision-making practices in the work area. It will discuss ways of seeking feedback on the use of critical thinking from relevant stakeholders and identify areas for selfimprovement. Lastly, it will discuss ideas on developing plans for future process evaluations.
Strong decision-making skills are an asset in any workplace environment. Employees are always expected to be on top of their game. They are expected to think outside the box, fearlessly rise to challenges and find solutions to complex problems. Doing all this will require one to have mastered all the decision-making processes in the work area.
Decision-making practices
Decision-making practices refer to activities that can help you improve your decision-making skills. Some examples of decision-making practices include:
- Prioritising decisions: Decision-making can get confusing when you are presented with many alternatives. Despite this, you must always prioritise your decisions based on their urgency. Always highlight tasks that need to be accomplished immediately. Tasks that are not urgent can be done later.
- Limiting the number of people involved in the decision-making process: You should limit the number of decision-makers, especially when working in teams or committees. This is important because it helps you assign tasks easier and will also help you work more efficiently.
- Using decision-making frameworks: Decision-making frameworks like the Eisenhower and SPADE decision-making models can help you make more careful, well-thought decisions. They can also help you prioritise your tasks and solve difficult problems.
- Avoiding biases: When making decisions, always ensure that your mind is free from biased thoughts. Having biased thoughts can cloud your judgment and prevent you from making the best decision there is.
Further Reading
Access the following links to find out out more about the two decision-making frameworks:
Steps to review decision-making practices
The first step to reviewing a decision-making practice is to identify the decision-making practices that are being followed in your organisation. Some organisations will require you to work in teams and committees, which is why you must always be aware of the decision-making practices you should follow.
After identifying your organisation’s decision-making practices, you must then gather information on these practices. You can do this by:
- Asking others for their thoughts and opinions about your workplace’s decision-making practices
- Checking your organisation’s policies and procedures
- Observing what other people in the organisation do
Identifying the pros, cons, and risks of your decision-making practices will help you determine which practices to follow and which to avoid. It will also help you anticipate possible outcomes that may come because of your decision-making practice.
Feedback is defined as information concerning one’s understanding and performance. It gives you information on your progress in an effort to reach your goals. Feedback is needed because of the following reasons:
- It helps you avoid mistakes
- It motivates you to do better
- It keeps you on track
- It advances your career
- It helps you help you assess your workplace performance
Because critical thinking is needed in the workplace, seeking feedback will help you evaluate whether you applied critical thinking in the workplace. It will help you build confidence, learn from your mistakes, and develop a critical-thinking mindset.
Seeking feedback from relevant stakeholders is vital to promoting professional and personal growth. It helps you obtain information on how to optimise your work practices and get things done faster. It also helps you avoid repetitive mistakes and helps keep everyone on track.
It is normal for you to wonder whether you successfully completed a task or if your performance needs work. Seeking feedback can confirm your thoughts and motivate you to do better. There are many ways to seek feedback, such as through:
Seeking feedback from others is not always easy. You may sometimes feel like your questions sound stupid or that whoever you choose to approach might not want to give you feedback. Despite this, it is important to note that:
- Asking for feedback is normal, especially in a workplace setting
- Asking for feedback saves you time and effort from figuring things out on your own
- You can gain control over your fear and express your thoughts without being judged
- Others will learn from your questions just like you will learn from their feedback
Asking for feedback may seem daunting at first, but it is something that you can overcome. When seeking feedback from relevant stakeholders, always ensure that you ask for feedback correctly. Refer to the following guide for steps on how you can seek feedback from relevant stakeholders:
Remember to explain why you are seeking their feedback and how their honest feedback can help you in the long run. Encourage them to avoid holding back and assure them that you will need honest feedback to improve your performance and to grow in the workplace. You can state your intentions by:
- Scheduling a meeting with your stakeholders=
- Asking open-ended questions
- Asking rating-based or yes/no questions
- Asking clarifying questions
- Asking for honesty
Listening is one of the most important steps in seeking feedback. Ensure to listen to what the stakeholders are saying whether it may be positive or negative. Positive or negative feedback is still feedback. You must always be willing to accept whatever their opinions are. Writing their comments down will not only help you remember what they said but will also help you internalise what they are saying. It will help you process your emotions and will also give you something to look back on. You can list down your successes and the areas that you can improve on.
