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A Short Guide to Building Your Team’s Critical Thinking Skills

• Matt Plummer

Critical thinking isn’t an innate skill. It can be learned.

Most employers lack an effective way to objectively assess critical thinking skills and most managers don’t know how to provide specific instruction to team members in need of becoming better thinkers. Instead, most managers employ a sink-or-swim approach, ultimately creating work-arounds to keep those who can’t figure out how to “swim” from making important decisions. But it doesn’t have to be this way. To demystify what critical thinking is and how it is developed, the author’s team turned to three research-backed models: The Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment, Pearson’s RED Critical Thinking Model, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Using these models, they developed the Critical Thinking Roadmap, a framework that breaks critical thinking down into four measurable phases: the ability to execute, synthesize, recommend, and generate.

With critical thinking ranking among the most in-demand skills for job candidates , you would think that educational institutions would prepare candidates well to be exceptional thinkers, and employers would be adept at developing such skills in existing employees. Unfortunately, both are largely untrue.

• Matt Plummer (@mtplummer) is the founder of Zarvana, which offers online programs and coaching services to help working professionals become more productive by developing time-saving habits. Before starting Zarvana, Matt spent six years at Bain & Company spin-out, The Bridgespan Group, a strategy and management consulting firm for nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropists.  

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  Critical Thinking in HR 

Although we may not have been aware of it, critical thinking has always played an important role in business. Have you ever been in a meeting with senior management making a business case for a HR policy only to find your sound case was derailed? Someone in the room may relate it to something that didn’t work in the past, causing your valid arguments to be lost? If this sounds familiar, that person may have applied their critical thinking skills to the situation to your detriment. 

Opportunities to share ideas with senior management or outside stakeholders may not present themselves regularly. To make the most of them it is important people professionals can identify and employ critical thinking skills. 

It is also an area employers surveyed by the World Economic Forum identified as essential to the future of work across many industries. Critical thinking and analysis topped a list of ten skills  employers believed would be required in 2025. 

What are critical thinking skills?

Before we delve into why critical thinking matters for people professionals and how you can develop your critical thinking skills, it is important to define the term. Critical thinking is a process of conceptualising, analysing and evaluating information gathered from observation, experience or communication to guide belief or action. For people professionals there are three key areas relating to the skill:  

• Critiquing the ideas and arguments of others
• Constructing our own ideas and arguments
• Identifying when others are using critical thinking 

Critical thinking helps people professionals make decisions in a more reflective way. These decisions are less likely to be biased , crucial for HR leaders.

Why is critical thinking important in HR?

HR and People management involves solving a multitude of problems for your business. Critical thinking is important in people management because it helps us avoid making decisions based on:

• Incorrect assumptions
• Unreliable sources
• Unconscious biases 

Having strong critical thinking skills enables HR professionals at all levels to collect and process information in a structured way aiding the problem solving process. 

Critical thinking also helps people managers engage in strategic conversations with internal business partners from professions where critical thinking is a central part of their role like legal professionals, engineers or C Suite management. HR teams are often asked to facilitate meetings around complex or difficult strategic issues amongst other parts of the business. With critical thinking knowledge you are likely to be in a better position to do this but also to facilitate stakeholder thoughts in a more structured way.

How to develop critical thinking skills?

Fortunately, critical thinking skills are not inherent, it is something that can be learnt or improved upon. If you feel your skills need some improvement we have found 6 ways HR professionals can improve critical thinking skills :

1. Question your own thinking

It is natural for all human beings to develop a pattern of thinking that we use to navigate life and work. As a HR leader it is easy to believe something must be correct because it has ‘always been done that way’. Critical thinking helps us to break out of those patterns of passive thinking where little changes. Instead, it asks us to question how we think and look for problems that could be solved to make a situation or process better. 

2. Discern relevant data

The digital age means we are often overwhelmed by data. It is important that people managers remember that not all data is useful or relevant. As critical thinking skills improve it should become easier for you to divide information into what to ignore and what to pay attention to.

