Critical Thinking Skills

561 Words2 Pages

Central to decision making, critical thinking includes the understanding of changing situations, arriving at quantifiable justifiable conclusions, making sound judgments, while applying the learned experience. Critical and creative thinking are the basis for developing approaches to solve complex, ill-structured problems. Developing these skills is critical to positioning oneself for levels of higher responsibility. Sound Judgement: Judgment involves the capacity to assess situations shrewdly and to draw rational conclusions, enabling leaders to make effective decisions. Leaders tune their judgement level through trial and error, experience and by observing others through mentoring and coaching by superiors, peers, and even subordinates. …show more content…

Innovative leaders are curious and inquisitive, learning how to be good problem solvers. It begins with not accepting the status quo or only looking at first order solutions. Being innovative includes creativity in producing original and worthwhile ideas. Creative thinking uses adaptive approaches (drawing from previous circumstances) or innovative approaches (developing completely new ideas). Leaders think creatively to adapt to new environments or issues. They prevent complacency by finding new ways to challenge subordinates with forward-looking approaches and ideas. Good innovative leaders rely on intuition, experience, knowledge, and input from subordinates. Innovative leaders reinforce team building through encouraging individual responsibility during the innovation process. By the very nature of innovative thinking, most peers and superiors will be inclined to initially reject the innovation. Innovation is an new way of approaching or using a technology, product, or process, which is new and creates significant value. Recall in Volume I (page 155) our winning the Textron Innovation award for the turned exhaust. Even though their very lucrative program was being threatened by cancelation by the standard solution, the engineers and senior leadership initially rejected the innovative idea until they were directed to apply it by their own

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