When seeking feedback, it is important to focus more on what you can improve on than what you did wrong. Remember to focus on the future and avoid dwelling on your mistakes. Ask what you can improve on moving forward and always be willing to listen. You can ask the following types of questions to improve your decision:
- Follow-up questions
- Probing questions
- Funnel questions
Because feedback can be either positive or negative, you should separate what is being said from how it is being said. People may sometimes fail to notice how they are conveying their message. Always take the time to understand what they are saying and do not take their feedback too personally. Remember that what they are saying can help you in the long run
Self-development refers to the process of gaining new information and skills that may help you in your working life. It helps you assess your performance, communicate your concerns, makes you become more open to criticism. It is also a continuous process that requires constant input and improvement.
Self-development and self-evaluation go hand in hand. You cannot seek self-development without knowing your flaws, strengths, and weaknesses. In the same way, you cannot know your flaws, strengths, and weaknesses without evaluating yourself first. Once you can identify these aspects of yourself, you may then begin the process of self-development.
Aspects to consider before self-evaluation
- Strengths: Strengths refer to skills and knowledge that one develops and perfects over time with disciplined effort. They are tasks and activities one does with proficiency, usually at a higher level than most people. You can think of your strengths as assets that you can use to your advantage. These can be talents, skills, and values that can help you do your job well.
- Weaknesses: Weaknesses are areas a person cannot do or has difficulty carrying out. Your weaknesses can also refer to aspects of yourself that you wish to improve. For example, you may want to improve your communication skills because you have difficulties putting your thoughts into words. Because of this, you might think that communication is an aspect of yourself that you want to develop.
- Core values: These are personal traits that include beliefs, ideals, and practices that control how a person’s personal and professional life is carried out. Your core values can guide you in making the right decisions in life. They can also help provide structure in your life. Some examples of core values are creativity, perseverance, honesty, and reliability.
- Accomplishments: These are a person’s achievements that contribute to a set of goals. They measure a person’s commitment to his personal and professional life. You can see your accomplishments as positive achievements that you can celebrate. They can come in the form of awards, promotions, and exam results.
- Goals: These are objectives that a person sets and targets to achieve within a fixed time frame. Your goals can also refer to what you want to achieve in life. For example, part of your current goal is to be promoted to manager within the next three years.
- Feedback: This is information given by other people on how a person is performing in their efforts to achieve set goals. Feedback can tell you if what you are doing can help you achieve your goal or if your actions need improvement.
The process of self-development
As mentioned earlier, self-development is a continuous process that requires constant input and improvement. Everyone strives to become the best versions of themselves throughout their lives, which is why self-development is of utmost importance. The process of self-development consists of four steps:
Everyone needs to have a solid understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, values, and feelings. They need to have a sense of self-awareness to succeed. Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself objectively and clearly through introspection, reflection, and through the perspective of others. This is an awareness of the unique identity, thoughts, experiences, and abilities of one’s self. Here are three ways to increase your self-awareness:
- Practise mindfulness: Being mindful can help you become self-aware because it helps you focus on the present. It also helps relieve your mind of biased and judgmental thoughts.
- Practise listening: Listening to the perspectives of other people can help you become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses. It can also help you see how others look at things and how they might feel about your actions.
- Create space and time: Always remember that you need to take time to reflect on your actions and behaviours to become self-aware. It is easy to get caught up in a fast-paced lifestyle, especially when busy with work, school, or life. Ensure to make time to think about what you have been doing and how your actions have affected others.
This is the knowledge of one’s own abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and the extent of them in performing tasks. It differs from self-awareness because self-knowledge focuses more on knowing why you behave a certain way or why you feel the way you do.
Self-development involves setting and achieving goals that may help you improve on yourself. This is the continuous development of various aspects of a person’s life. You aim for personal growth by improving your knowledge, skills, talents, and competencies to reach your fullest potential.
Self-mastery is the mastery of the ability to recognise, understand, and control one’s self to move towards one’s goals. It focuses on controlling yourself so you can achieve your goals without distractions. While it is often confused with self-development, self-mastery differs from it because it focuses more on knowing what you can do to improve on yourself. It also focuses on being familiar with your own capabilities and limitations and knowing what you still need to improve on.