3. Explore new ideas

It can sometimes be intimidating or threatening when you are faced with new ideas, especially in such a regulated area. In order to grow as a professional, it is important to explore new ideas. Speak to colleagues or people in other departments for input on how things could be done. Take a professional development course in an area of interest or read up on new developments in the industry that your business might be able to employ.

4. Encourage alternative views

Often businesses get stuck in a cycle of short-term thinking. Getting things done to reach immediate goals at the expense of the bigger picture. Developing an organisational culture that is open to alternative views is an important part of facilitating critical thinking. Don’t just wait for colleagues to challenge the status quo, actively encourage it through:

• Informal conversations
• Brainstorms

When provided with the space to do so, you and your colleagues may come up with many alternative ideas that challenge existing processes and procedures across the organization.

5. Take time to decide

A quick decision is the enemy of critical thinking. If you regularly make decisions on the fly, take time to reflect on whether with the benefit of hindsight they were always the right one. As a people manager it is important to take time to think about important decisions. Particularly those that are going to impact the entire organisation.

If you love a proposal, take some time to think about potential negative implications. Try to look at it from a number of different viewpoints, put yourself in the shoes of someone of a different:

• Level in the organisation

How will your decision impact each of them? If it is a very significant change, it might be worth interviewing a spectrum of people for their opinion before you make a final decision. Take a similar approach to decisions you don’t like, just because you don’t like an idea does not mean it is not the right thing for the wider team or organization as a whole. 

6. Avoid assumptions

The old adage making an assumption makes an ass out of you and me is most certainly true when it comes to critical thinking. Before you unintentionally jump to a conclusion ask yourself:

a.            What are the facts?

b.            Is there a relationship between cause and effect?

c.            Is the language used to describe the issue is ambiguous or clear?

          These questions will help you avoid falling back on something you believe to be true without any proof. 

TedTalks to improve your critical thinking skills

Prefer to learn by watching or listening? The experts at TED have created some useful talks on the subject of critical thinking:

1.  5 tips to improve your critical thinking

Samantha Agoos takes us through a five step process we can apply to decision making in any area of life.  

2.  Encourage critical thinking with these 3 questions

Eric Wilberding shared the Socratic Method of critical thinking developed by Socrates one of the founding fathers of philosophical thought.  

3.  How can you change someone's mind

Hugo Mercier demonstrates how critical thinking skills can be used to change the minds of others. Particularly useful for people managers who have to influence others within the business. 

The most important thing to remember when it comes to using critical thinking effectively is there is no one right answer. You can use this skill to create a number of options, all of which may work well.  Although people management may be fraught with difficult decisions. International health insurance for your expat employees does not have to be one of them. We offer tailor made solutions for businesses of all sizes. Get in touch with us today to discover more. 

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How to Make Better-Informed HR Decisions: Applying Critical Evaluation

Written especially for HR professionals at small businesses and HR departments of one, Applying Critical Evaluation (Society for Human Resource Management, 2017) by Jennifer Currence, SHRM-SCP, draws from thought leaders' insights and real-life examples to provide ready-to-use recommendations that HR professionals can incorporate into nearly every aspect of the job. The book is the second title in the SHRM Competency Series, which will cover nine behavioral competencies that are critical to effective HR performance.

Currence, president of  OnCore Management Solutions  in Tampa Bay, Fla., and a professor of human resource management at the University of Tampa, is a presenter at the SHRM 2017 Annual Conference & Exposition June 18-21 in New Orleans on Top Five Priorities for an HR Department of One , How to Create a Dynamic Onboarding Experience and Developing Business Acumen as an HR Department of One . 

HR Magazine 's Book Blog recently spoke with her about how HR can make an impact by applying critical evaluation. 

What makes critical evaluation an indispensable tool for the day-to-day work of HR professionals?

Critical evaluation is about going deep instead of wide. In the first book in the SHRM Competency Series, Developing Business Acumen , we talked about how HR can effectively develop business goals, mission and values. HR must be able to create and recommend programs that align with those goals. Critical evaluation is the linchpin between understanding the business and offering consultative solutions for effective people programs.

