These Critical Thinking Skills Will Redefine Your Future

Remember the teen contestant from Slumdog Millionaire? How did he tackle the situation when he was interrogated for cheating? In such time-bound or tough situations, Critical thinking skills are required to overcome them. It is an affluent concept among the many skills like Behavioural skills, Personality Skills, Career Skills, etc. with its roots in the mid-late 20th century, Critical skills have been developing throughout the past 2,000 years and can be utilized in critical, unexpected, or essential situations. Let’s read through the blog to understand the definitions, importance, etc. about critical skills.

What are Critical Thinking Skills?

Critical thinking is the capability to think rationally and understand the logical connection between ideas. Since the time of early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates and has continued to be a subject of discussion into the modern age. For example, the ability to identify fake news. It is the analysis of facts to pass a judgment. The subject is a little complex, and several different definitions exist for this which generally include the rational, sceptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence.

Also Read: How Creative Thinking Can Help You In Interviews?

Steps to Follow While Critically Thinking

A person can be a  successful critical thinker by being impartial. This means analysing a problem only on the facts instead of getting your emotions involved in the situation. You need critical thinking skills at every career level in all industries. Good critical thinkers find it easy to work with groups and independently to solve problems. Let us understand the steps with the help of an example.

• Identify the Problem – Imagine you’re at work. Someone, potentially your manager, presents you with a problem of wrong data. Then the first thing you will do is to identify the problem. What is the problem? Here is the wrong data circulated in the whole department.

• Understand the Reason Behind it – Then after identifying the problem you will try to understand the reason behind this scenario. What is the reason behind it? You found out that there is a problem with the software.

• Research and Collect Data – As you have found out that the problem is in the software, then you will research more on the subject. After researching and collecting data on the issue you found out that the software is mixing previous year and current year data together.

• Organise Findings and Data -After this, you have to make amendments to the software and try to organise the data correctly according to its respective year.

• Implement Solutions – After that, you need to call the software engineers to solve this problem and inform everyone in the department not to make reports on the basis of the data circulated.

• Analyse the Implemented Solutions – After this, you need to check whether there is someone in the department who is still facing a problem or still making reports on the basis of previous data.

• Identify ways to Refine Solutions – If there are some employees then make them use the new data and make sure to check data priorly before sending it to the department.

Importance of Critical Thinking at Workplace

Employers know the worth of critical thinking and they look for candidates with critical thinking skills to fill the vacancies. So focusing on your own critical thinking at work has the possibility of advancing your career:

• Encouraging teamwork
• Resolving conflict
• Demonstrating leadership
• Saving time

Also Check out 10 Organizational Skills Every Student Must Have!

What are 5 Critical Thinking Skills?

The 5 Critical Thinking Skills are as listed below:

• Analysis
• Interpretation and Inference
• Explanation
• Self-regulation
• Problem-solving

Top Critical Thinking Skills

Analysis

The major part of critical thinking is the ability to carefully examine a situation or problem. People with analytical skills can examine information, understand what it means, and properly explain to others the implications of that information.

Communication

You need to share your conclusions with your employers or with a group of colleagues. You need to be able to communicate with others to share your ideas effectively. So, you should know how to communicate effectively and efficiently.

Creativity

Critical thinking often involves creativity and innovation. You might need to spot patterns in the information you are looking at or come up with a solution that no one else has thought of before. 

Problem Solving

Problem-solving is another critical thinking skill that involves analyzing a problem, generating and implementing a solution, and assessing the success of the plan. Employers don’t simply want employees who can think about information critically but they are expected to be able to come up with practical solutions.

Tips to Improve Critical Thinking Skills

Here are some tips for you to improve your Critical thinking:

• Keep your Biases at Bay – We mostly think from our own perspective to deal with problems. However, we should make decisions if we try thinking from someone else’s point of view.

• Consider the Consequences – Every choice we choose has its own consequences or maybe others involved in the problem. We should be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

• Research Properly – Critical thinking requires letting go of the beliefs to solve problems. Reluctance to learn, research, or acquire new beliefs will only hold you back and certainly won’t help you with critical thinking.

• Don’t overcomplicate things – Overcomplicating things is something a lot of us have in common. It’s a necessity to think things through but it only makes things difficult if you begin overthinking. 

Critical Thinking Skills Example

Here are some examples of Critical Thinking that we can see on a daily basis.

