CPB S2E1: Why You Should Care About Critical Thinking – and What It Actually Means

We’re back from hiatus with episode 1 of season 2! Today we’re talking about critical thinking – what it is and why it’s important, even outside of the workplace. Critical thinking is not necessarily disbelieving everything you hear – it’s more about forming objective opinions and judgments based on data. So in this podcast, I’m discussing what critical thinking is, and the skills you need to develop in order to grow your critical thinking.

Referenced in this episode:

• Critical Thinking: Not Just Being All Siskel and Ebert
• Talent vs Effort: Talent is Overrated

View the video that goes with this podcast: https://youtu.be/phOh_7I_Kvc

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Transcript

Hello and welcome. This is Dianne Whitford from Coffee, Grit, and Inspiration, and this is the weekly Coffee Break podcast. Welcome to the show! Hey everyone, we’re back from our hiatus and this is the first episode of season two, which I’m very excited that we made it to season two. Hopefully you guys have enjoyed what you’ve heard so far and are looking forward to the next 10 episodes. Season three will be sometime in February, I think it’ll be 10 weeks, with one podcast a week and then we’ll take another week break. So while we were gone, I made a couple trips to Nashville, Tennessee, which was, it was really awesome on one hand because I had the opportunity to see a lot of teammates that I don’t normally get to interact with and that was so rewarding and so fulfilling. But it was hard also because, you know, being away from my family and having to like actually travel somewhere that is not always comfortable, but it was still really good.

I also celebrated my birthday, which was super exciting. I had a lot of fun with my family and, and friends. So that was also very cool. So today, we’re going to talk a little bit about critical thinking. And before I get into that, I just wanted to remind everybody that if you haven’t had a chance to check out the blog yet, you can do so at www.coffeegritandinspiration.com. You can also find transcripts of all the podcasts there. We have a number of posts. We do at least two a week, sometimes more. Talk about all kinds of topics. We do a different theme every month, so four weeks per theme. And this month is critical thinking. I posted about it on Monday and I just wanted to talk a little bit more about it and explore some of the topics on today’s podcast. So let’s get started. So critical thinking for me, has always kind of been – until I started doing some research into it – was always kind of a ambiguous type of term.

You know, people tend to throw around critical thinking to cover a whole bunch of different things that they’re looking for in a person or in a potential employee or something like that. And I started to, I had a different idea of what it was before I started to actually research it for this and for other stuff, other personal development things that I’m working on. What critical thinking really is, is looking at facts and data objectively and being able to pull all those pieces together to form a picture. So thinking objectively about something before forming an opinion or before making a judgment. And I know that there’s probably a lot of folks out there thinking, I, you know, I don’t judge. I, I try not to judge and I don’t know that that’s, I don’t know that that’s possible. We all judge things and whether that’s because we’re taking in some input via our eyes or our ears or something that we’re hearing or seeing and we form an opinion about what we think that means.

And that’s a judgment. It’s a judgment call. We’re making a judgment about what we think is going on at any given time. And so while we don’t want to necessarily prejudge too much, you know, we don’t want to make a judgment before we have all the facts. That’s where critical thinking comes in. So while I don’t believe that any of us are without judgment, I do think that we can temper our judgments with critical thinking. So in Monday’s blog post I talked about critical thinking, why it’s important and the top skills that I think are most important when it comes to developing your critical thinking. I think it’s the, the skills that go into critical thinking that are what you need to practice and those things together when you apply them together means that you’re a critical thinker. Before we jump into that, I wanted to talk a little bit about why critical thinking is important.

Not only is it something that employers look for in potential employees, so if you’re out there looking for a job, if you’re working on your resume, critical thinking is something that you can put on your resume to really get a little more attention to whatever it is that you’re trying to apply for. But it’s also important for parents, for students, for anyone that is just living life. I mean, when you think about how many scams and things, like for example, I have a post in mind for probably next week or the week after about spam mail. You get an email and it tells you, Oh, click here, you’ve got a chance to win something or forward this on and get, you know, some big prize or whatever. And if you just believe all of that stuff and just do it, you’re opening yourself up to a virus or something, somebody stealing your information or stealing your identity.

Whereas if you applied critical thinking to that action, you might not do it. And so it helps to protect you thinking critically about things that are going on can really help protect you. Another way that I apply critical thinking non-work-related is as a parent. So, you know, when my son tells me something, I have to think critically about whether that’s true, I need to stay involved. It’s a little less important now that he’s an adult. It’s a little less important now. But, as he was growing up, you know, going out with his friends. And I think all kids go through that kind of a phase where they’re testing, they’re pushing boundaries. And as a parent you have to think critically about what you’re hearing and what you’re seeing to make sure that you’re doing the best you can to keep your child safe. I think what else makes critical thinking really important is not necessarily the mental process of doing it, but all the skills that go into it.