Why is it important to start the critical evaluation process by assessing the big picture?

Sometimes when confronted with a situation, we try to solve it quickly based on past experience. Or we immediately address what we think is the causation. When we start midway into the process, we miss the opportunity to ask the right questions. That's what enables us to examine all the options.

How has learning about critical evaluation changed your approach to problem-solving and decision-making?

I realized I had an unconscious bias against the very term "critical evaluation." Critical evaluation means a lot of hard work, right? But what I learned was that I gained so much more confidence going through the process, and that's when some magic started to happen. I have learned that following the process is immensely rewarding.

How can HR best evaluate the quality of its decisions?

Decide on three optimal choices or plans of action and measure each of them against what works for your organization [and] what doesn't work, and critically evaluate whether or not there are any unconscious biases or assumptions that are playing a part in your decision.

Not every situation requires a formal critical evaluation process. What advice do you have for making everyday decisions?

Successful solutions invariably derive from an openness to possibilities. If we remain curious, we'll overcome our biases and gather key information and data to make sound decisions. But beware of over-analyzing. One trick I use to move myself from thinking to doing (or deciding) is to schedule a deadline for myself—and promise someone an answer at that time to help hold myself accountable.

What's one thing HR professionals can do today to apply critical evaluation in their decision-making?

Develop this habit: When confronted with an issue or problem, ask yourself "why" five times. Simple, but you'll be surprised how your responses will guide a realistic and manageable approach. Next step? Read Applying Critical Evaluation , naturally!

Matt Davis manages book publishing at SHRM.

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Critical Thinking: Strategies for Improving

• Cost:  $150
• Duration:  3 hours
• CEU Credits:  0.3

Critical thinking is used by everyone in their professional and personal lives. Almost all of your everyday activities require you to seek information, analyze and assess the alternatives, and reach some conclusion. The challenge to critical thinking is being able to reality test every situation and apply the appropriate strategy to the appropriate situation. This class offers strategies to resolve situations and make decisions that lead to an effective conclusion.

At the conclusion of this course, participants will be able to:

• List the four characteristics of critical thinking to help you gather and assess the right information.
• Follow the three-step process of critical thinking to ensure you thoroughly review issues and potential solutions.
• Recognize and avoid the four critical thinking mistakes.
• Apply the process of critical thinking to real-work situations.

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The Shift to Strategic HR – A Guide for HR Professionals

We’ve seen an increasing amount of content being published about how a shift to strategic HR is the future, and how HR professionals need to be more strategic partners within their businesses. Like most things, this is easier said than done. Although the call for this shift is loud and frequent, we’ve spoken to many HR departments who are unsure what this means at a practical level. They want to be more strategic, and they have the talent and capacity to do so, but the question is always, how?

Telling someone to change the way they think of their job without sharing how is the equivalent of telling a baseball player to hit a 90 MPH fastball before teaching them to swing a bat. Before something can be put into practice, actionable steps must be taken and information must be shared. We’ve written this article to act as a practical starting point in your journey to develop into a more strategic HR leader.

What is Strategic HR?

Strategic thinking in HR involves identifying long-term goals or aspirations, and then come up with plans to achieve them.

When we put it in that light, the goal becomes a lot less intimidating. In fact, you can start today.

Why isn’t HR typically thought of as strategic?

This question is worth asking, because if HR were already strategic then there wouldn’t be anything further to discuss. So why hasn’t the human resources department traditionally been viewed as a strategic entity?

It mostly comes down to the day-to-day functions of the job. Historically, the majority of HR’s tasks have been administrative. There was paperwork to be signed, payroll to be run, benefits to be administered, and time clocks to be tracked. The amount of time needed to complete these critical tasks could easily consume all 40 hours of the workweek.

These tasks have certainly not disappeared, but the advent of HR software has played a critical role in reducing a lot of the time that a human resources professional would typically spend completing them. Now that HR leaders can spend less time on these administrative tasks, companies are calling for more time spent on strategic ones.