• A person trying to interpret an angry friend’s needs, expressed through a rush of emotion and snide comments, to give that friend some help and support.
• A manager trying to be as objective as possible when settling a dispute by summarizing the alternatives, with fairness to all sides to a disagreement.
• A team of scientists working with great precision through a complex experiment in an effort to gather and analyze data.
• A creative writer organizing ideas for the plot of a story and attending to the complex motivations and personalities of the fictional characters.
• A person running a small business trying to anticipate the possible economic and human consequences of various ways to increase sales or reduce costs.

How to develop Critical Thinking Skills in Students?

Here are some tips to develop Critical Thinking Skills in Students:

• Project-Based learning– To develop critical thinking in students, it is necessary to encourage them in project-based learning. It helps students to figure out real-world problems on their own. Project-based learning allows students to gain practical knowledge, develop various ideas and concepts that are prevalent to a successful life beyond school.
• Freedom To Learn– One of the best ways to develop Critical Thinking Skills in students is to give them the freedom to learn. When students try to learn on their own, they learn more effectively. There are various learning methods and students must be given the choice for choosing the method of learning they are the most comfortable in. This creates a sense of ownership of the problem and allows students to find solutions for the same.
• Analyze and Assess- Analysis is one of the major critical thinking skills. Students must be encouraged to analyze and assess the consequences and effectiveness of the ideas. This allows students to figure out whether the ideas are logical or not.
• Ask Open Ended Questions– Ask thoughtful questions and allow students to answer with valid reasoning. This will prepare students for an end to end conversation and will help them develop communication skills as well.

Critical Thinking Skills for Resume

• Apart from your hobbies and extracurricular activities for your CV or Resume, add Relevant Skills also. Explain critical thinking by using keywords mentioned above related to your skills in your resume.
• Accentuate Skills in Your Cover Letter: Mention some of these skills in your cover letter.
• Use Skill Words in Your Job Interview: Discuss a time when you faced a problem at work and explain how you applied critical thinking to tackle it.

FAQs

We hope that this blog familiarizes you with all the essential Critical thinking skills for your resume! Once you master these important critical thinking skills, you can lay the groundwork that encourages effective interaction to consistently balance your life and work.

If you’re looking for job opportunities and need help in creating a job-winning resume, our experts at Leverage Edu can help you with the best guidance.

Remember the teen contestant from Slumdog Millionaire? How did he tackle the situation when he was interrogated for cheating? In such time-bound or tough situations, Critical thinking skills are required to overcome them. It is an affluent concept among the many skills like Behavioural skills, Personality Skills, Career Skills, etc. with its roots in the mid-late 20th century, Critical skills have been developing throughout the past 2,000 years and can be utilized in critical, unexpected, or essential situations. Let’s read through the blog to understand the definitions, importance, etc. about critical skills.

What are Critical Thinking Skills?

Critical thinking is the capability to think rationally and understand the logical connection between ideas. Since the time of early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates and has continued to be a subject of discussion into the modern age. For example, the ability to identify fake news. It is the analysis of facts to pass a judgment. The subject is a little complex, and several different definitions exist for this which generally include the rational, sceptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence.

Also Read: How Creative Thinking Can Help You In Interviews?

Steps to Follow While Critically Thinking

A person can be a  successful critical thinker by being impartial. This means analysing a problem only on the facts instead of getting your emotions involved in the situation. You need critical thinking skills at every career level in all industries. Good critical thinkers find it easy to work with groups and independently to solve problems. Let us understand the steps with the help of an example.

• Identify the Problem – Imagine you’re at work. Someone, potentially your manager, presents you with a problem of wrong data. Then the first thing you will do is to identify the problem. What is the problem? Here is the wrong data circulated in the whole department.

• Understand the Reason Behind it – Then after identifying the problem you will try to understand the reason behind this scenario. What is the reason behind it? You found out that there is a problem with the software.

• Research and Collect Data – As you have found out that the problem is in the software, then you will research more on the subject. After researching and collecting data on the issue you found out that the software is mixing previous year and current year data together.

• Organise Findings and Data -After this, you have to make amendments to the software and try to organise the data correctly according to its respective year.

• Implement Solutions – After that, you need to call the software engineers to solve this problem and inform everyone in the department not to make reports on the basis of the data circulated.

• Analyse the Implemented Solutions – After this, you need to check whether there is someone in the department who is still facing a problem or still making reports on the basis of previous data.

• Identify ways to Refine Solutions – If there are some employees then make them use the new data and make sure to check data priorly before sending it to the department.

