Learning the core of critical thinking skills allows you to make better choices.
At its core, thinking can be broken down into 3 categories: creative thinking, problem solving, and critical thinking. Creative thinking involves imagining, inventing, changing, designing and creating. Problem solving includes improving, refining, finding, and inventing new criteria to mash up. Critical thinking incorporates analyzing, breaking things down, comparing, categorizing, listing, and ranking.
An individual who takes the time to think increases the organizational bandwidth for all solutions. Throwing more tasks and more information at someone will not make them thinkers or help the organization grow. Believe it or not, it will only increase turnover and decrease morale. The reality is that our society is terrible at critical thinking skills. We must encourage employees and donors to help us think. Taking the time to think is the foundation of democracy. Here are four universal examples of critical thinking:
1. Making distinctions between ideas, objects, and the pros and cons
2. Looking at systems and picking them apart
3. Recognizing relationships in the community
4. Looking at multiple perspectives to increase compassion and empathy
One of my favorite articles ever written is the “Making of a Corporate Athlete” by by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. It’s a white paper, that is a scaled down version of their book “The Power of Full Engagement, Managing Energy, Not time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal.” Their book is one of the key factors of why Think is number 6 in our process. In fact their book is foundational to understanding an individuals ideal performance state, and also understanding oscillation and programs.
Building “Think” into our process allows an organizational leader the opportunity to reach their ideal performance state. As Jim and Tony point out, an ideal performance state involves a physical capacity, emotional capacity, mental capacity, and spiritual capacity. Each one of these capacities needs time oscillate. Rituals that promote oscillation—the rhythmic expenditure and recovery of energy—link the levels of the capacity pyramid.
The R7 Health assessment is not a program it’s a process.
A process that helps provide clarity to Vision and creates an environment for reflecting and applying rigor to daily tasks is where the message hits the tip of the sphere. The R7 health assessment is a highly collaborative process. A process is very different than a program. A program has hard and fast rules while a process takes innovation and collaboration with team members to execute.
For instance, vigorous exercise can produce a sense of emotional well-being, clearing the way for peak mental performance. Peak performance in business has often been presented as a matter of sheer brainpower, but we view performance as a pyramid. Physical well-being sits at its foundation. Above that rests emotional health, then, mental acuity, and at the top, a sense of purpose. The ideal performance state requires peak performance under pressure and is achieved when all levels are working together. All levels cannot work together if there is not proper oscillation within each of the capacities.
Therefore, developing critical thinking skills is one of the most critical steps in the R7 Health Assessment. They are essential for reaching an ideal performance state, increasing human potential, and boosting corporate performance.