Do you need to be freed to do more strategic work?

5 steps to being a more strategic hr leader.

So with that context, let’s dive into the five steps to guide your shift to a strategic HR leader:

• Schedule time to think strategically
• Understand the needs and challenges of your company
• Gather data and understand metrics
• Develop and implement plans
• Forecast into the future

Schedule time to think strategically.

We mentioned the administrative side of HR as something that’s traditionally held human resources leaders back from being strategic. In many cases, this is still the case. If you’re unable to break free of the tedious, detailed, administrative work that can so easily consume your time, it’ll be tough to make the shift to a strategic leader.

So what can be done to help reduce some of the time spent on administration?

First, if you don’t have a great HRIS (Human Resources Information System), you need to convince yourself, your boss, and whoever else might be involved in that decision to purchase one. A good HRIS will immediately lighten your workload. The purpose of HR software is to make your life easier, automate repetitive tasks, and give employees the ability to complete tasks of their own.

Next, you’ll need to become more disciplined with your time. Implementing an HRIS will certainly help, but it’s so easy to get distracted or caught up in different things if you haven’t specifically allotted time for strategic thinking on your calendar.

Unlike task-based work where you can simply execute one task after another on a to-do list, strategic work may not have clear parameters. Strategic work requires critical thinking, creative problem solving, and data-driven analysis. Although time for strategic thinking is the most important leadership behavior in an organization , it’s rarely given the time it deserves. It is hard to determine how long it will take because it’s often impossible to tell how quickly you will be able to develop a clear direction or initiative.

Because of this, we recommend setting aside a few hours every week to devote to strategic HR initiatives. We recommend that these hours come in large, uninterrupted blocks of time (i.e. you set aside Wednesday and Friday mornings from 8am-10am to think about strategy). You really need to give yourself time to think without distractions and without other commitments.

Understand the needs and challenges of your company.

Ok, so now that you’ve committed to set aside time for strategic thinking, you’ll want to make sure that you’re spending that time wisely. It’s vital that you have a clear understanding of what challenges are facing your company before diving into possible solutions. If you fail to understand the issues, you’ll fail in your shift to strategic HR.

Start by making a list of things you recognize as difficult or challenging for the company. These challenges can range from very obvious (like missing a quarterly revenue goal) to relatively unnoticed (like a slow but steady increase in employee turnover).

Next, spend some time talking with your colleagues about the challenges they’re facing. It’s likely that each department head will be dealing with their fair share of problems. Get an idea for what these are and start thinking about how their challenges might overlap with your responsibilities.

Finally, consider the company mission, objectives, goals, and performance indicators. At a high level, what is your organization trying to achieve? Where is it struggling? What objectives are not being met, and why?

Only after gathering this information will your strategic thinking be valuable . Developing great strategy is impossible without understanding the broader picture. 

Gather data and understand metrics.

Once you feel like you’ve got a better understanding of the problems and challenges facing the business, it’s time to dive into the data to figure out what’s going on and where you might be able to help.

Of course, as an HR leader, gathering the data and understanding the intricacies of sales and marketing funnels won’t fall on your shoulders. However, a shortage of salespeople or a high turnover rate in the sales department are metrics you should be tracking.

Your first step is to get an idea of what’s currently being tracked and what isn’t.

A great place to start might be with your company’s hiring funnels. Ask yourself if you can answer the following questions:

• What’s our average time to hire?
• Are there departments that hire faster/slower than others?
• On average, how many applicants submit resumes for each job post?
• How many days does the average candidate wait before being contacted?
• Which sources (job boards, referrals, recruiters) produce the majority of hires?
• What percentage of candidates accept the job when it is offered?

If you can’t answer some or all of these questions, you might have an idea of where you can spend your time. Strategy can only be implemented when problems are understood, and problems are best understood when there is data to support them . If you don’t have the data, you likely won’t know the problem exists.

You might anecdotally realize that you’re not contacting job candidates fast enough, or that the Marketing department seems to hire slower than the rest, but until you’re tracking it and monitoring those metrics, you won’t really know.

