Critical thinking is the heart and soul of learning and what critical thinking skills we require to excel at any job, any business, literally anything in the world, we shall discuss this now.

It’s important to keep enhancing your critical thinking skills no matter what profession you are in. If you are an employer, you would need employees who are good at critical thinking.

“The ability to think critically is more important now than it has ever been,” urges Kris Potrafka, founder and CEO of Music Firsthand.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking as defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987 is

‘The intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.’

A person with critical thinking skills would make an informed decision on any subject and would not believe in any make believe.

What critical thinking skills are needed to be the best in our fields?

1. Observation

The process of critical thinking starts with this. The ability to observe and analyse a potential problem determines who has strong analytical skills.

Once you have a clear picture of the problem and the people involved or factors that may be influenced, you can easily begin to dive deeper into the issue and its possible solutions.

Imagine you have a disease but you are prescribed the medication of a different disease i.e. you have been misdiagnosed. Would the condition cure? No. Just like this, if you are not able to identify the problem correctly, nothing is going to work whatever the solution is because that solution is not addressing the specific problem.

Related: 10 Best Critical Thinking Movies With Interesting Endings

2. Creativity

After all the observation and analysis, comes the role of creativity. Creativity involves thinking outside the box. Critical thinkers would answer such questions in the most unique way possible. They’ll find the best solution to a given problem in a much less time.

When anyone asks what critical thinking skills can make or break a business? the answer almost always comes down to creativity.

3. Communication

Now, any employer would want an employee who has strong communication skills whether the person is in sales, management or customer service and vice versa.

The importance of communication cannot be stressed enough and it’s seriously lacking in most of us. You can really impress anyone if you have great communication skills.

Imagine you are trying to tell a problem to your employees but if you are not good at communicating , would they ever understand what you are trying to say? Probably not. And that would just result in undesirable outcome.

Recommended: Interview Questions For Critical Thinking No One Tells About

4. Problem Solving

This involves the execution of the solution you came to after carefully analysing the problem. Many people and by many I mean A LOT, fail to execute their rather perfect solution. Your perfect solution is worthless if you cannot execute it the way it should be.

Lack of resources, understanding etc could also be the reasons for the failure but in the end, you would be the one to blame. Any critical thinker would solve the problem with the given resources most efficiently.

Also Read: Controlling the mind the way big brands like Apple, Zara do: Marketing 101

5. Relevancy

Not only problem identification but the ability to identify how relevant the information presented to you is, makes one a great critical thinker. You cannot just gulp down all the information thrown at you.

You need to sort out important from the unimportant to reach to an efficient and effective solution in a limited time.

HiBelieve me, whatever job or business you have whatever might be the post, you are going to excel at it if you hone your critical thinking skills.