Successful people and critical thinkers often share the skill/ability to “size up” information they’ve gathered and “come up” with an appropriate, workable plan or action. For example, a real estate agent would analyze and apply the information she has gathered about her client and devise a strategy that would get that client the type of house he wanted where he wanted it for an amount he could afford. If the agent’s critical thinking is correct and she’s sized up her client accurately, the execution of her strategy to get her client what he wants will likely be successful.
Discover how disposed you are to sharpening your critical thinking skills by checking out this list below. Also, when you have a few extra minutes, take the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory to get objective feedback about how ready, willing and able you are to improve your abilities to both size up a client and/or a situation and to then “come up” with a strategy that will best serve your client as well as yourself.
- Are you a truth seeking individual? Are you a nothing-but-the-facts kind of person like Joe Friday on Dragnet or do you try to understand how things “actually” are?
- Do you value open-mindedness? Do you welcome new ideas/information?
- Are you analytical in your approach to decision-making? Do you rely on your gut, your intuition or do you rely on data driven pros and cons?
- Are you systematic in you approach to problem solving? Is your approach orderly or do you break issues down into small parts and tackle each one on a step-by-step basis?
- Do you have confidence in your reasoning abilities? Do you like to rely on your own observation/research/thinking/analyzing abilities or do you prefer to defer to the abilities of others?
- Are you an inquisitive person who is full of questions and curiosity?
- Do you trust your abilities and skills to “come up” with accurate conclusions? Do you analyze things from different perspectives/points of view and include the thoughts and experiences of other trusted colleagues? Or do you just want to come up with a conclusion and be done with it?
Once more aware of your tendencies to think critically, the more you’ll sharpen your abilities to do so. Perhaps your “success rate” as an agent will sharpen as well.