Importance of Critical Thinking at Workplace

Employers know the worth of critical thinking and they look for candidates with critical thinking skills to fill the vacancies. So focusing on your own critical thinking at work has the possibility of advancing your career:

• Encouraging teamwork
• Resolving conflict
• Demonstrating leadership
• Saving time

Also Check out 10 Organizational Skills Every Student Must Have!

What are 5 Critical Thinking Skills?

The 5 Critical Thinking Skills are as listed below:

• Analysis
• Interpretation and Inference
• Explanation
• Self-regulation
• Problem-solving

Top Critical Thinking Skills

Analysis

The major part of critical thinking is the ability to carefully examine a situation or problem. People with analytical skills can examine information, understand what it means, and properly explain to others the implications of that information.

Communication

You need to share your conclusions with your employers or with a group of colleagues. You need to be able to communicate with others to share your ideas effectively. So, you should know how to communicate effectively and efficiently.

Creativity

Critical thinking often involves creativity and innovation. You might need to spot patterns in the information you are looking at or come up with a solution that no one else has thought of before. 

Problem Solving

Problem-solving is another critical thinking skill that involves analyzing a problem, generating and implementing a solution, and assessing the success of the plan. Employers don’t simply want employees who can think about information critically but they are expected to be able to come up with practical solutions.

Tips to Improve Critical Thinking Skills

Here are some tips for you to improve your Critical thinking:

• Keep your Biases at Bay – We mostly think from our own perspective to deal with problems. However, we should make decisions if we try thinking from someone else’s point of view.

• Consider the Consequences – Every choice we choose has its own consequences or maybe others involved in the problem. We should be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

• Research Properly – Critical thinking requires letting go of the beliefs to solve problems. Reluctance to learn, research, or acquire new beliefs will only hold you back and certainly won’t help you with critical thinking.

• Don’t overcomplicate things – Overcomplicating things is something a lot of us have in common. It’s a necessity to think things through but it only makes things difficult if you begin overthinking. 

Critical Thinking Skills Example

Here are some examples of Critical Thinking that we can see on a daily basis.

• A person trying to interpret an angry friend’s needs, expressed through a rush of emotion and snide comments, to give that friend some help and support.
• A manager trying to be as objective as possible when settling a dispute by summarizing the alternatives, with fairness to all sides to a disagreement.
• A team of scientists working with great precision through a complex experiment in an effort to gather and analyze data.
• A creative writer organizing ideas for the plot of a story and attending to the complex motivations and personalities of the fictional characters.
• A person running a small business trying to anticipate the possible economic and human consequences of various ways to increase sales or reduce costs.

How to develop Critical Thinking Skills in Students?

Here are some tips to develop Critical Thinking Skills in Students:

• Project-Based learning– To develop critical thinking in students, it is necessary to encourage them in project-based learning. It helps students to figure out real-world problems on their own. Project-based learning allows students to gain practical knowledge, develop various ideas and concepts that are prevalent to a successful life beyond school.
• Freedom To Learn– One of the best ways to develop Critical Thinking Skills in students is to give them the freedom to learn. When students try to learn on their own, they learn more effectively. There are various learning methods and students must be given the choice for choosing the method of learning they are the most comfortable in. This creates a sense of ownership of the problem and allows students to find solutions for the same.
• Analyze and Assess- Analysis is one of the major critical thinking skills. Students must be encouraged to analyze and assess the consequences and effectiveness of the ideas. This allows students to figure out whether the ideas are logical or not.
• Ask Open Ended Questions– Ask thoughtful questions and allow students to answer with valid reasoning. This will prepare students for an end to end conversation and will help them develop communication skills as well.

Critical Thinking Skills for Resume

• Apart from your hobbies and extracurricular activities for your CV or Resume, add Relevant Skills also. Explain critical thinking by using keywords mentioned above related to your skills in your resume.
• Accentuate Skills in Your Cover Letter: Mention some of these skills in your cover letter.
• Use Skill Words in Your Job Interview: Discuss a time when you faced a problem at work and explain how you applied critical thinking to tackle it.

FAQs

We hope that this blog familiarizes you with all the essential Critical thinking skills for your resume! Once you master these important critical thinking skills, you can lay the groundwork that encourages effective interaction to consistently balance your life and work.

If you’re looking for job opportunities and need help in creating a job-winning resume, our experts at Leverage Edu can help you with the best guidance.