Apply this thinking to every aspect of the business that you are responsible for. Track metrics on employee turnover, retention, onboarding processes, and company diversity. Track reports on PTO usage, employee compensation, common disciplinary actions, and employment types.

Depending on the problems or challenges facing your company, some of these might be more important to tackle more quickly than others. Do your best to think through what data would be helpful when considering organizational needs.

Develop and Implement Plans

After identifying specific data, metrics, or reports that you believe can contribute to understanding a problem, you’ll want to use that information to develop and implement a plan to solve it.

This is the essence of strategic HR. When thought leaders refer to the shift in human resources from administrative to strategic, this is what they’re talking about. Your business not only needs you to understand the underlying causes of what’s going on, but it needs your help in developing a plan to solve the problem.

Plans can be developed in many areas of the company but will be most welcome in areas that have direct correlation with revenue. For example, your company may be experiencing unusually high turnover. Turnover is extremely costly for a business, and slowing the turnover rate can save enormous amounts of money. A strategic plan from HR on how to solve the problem will certainly get your CEO’s attention.

When presenting your plan, be sure to use the data and metrics that you’ve collected. This will provide legitimacy for your argument. Be confident in what you propose. It’s likely that you have an idea or a way to think about the problem that no one else has discovered.

When implementing a plan, you’ll likely need buy-in and cooperation with multiple stakeholders. For example, if there’s a problem with a certain department’s hiring process, you’ll likely need to work the department head on solving the problem. It’s critical that you help your colleagues see that your intent is not to simply point out weaknesses in their department, but rather to help them tackle challenges that will benefit the entire company.

Forecast Into the Future

A final step in your shift to strategic HR will be your ability to take what you learn and develop forecasts for the future. As you are more thorough in your data capture and more analytical in your thinking, you’ll likely find that there are many problems you’d like to solve. However, due to resource constraints, organizational readiness, or management differences, you likely won’t be able to take on everything at once. However, you will be able to formulate and sell a vision of the future.

Strategic HR leadership will work hand-in-hand with other company executives to both identify and anticipate future challenges and opportunities. This might include predicting how many salespeople to hire as you ramp up growth, how to fairly compensate the customer service team to slow down turnover, or how to harness the power of exit-survey data to modify company culture.

If you remember, at the beginning of this article “long-term” aims are at the very heart of strategy. By definition, strategic leaders will need to be able to look ahead and make forecasts for the future. By following and repeating steps 1-4, you’ll be prepared to accomplish this fifth step when called upon.

A real-life example

Marion is the head of a small HR team for a logistics company with around 200 employees. Just recently, Marion purchased and implemented HR software company-wide, and now has some time to think more strategically.

One issue that has continually plagued the company is that they always seem to be short on fulfillment staff. As a logistics company, fulfilling orders is critical to their success and their reputation, but because of this staffing issue, they have been slow to get orders out of their warehouse. The slow fulfillment has caused the company to lose multiple customers.

To solve this problem, Marion first needs to understand why they’re always short on fulfillment staff. She investigates by looking at the data and finds that despite receiving many applicants for open positions, they have two problems:

1) Time-to-hire is incredibly slow even though it’s a position that doesn’t require a lot of previous experience, and

2) Turnover rate is higher in fulfillment than in any other department of the company.

Equipped with this knowledge, Marion can make some decisions about how to solve the problem strategically. She first needs to find a way to shorten the hiring process. As she digs into the data further, she realizes that there are too many stages in the hiring funnel and that the hiring managers are not communicating with applicants in a timely manner.

To change this, she works with the fulfillment team to shorten the hiring process from five steps to three. Rather than going through multiple rounds of interviews, candidates will now need to submit a resume, pass a phone screen, and have a single in-person interview before being offered a job.

She also leverages technology found in her applicant tracking system to automate email messages to job seekers, so that communication is streamlined and interviews are scheduled quickly.

By doing these two things, Marion is able to reduce the time-to-hire by over 7 days, allowing the fulfillment team to fill holes in their department quickly.