Self-Mastery
Self-mastery can help you:
- Develop beliefs, attitudes, and habits that will enable you to create and live your life to the fullest: Self-mastery can help you live your life to the fullest because it makes you realise that there will always be room for improvement. This realisation can help you strive more to become the best version of yourself. It will also help you gain confidence, enjoy the tasks you are doing, and see what truly matters in your life.
- Achieve your goals and determine your purpose: Self-mastery helps you achieve your goals because it enables you to become disciplined. You can achieve your goals and reach your full potential once you discipline yourself and determine your purpose.
- Manage your time and deal with stress: You can manage your time and deal with stress better once you develop a sense of self-mastery. You will have better control of your actions, feelings, and time when you know what needs to be accomplished and how you can achieve it.
Areas of self-development
Becoming the best version of yourself does not happen overnight. You need to know what you should improve on and where you should put your focus on if you want to become a better version of yourself. The more you can improve on yourself, the more you can achieve your goals.
Focusing on the following areas for self-development can help you reach your full potential in the workplace and can help improve your:
- Relationships: Relationships play a big role in your self-development. Focusing on your relationships can help you mend broken relations and strengthen bonds with others. For example, you can do your job better if you get along with everyone in your workplace. It is difficult to succeed if you harbour negative feelings towards your teammates or workmates. Remember that you must also make an effort to get along with others and work towards a common goal.
- Self-esteem: Focusing on your self-esteem can help you value yourself. It can help you improve how you view yourself and can also help you process your emotions. It can also help you be more confident in the workplace. Asking questions and expressing your thoughts can be tough when you are in a workplace setting. Because of this, you must focus on improving your self-esteem and building up your confidence. You will find it easier to express your ideas if you believe in yourself and realise that your opinions matter.
- Career: Focusing on your career can help you envision where you want to be in the succeeding years. It could help you gain insight into your goals and help you do your job better as well. The more motivated you are in developing your career, the more likely you will succeed in the workplace.
- Health: Your health should be one of the most basic things you should focus on. Do you practise healthy eating habits? Are you getting eight hours of sleep every night? Do you prioritise your health? Taking care of yourself and practising healthy habits will not only improve the quality of your life, but it will improve the quality of your work as well.
Further Reading
Refer to the following links to learn more about self-development and self-mastery:
about personal development - planning, goal setting, purpose (destinysodyssey.com)
Self-Mastery - our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self (destinysodyssey.com)
Evaluation and critical thinking go hand in hand. Evaluations help you assess whether critical thinking techniques have been effectively used in developing solutions and addressing workplace limitations. They also help you understand your strengths and weaknesses.
Organisations usually evaluate one’s performance by creating evaluation plans.
Evaluation Plans
Evaluation plans are often developed to:
- Help you decide on the decision you need to make: Evaluation plans help you in decision-making because it gives you insights on areas that may need improvement. It can also give you an understanding of the pros and cons of the decisions made.
- Help you save time on gathering information: Organisations can use previous evaluations as guides in making decisions. For example, you want to start a new work practice that aims to give employees 30-minute breaks in the afternoons. A previous evaluation from a different organisation shows that 30-minute afternoon breaks made employees feel lazy. Knowing this information can help you gain insights on what to expect if your proposed work practice is implemented.
- Assist you with creating realistic and reasonable timelines for evaluation: Evaluations can be time-consuming. Following an evaluation plan will help you manage your time better and will also help you create more realistic decisions.
Developing an evaluation plan has four main steps:
The steps are below:
This step occurs right at the beginning of your process. Creating timelines can help you identify important sequences and events. It will also help you establish when you should begin your evaluation and until when you will be conducting it. It would be best if more focus was given to evaluating from the initial to the final stages of your process. This step will help you create changes that might improve your process along the way.
This step clarifies the main tasks you want to accomplish, and the steps needed to accomplish them. It also helps you identify the major process components that need to be evaluated.
Evaluation questions help you determine what you want to evaluate. These questions will help you determine the data you will be using, analysing, and reporting. Evaluation questions address the following:
- Impact on the community and the participants
- Planning and implementation issues
- Evaluating if objectives were met
There are many types of evaluation methods:
- Grading system
- Surveys and Interviews
- Reports
Evaluation Methods
Some common evaluation methods are:
- Grading system: Grading systems are one of the simplest and most common methods of evaluation. They can assess performance based on points from a standardised scale. You might be familiar with this type of evaluation method from school, but organisations use this type of evaluation method as well. Examples of grading systems include: o Scales from 1 - 5 o Scales from poor - excellent o Letter grades from A - F Trainer Manual BSBCRT411 - Apply critical thinking to work practices (Release 1) Trainer Manual Produced 02 September 2020 © Precision Group (Australia) 75
- Surveys and Interviews: Surveys and interviews are one of the easiest methods to use when evaluating a process. They allow you to gain insights on the viewpoints of your co-workers and can also help you identify factors that may have caused the success or failure of certain events. Lastly, they inform you of aspects that should be improved.
