4 Ways Critical Thinking is Limited

Often we limit our team’s ability to apply critical thinking by defaulting to what’s quickest and easiest. Here’s 4 examples:

⛔ You do the work, instead of delegating because it’s faster, easier, and better.
⛔ You require strict adherence to a process or policy.
⛔ You provide a solution, instead of letting them figure it out.
⛔ You swoop into save the client, instead of letting the team member provide the solution.

Your team can’t learn when you hold on to tasks and projects. Your behavior limits their ability to strengthen their skills and fully support you. In the long run, this slows down the business’s ability to bring on new clients and serve them well.

Policies and processes are necessary to protect the business and provide a consistent standard of service. However, problems can occur when they’re followed too tightly.

• The team member fumbles to deliver excellent service because they don’t understand when it’s appropriate to deviate.
• The team member feels constricted and misses opportunities for innovation or creativity.

When we’re feeling rushed and stressed it’s easy to default to providing an answer. Unfortunately, this makes you a bottleneck. It teaches them to always come to you for an answer instead of learning how to find the answer and be self-sufficient. As a result, it slows everything down because it has to filter through you.

I’ve talked about this before, but here’s a reminder: Let your team be the heroes. If the client gets a different answer from you, then it undermines the team member’s relationship with the client and their confidence to uphold a standard in the future. You’ve taught the client that the team member doesn’t have authority and to come to you instead, thus increasing your work.

So what can you do to develop and encourage their critical thinking?

Slow Down to Develop Critical Thinking

You slow down to ensure they’ve mastered the basics for their role in your business. You can provide access to your policies and processes, but high performance requires continuous coaching and mentorship. Coaching and mentorship are where learning is nurtured and wisdom is shared.

Here are 3 ways to help your team improve their critical thinking:

🚥 Help them understand context and nuance.

• What factors do you consider?
• What factors do you recommend they consider?

🚥 Work through the process together.

• What steps would they take to solve the problem?
• What steps would they take to achieve a goal?
• Have them map it out.

🚥 Practice thinking ahead.

• How would they respond if X happened?
• What are the opportunities and risks of Y?

Critical thinking is a process that requires us to slow down when applying or teaching. The more often your team is empowered to make decisions on their own, create solutions, and resolve failures, the more capable they become. As their capability increases so does their confidence. And this is what you want and your business needs to serve clients with excellence.

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