America's Benefit Specialist June 2023
CRITICAL-THINKING SKILLS
• detect inconsistencies in common mistakes and reasoning • reflect on the justification of their own belief systems and values • identify the relevance and importance of ideas • solve problems systematically Let’s talk about critical thinking in more concrete terms in the insurance industry. Here are five scenarios where critical thinking skills can be applied to make the best decisions:
To his credit, the president learned from his mistakes. After a complete debrief, he changed the way he made tough decisions from that point on. Fast-forward to October 1962, when Kennedy was faced with the second huge challenge of his administration: The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles just 90 miles from U.S. shores. This quickly escalated into another international crisis. However, President Kennedy and his team handled the Cuban Missile Crisis with complete competence by using critical-thinking skills to negotiate and avoid a potentially cat astrophic outcome. It’s one of the greatest teachable examples of how a leader can learn from a major mistake and reform the deci sion-making process by applying critical-thinking skills. President Kennedy admitted later that the lessons from the Bay of Pigs Invasion helped him to avoid groupthink, and to analyze the situation with great care to reach a well-vetted and well-reasoned solution. WHY CRITICAL THINKING IS INVALUABLE FOR LEADERS AND THEIR TEAMS Even great leaders can fall into traps, but great leaders can also learn from their experiences. They can change their approach and the culture around them and thrive from competent decision-making. Let’s look closer at why critical thinking is key for leaders and their teams. The Foundation for Critical Thinking defines critical think ing as “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 commu nication, as a guide to belief and action.” In other words, critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to decide and what to believe. Critical thinking is a way of thinking. HOW DO LEADERS BENEFIT FROM CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS? According to The Nth Degree, an online publication by New man University, the top five skills that are the most important in today’s workplace are: 1. complex problem solving 2. Critical-thinking skills 3. creativity 4. people management 5. coordinating with others Leaders with critical-thinking skills are able to: • understand the logical connections between ideas • identify, construct and evaluate arguments
1. Say a senior account manager needs to an alyze her book of clients on Monday morning. Each has their own needs and requests, and she needs to prioritize her account tasks so that she creates maximum value for her clients. 2. Maybe there’s a producer on the team who needs to evaluate the capabilities and services of his firm and decide on which ones are best suited to present to win a new account. 3. A claims consultant on any given day may receive pushback from a carrier, and needs to review all the evidence to devise a strategy in order to win a favorable ruling. 4. Perhaps a hiring committee that has a slate of seemingly qualified candidates and needs to avoid biases to vet and select the perfect candidate. 5. Finally, consider an executive team who’s of fered an opportunity to acquire a firm but needs to make the right decision or risk losing ground to competitors.
Everyone on your team, including you, is being tasked with making complex decisions. Some are smaller and some are game-changers, but all require analytical skills to sift through the noise and make decisions based on facts and reasoning. WHAT PREVENTS US FROM USING CRITICAL THINKING? There are reasons why we don’t easily apply critical-thinking skills to every situation and many of those reasons fall into two buckets: 1) external factors and 2) internal factors. External pressures include speed, productivity, multitask ing and the like. Oftentimes, leaders feel overwhelmed by the depth and the complexity of the decisions they need to make on a day-to-day basis. Trying to make decisions quickly in order to move forward is a natural response. Here’s what I want you to remember, though: Speed and critical-thinking skills do not have to be seen as mutually exclusive. After reflecting on a decision made in the past, nobody’s ever said, “It took me a little while longer, but I got to the right decision… yet I still feel regret or remorse.” That just doesn’t happen.
28 ABS | benefitspecialistmagazine.com
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