So for example, one of the things that I think is really important in order to be a good critical thinker is creativity. And creativity is important to have, to express yourself, to express who you are or to have a creative outlet. You know, all of that is important. And so practicing your creativity in order to become a better critical thinker has its own benefit in and of itself. The skills necessary for thinking critically about things are not talents. So few weeks ago we did a, well, I guess it’s more than a few weeks ago now, but a while ago we did a podcast on talent and how sometimes we get into the trap of thinking, I’m not talented at that, or I don’t have a talent for that. And so I can’t do it. And you can’t be creative if you’re not talented or you can’t be analytical unless you’re talented at that kind of thing.

And while it’s true that some people have more of an affinity for being creative or more of an affinity for analysis than others, I don’t believe that either of those things can’t be learned or grown. I believe that you can grow your creativity. I believe that you can grow your analytical skills. I think you can get better in all of that stuff, even if it’s not a strong point for you right now. So when we think about critical thinking and a lot of those things that go into it, like creativity, observation, analysis, being objective, all of that kind of stuff that you don’t need to look at that like, Oh, well, I’m just not, I’m just not observant, so I can’t be a critical thinker, or I’m just not creative, so I just can’t do it. And those are things that you can learn. Those are things and skills that you can grow.

They’re not just talents that you have to have. So when we think about critical thinking and what, I’ll just share with you my thoughts on what are the top skills that you can grow or learn in order to become a critical thinker. So if you’re looking for areas to develop or, or skills that you’d like to work on, these are great ones that will round you out as an individual. In addition to help you become a little bit more of a critical thinker. First is observation. So I was recently in a leadership class, and one of the things that they said that I wrote down in my journal was, leaders are first-class noticers. So developing this skill of being observant, really being able to observe your environment, notice what’s going on, not be so up in your own head that you’re not able to see what’s happening around you.

That is a critical skill. That’s important whether you’re being a critical thinker or not. You want to notice what’s happening so that you can put those pieces together. It’s all data, right? So when you think about what are the things that I’m noticing in my environment, you know, as you’re looking around or as you’re observing people or you’re seeing your kids doing something or anything like that, and that’s what goes into the facts that you need to form your informed opinion, your informed judgment. So you learn all these things. And the only way to learn those things is by observing and asking questions.

Objectivity is the second thing. And that I think is probably one of the hardest things that I have. And I think that anyone who is super passionate about a topic, you know, whether it’s something at work or something at home or whatever it is, when you’re super excited about that thing, it can make it very difficult to be objective.

And so that’s something that I’m working on all the time is when I react, when I have a thought, when I have an opinion, I have to make sure that it’s an objective opinion, that I’m, that I’m looking at it not from what do I want to be true, what do I wish was true? What do I want to hear and what am I actually hearing? What am I actually seeing? What am I actually observing? And that is hard. I don’t know about you guys, but that is super hard for me to, especially when it comes to something I’m super passionate about, to be objective and not get all wrapped up in what I want to have happen.

Another skill that again is useful no matter what is asking questions. Be curious, try to understand the context and the background and all the things related to whatever it is that’s happening right now.

One of the only ways to find something out is to ask to ask, to ask the questions. Why? Why is this a problem? Is this the right solution? Are we solving a problem that doesn’t exist? Tell me a little bit about how you use this. Tell me a little bit more about why you’re concerned about this. Where were you, where were you last night? What, who were you with? What’s going on? Where are you going? Are their parents going to be there? Like all of those kinds of things. There’s, there’s the joke right about over-protective parents or something that are asking a million questions. But I firmly believe that it’s the parents that ask all the questions and the ones who are really curious about everything that’s going on in their kids’ lives are the ones that for the most part, their kids stay mostly out of trouble.

Because while we’re asking all those questions, we’re also communicating a deep interest in what’s going on. So I’m present, I’m here, I’m engaged, I know what’s happening because, and you know that because I’m asking questions, I want to know, I want to know what’s going on. So you’re not only building a relationship with the people that you’re talking to, hopefully, but you’re also learning and that’s also data that you can use to form your opinions.

Analysis. So analysis is something that I do think, I’ve practiced a lot. I do it in my job. I was a business analyst for many years and I now manage a team of business analysts. Hey, team! Analysis is taking all those data points. So everything you heard, you observed, you asked questions about, all of that stuff and putting it together into a picture. So you’ve got what people have said, what they’ve told you, the answers to, the questions that you’ve asked.