- Reports: Reports will help you determine if you achieved your initial goals and proposed changes. They share important findings and recommendations that may give you ideas on what you can improve in your work. Example of reports include: a) financial reports, b) project progress reports, c) feasibility reports, d) audit reports
Incorporating the evaluation process into your workplace practices means that it will become a part of everything you do. For example, managers evaluate their employee’s performance to help them do their jobs better. Evaluations will help you understand what is expected of you and will also motivate you to work harder.
After creating your evaluation plan, you may then begin incorporating the improvements you identified when you evaluated your process. Incorporating improvements is important because it helps you become more productive and efficient.
The information you obtained from your evaluations can be used to:
- Review and improve existing practices in your organisation: The information you obtained from your evaluations can be an indicator that you might need to look into existing practices in your organisation. For example, you received a negative result on an evaluation conducted on using MS Teams in your workplace. This information might make you want to check whether MS Teams is still an effective means of communication or if another application should take its place.
- Ensure you are reaching your goals and objectives: Evaluations can help you assess whether you reached your goals and objectives for a particular task. The information you obtained from these evaluations may also help you judge whether your current goals and objectives are achievable.
- Improve relationships with stakeholders: Evaluations can help you see what you can improve to develop a better relationship with your stakeholders. You may look into your evaluation findings to know at what needs to be improved, replaced, or retained in your process. You may also research ways that may help you achieve your stakeholder’s desired outcomes.
Evaluation and improvement are two things that go hand in hand. As mentioned earlier, your evaluation findings can help you improve your work practices, goals, objectives, and your relationship with stakeholders. To use your evaluation findings to improve your work, you must:
Improving workplace practices will always require help from other people. Because of this, it is important to always share what you learned with your teammates and co-workers. Sharing what you learned can help promote accountability and transparency in the workplace.
Evaluations do not solely deliver bad news. They can deliver good news as well. If your findings reflect good news, ensure to share your team’s success stories and recognise your staff’s achievements. This will not only make your staff feel good, but it will encourage them to work harder as well.
Evaluations help you recognise what needs to be improved in your organisation. If your evaluation findings show that a certain process or practice needs improvement, do not hesitate to brainstorm ideas that may help you do a job better. You can also use your evaluation findings to help you:
- Identify activities that are not making you meet your desired outcomes. Studying your evaluation findings can help you determine where you went wrong and why you did not achieve your desired outcome. Knowing what went wrong and what caused it will help you think of ways to improve your process.
- Prioritise tasks that may help you make changes. Knowing what needs to be evaluated will help you determine which tasks you should do first and which could be done later. Ensure to prioritise the tasks with the most changes and work your way from there.
- Review your staff’s skills and needs. You can use your evaluation findings to assess what your staff needs to help them achieve better results. You can also study your findings to determine the strengths, weaknesses, and skills of each of your workmates. Doing this will help you assign tasks according to where your workmates would succeed the most.
- Understand the level of change needed. Evaluation findings can help you assess whether you need to make drastic or minimal changes to your process. They also help you assess how much time will be needed to make these changes.
Quiz
Critical thinking refers to the ability to think clearly and rationally in any situation. It helps you create knowledge and evidence-based solutions to problems you can encounter in the workplace. Critical thinking is applicable whenever you are required to solve problems, make decisions, or create and share new concepts and ideas. It also helps you think outside the box and look beyond what is expected of you.
Developing and maintaining a critical thinking mindset is an essential factor for living a successful life. A critical thinking mindset has numerous benefits. For one, it promotes creativity, curiosity, and independence. It also helps you become an effective problem-solver. When it comes to the workplace, critical thinking has the potential to impact people in both positive and negative ways.
Every decision you make in the workplace should involve critical thinking. Critical thinking impacts people through the things they do and the decisions they make. Because of this, learning the essentials of the critical thinking process is significant.
