Critical and creative thinking skills are important components of the modern labor market. The skills that are required by workers in order to improve their professional stature have changed greatly over the last few decades. According to Lee Weiser, future employees are not expected to conform to particular models of action. Consequently, critical thinking skills will play a major role in defining future employee-related abilities.
The most pertinent skill in the modern work environment is the workers’ ability to interact with technology. On the other hand, employers are not only swayed by academic qualifications, but they also look into a person’s ability to ‘problem-solve and innovate’ (Weisser, 2012). Success in a team of employees depends on the skills of individual team members. Team members who have the ability to think creatively and critically are important to any team of employees. Furthermore, the professional growth of any team member is reflected in the team’s overall performance. Critical and creative thinking abilities are vital skills in the professional development of all workers.
Professionals use creative and critical thinking skills to accomplish a number of goals. Human resource professionals are required to have mastered creative and critical thinking skills before passing them on to their teams of employees. Consequently, team leaders are tasked with the responsibility of instituting brainstorming and other methods of operation to invigorate employees’ critical and creative thinking skills. Other than the skills that are coerced by human resource professionals and team leaders, each team member should possess a specific set of creative and critical thinking skills.
A worker should be able to explore all possible solutions to a certain problem with the view of seeking the most appropriate answer to a certain solution. Therefore, positive professional development does not depend on an employee’s ability to master pre-determined solutions for specific problems. Furthermore, critical thinking skills enable workers to explore how various solutions would impact their professional development. On the other hand, creative thinking skills enable workers to seek solutions in a “spontaneous but free-flowing manner” (Gray, 2007). During the process of critical thinking, team members are expected to have the ability to make connections between things that are unrelated.
The ability to make far-fetched connections between disparate occurrences is important to the professional development of employees. In addition, employees are only able to come up with extra-ordinary solutions by thinking ‘outside the box.’ It is the responsibility of a team member to master “innovation through diversity of opinion and experience, openness to new ideas, and transparency of their learning objectives” (Weisser, 2012). In the modern work environment, team members are required to further their professional commitment to their respective organizations, not through their attendance but by seeking new solutions that can positively impact their organizations. Therefore, critical and creative thinking skills are an important part of professional development for workers.
Critical thinking can be achieved and harnessed through a number of strategies. The most universally acceptable critical thinking skill that is of benefit to professional development is the ability to question assumptions. Team members should have the ability to question the assumptions of their fellow employees as well as their own. In extreme circumstances, team members should have the ability to question the assumptions of the management.
For instance, a team member’s critical thinking abilities have the capacity to alter an organization’s rules and regulations. Ordinarily, the thought process of most people is flawed, but critical thinking is the most appropriate tool for streamlining this practice. Critical thinking skills are highlighted by the employees’ innate need to question decisions and assumptions. Attitude is an important aspect of creative thinking skills. An attitude that is open to learning is a prerequisite for good critical thinking skills.
Team members should harness critical thinking skills during their training process. During the learning process, it is possible for employees to adopt an attitude that favors problem-solving, inductive-learning, action-taking, and critical reflection (Weisser, 2012). All these skills have a great influence on an employee’s long-term professional development needs. Current employees are arguably tomorrow’s industry leaders. Consequently, employees should embrace learning processes that hone their critical and creative thinking skills with the view of furthering their long-term professional goals.
Team members use various creative and critical thinking strategies to enhance their professional development. One strategy that applies to creative and critical thinking skills is the ability to identify which skills are most suitable for a specific problem-scenario. Critical and creative thinking team members have the succinct ability to know the exact set of skills that are required to carry out a certain task. The main reason why employees are formulated into teams is to enable them to brainstorm on certain tasks whilst using the creative and critical thinking abilities of individual team members.
Teams and team members should also be in the habit of using examples and demonstrations as part of their action process. The examples and demonstrations that are used by teams and team members should be sourced from experts and strategies that have worked in the past. Furthermore, using examples of strategies that did not work in the past is another method that can be beneficial to team members. Currently, most teams use video tutorials as part of their learning and teaching strategies. Video tutorials are an effective creative and critical thinking strategy because they provide an interactive forum for functional teams.
Another known creative and critical thinking strategy that is used by team members is the tendency to learn from each other. In the digital age, employees have the chance to enroll in virtual forums that enable them to learn from each other. For instance, social media features platforms that bring individuals from certain careers together are a good venue for practicing creative and critical thinking. Forums enable team members to interact with their peers. Critical and creative thinkers can use these forums to learn from the experiences of others. Another strategy that is often used by creative and critical thinkers is ‘learning by failing’ (Carr & Kemmis, 2003).
Workers who are not afraid of failure have the capacity to enhance their creative and critical thinking skills to a large extent. Furthermore, lessons that are learned through failure are important and long-lasting in the course of the critical thinking process. Failure is also known to spark creativity among workers. Learning through failure is the most effective creative and critical thinking strategy because it leads to involuntary growth for both the organization and its workers. Critical and creative thinking skills are important when performing a professional development analysis. Members of a single team can use critical thinking as a tool for integrating their skills and furthering their professional development agenda.
References
Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (2003). Becoming critical: education knowledge and action research. New York: Routledge.
Gray, D. E. (2007). Facilitating management learning developing critical reflection through reflective tools. Management learning, 38(5), 495-517.
Weisser, L. (2012). Facing the Future: What skills will your employees need?. Canadian Learning Journal, 16(1), 23-24.