How to Think Strategically (Critically)

Great leaders build success by learning to think differently from the average person. Successful people have sought to master a single skill: The ability to THINK CRITICALLY.

Critical thinking is the process of careful and deep thinking about a subject or idea. It includes being able to analyze and weigh facts, to carefully reason, and to make insightful connections.

Here are five tips:

1. Learn To Accept Negative Feedback When someone criticizes your work, it doesn't feel good. You'll be tempted to defend yourself, or to close your mind. Don't. Steps to accepting negative feedback Recognize its value Ask for it regularly Reward it. Thank people for it Never punish negative feedback Listen actively Don’t respond right away Don’t refute the criticism or justify yourself Don’t take offense. Don’t interpret it as a personal attack.

2. Block Time To Think The whirlwind and urgency of the day is a very strong pull on your time. But don't confuse motion with progress. Don't confuse urgent with important. Critical thinking is hard work. So, when it comes time to analyze facts, block out time in your calendar to engage in deep thought, because it is important. Use some of the following questions to help you analyze: What is the problem preventing you from being successful? If you could solve the problem, what does success look like, how do you measure it? What are the facts and assumptions? What are some alternative solutions to achieve the goal? What are the pros and cons of each alternative? What is the best solution given the goal and your practical constraints?

3. Create The Conditions For Insight Quiet moments: Quiet moments help reduce external perceptual competition (e.g., sights, sounds) for our conscious attention or awareness, allowing the brain to detect weaker signals more readily. Looking inward: Looking inward, or thinking about your thinking (also known as metacognition), shifts the focus of awareness away from older, more established solutions, and away from external input. It also can shift your focus to your thought process itself, as opposed to just the content of your thinking. Positive emotion: Research suggests people are more likely to solve more problems with insight when in a positive mood than in a negative mood. Distance from the problem: When you walk away from the problem and allow your attention to drift, this frees up the conscious mind from focusing on very strong and well-rehearsed signals.

4. Zoom In and Zoom Out One pitfall that prevents critical thinking is focusing only on the detail and the short-term. Zooming Out is essential to big picture decision making. It helps you to put things in context and stress principles that are important, but perhaps you may miss some subtleties and nuances. Zooming In brings the details into sharp focus. Opportunities may look large and compelling, but may lack context. One trap of Zooming In is that the constraints of the details become "the problem to solve" rather than trying to achieve the original outcome. The best leaders work the zoom button in both directions. When faced with a crisis, they can address the immediate situation while seeking structural solutions. They can zoom in to see problems while zooming out to look for similar situations, root causes, and principles or policies that will help prevent the crisis from recurring.

5. Take a Break From The Problem You'll benefit by taking a break and letting all the facts settle in your mind. This allows you space to learn and adapt from your experience and room to process what you have been thinking about and release negative emotions. Learning to think critically can take you and your work to the next level.