The second issue Marion wants to tackle is a bit more complicated. The turnover rate in fulfillment centers is typically high, but lately, it’s been much higher than usual. To get a better understanding of why this might be she reviews exit surveys of former employees, and narrows in on the questions surrounding their reasons for leaving the job.

It turns out that many fulfillment employees felt that they were fairly paid and the working conditions were fair. However, Marion reads time and time again that the onboarding and training for the fulfillment employees were lackluster, and that employees felt like they did not know what they were doing. This led to many mistakes being made, which led to upset managers, which led to employees leaving at a faster rate.

To remedy the situation, Marion holds a meeting with the fulfillment managers and reviews the onboarding and training process. It becomes clear that not enough time was being spent training new workers on how to succeed in their job. Marion and the team develop a new process that includes an extra day of observation, three extra days of hands-on training, and a quiz that new employees must pass in order to earn a completion certificate.

Within three months, the turnover rate in the fulfillment center reached an all-time low. The new training was paying off, and fulfillment employees were comfortable and happy with their job.

Over the next year, the company began to see revenue growth as customer satisfaction soared. This growth meant that forecasts needed to be made for the next six months. Luckily, because Marion was tracking metrics like time-to-hire and turnover rate, it became relatively easy to predict how many employees they’d need to hire, and how soon they’d need to begin the hiring process. Marion’s forecasts proved accurate because they were based on sound data that was proven to get results.

The shift to strategic HR is happening. HR leaders are no longer seen as administrators. Although the profession may still largely be task-oriented, the strategic side of HR is becoming more and more critical to aspiring professionals. Being able to understand company challenges, track and monitor data, use the data to make decisions and implement plans, and then forecast for the future make up the foundation that future leaders will build on.

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Becky Frith

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HR must encourage staff to think more critically

HR leaders can and should create the right environments for critical thinking and creative problem solving

It is HR’s responsibility to ensure that employees understand critical thinking, according to Jon Hull, head of resourcing at construction firm Carillion.

“From an organisational perspective, HR can create frameworks and environments for this learning to take place,” Hull told HR magazine. “The most important element is having a coaching-led culture that puts humility and the ability to take risks at its core.”

He added that HR professionals should also ensure their own critical thinking skills are well developed.

“Having a broader understanding of what people are saying or thinking in the business means that an HR professional can engage and challenge assumptions,” he said. “This is a critical part of being a trusted adviser.”

Training platform Macat, which is researching critical thinking skills with Cambridge University, has defined critical thinkers as those who listen to criticism, can expose fallacies, and think for themselves.

Speaking at the Macat Critical Thinking Summit 2015, the company’s chief research and development officer Mike Dash said anyone has the ability to develop these skills. “Critical thinking skills are now almost universally regarded as teachable,” he said.

“It is vital that critical thinking be elevated from its current position as a skill that is either assumed to be taught innately, or if taught explicitly, is not taught well.”

Lancaster University professor and dean Tony McEnery said critical thinking is key to business and technology.

“If business had not engaged with critical and creative thinking the world we live in today may look very different indeed,” he told HR magazine. “Consider speech recognition. This is now commonplace through services such as Siri. But if researchers at IBM in the late 1970s had not thought critically and creatively we would only be talking into, not to, our smartphones today.”

The curriculum of our schools and universities is one of the reasons critical thinking is being stifled, according to McEnery. “In the process of assessing students, we create an aversion to risk,” he said.

To encourage people to think critically organisations and educational institutions must embrace a ‘free to fail’ culture, he added. “It’s about giving people the freedom to make mistakes, and persisting when mistakes are made.”

Further reading

HR must encourage collaboration

Lucy Adams: when hiring HR should consider the 'finished product'

Fear of tech worker exodus puts pressure on HR

E-learning packages must consider different learning styles

HR must understand automation versus digitisation

Focus on 'opportunities' to encourage women into STEM

Ulrich: HR must engage more with the outside world

HR should encourage ethical leadership, says Ian Muir