You’ve asked thoughtful questions so that you can learn the whole story. And now you can take all those data points and you can put them together to form a picture. And your picture won’t always be complete. And I think sometimes we wait, we try to wait until we do have that complete picture. And sometimes we just got to get comfortable with the fact that we’re not always going to have all the pieces of information that we need. And we just gotta be comfortable moving forward with what we know. And so the skill that you’re doing with analysis is how much data do I have? How much data am I missing, and what can I put together with what I do know and highlight those areas that I don’t know. And a lot of times we don’t know what we don’t know, but we can move forward with what we know so far.

And put that together into a picture and then act on that. There’s, you’ve may have heard before about analysis paralysis. You get all this data coming in and you have all this information and you’re trying to analyze it. You’re trying to put it together into a picture and you get stuck because you don’t think you have all the information or you’re, you’re tweaking and tweaking and tweaking and you’re never moving forward. You gotta really be careful that as you’re analyzing and as you’re putting together your thoughts and forming your opinions, that you’re not getting stuck and waffling back and forth. You want to take the information, know when enough is enough, make your decision and move on.

Skepticism. Sometimes when you think about critical thinking, maybe you think that means that you never believe anything, that whenever somebody tells you something, you have to immediately disbelieve it until it’s proven to be true.

And that’s one approach to critical thinking. But I think it’s also a little bit close-minded. I think to be a true critical thinker, what you need to be is open-minded but also skeptical. I don’t think that means don’t believe anything. I think it means don’t take everything at face value. So you get an email that tells you you won a prize. Did you? Did you really? Is it likely that someone’s just going to email you to tell you that you won some thousand dollars? But did you enter a sweepstakes? Did you enter a contest? Do you recognize the email address? Have you looked at all the contents of the email? Does it make sense? That’s being skeptical. You see a meme on Facebook that tells you, Oh, some statistic, 1.7 5 million people said blah, blah, blah. Does it hurt to do a little extra research and a little extra digging to really validate that that’s true.

So another one that, which I just mentioned is being open-minded. Sometimes your answer is wrong. Sometimes the picture that you’ve painted or the idea you’ve come up with or the solution you’ve devised is not right. Sometimes a judgment you formed about one of your kid’s friends is not correct. Sometimes you need to let go of things that you’ve assumed to be true or things that you believe are true in order to really see what’s truly happening. I like to think I’m a pretty open minded person, but I’ll tell you what’s hard is for me to accept that a solution I’ve come up with – especially if I put a lot of time and effort into that solution or that problem and I really believe that I have the right answer – to think that maybe someone else’s answer is better. That’s really hard for me sometimes, especially for something that I have a lot of pride in to believe that I don’t have the answer, that maybe I’m wrong, that someone else might have a better answer.

Those types of situations are are kind of hard for me, but that is being open-minded that you need to approach something with the idea that I have an answer but I might not have the only answer. That this could be one solution, but there might be other solutions as well and maybe those other solutions are better than what I came up with and that’s okay. That’s, I think, the core of what open-mindedness means in the context of critical thinking. And last is creativity. And I don’t mean like drawing and sketching, although those are great examples of creativity. When it comes to critical thinking, creativity is thinking outside the box. So the standard answer to something, maybe there’s a different answer. Getting a little creative, thinking about things that are unusual or not standard, or outside the box, thinking around corners, thinking around obstacles. That’s what I mean by creativity.

So you don’t have to have a skill at drawing. In order to be a creative thinker, you don’t have to be the world’s greatest artist or be able to sew something or do sculptures or or anything like that in order to be a creative thinker. You can think around corners and you can come up with creative solutions even if you’re not artistically creative.

So I know critical thinking is not the most exciting topic, but I hope that you got excited listening to this or at least were interested listening to this. I think critical thinking is – while it is kind of a dry topic – it is super exciting for me because I feel like critical thinking stretches you in a lot of ways. It teaches you different ways to look at things. You can help show other people different ways to look at things and it stretches a lot of your skills and abilities in a lot of different ways.

And so even if it’s not something that you need for a job or for another purpose, it’s still something to to really work on and hone to help make you a little bit of more of a rounded individual. So I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast. So glad to be back. If you have not already, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. Just a reminder that we have a YouTube channel. All of these podcasts have their own video that go along with them and hopefully soon we’ll start posting additional videos on our YouTube channel. You’ll find that in the description as well. And for those of you that are Pinterest-o-philes like me, we have several Pinterest boards where we’re gathering stuff. We pin stuff every single day, and a lot of really good content about mindset and grit and inspiration and all kinds of other stuff that we talk about on this blog. So thanks so much for listening. Really, really appreciate it. It means a lot to me. I hope you guys all have a wonderful day. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye now.