Required Skills to Develop Critical Thinking Skills for Leaders
Analytical skills and critical thinking are crucial to business performance and being an analytical and critical thinker is essential for developing leaders.. However, according to the updated UK Commission for Employment and Skills ‘Employer Skills Survey 2015: UK Results (Amended 2018)’ :
- Managers are lacking in analytical skills
- 55% of managers are deemed to be not proficient in solving complex problems
- There is a lack of analytical and problem-solving skills in existing staff
Analytical thinking skills are essential for breaking down complex information, identifying patterns, and evaluating the components of a problem to draw conclusions based on facts and data.
Analytical skills and critical thinking are no longer nice-to-haves. They are required skills for a changing world, and among the 10 critical skills needed for developing leaders. But which matters most?
What are analytical skills?
Applying analytical skills, you can break down facts and information into small elements, as analytical thinking involves breaking complex information into smaller parts to understand it better. You can analyse data, apply reasoning, and recall information. You are curious about the way the data fits together.
Analytical thinkers can spot trends and gain insight into an organisation’s business by pattern recognition, and they use this skill to identify patterns and connections to better interpret data and find solutions to problems. You’ll seek to identify differences, similarities, trends, and relationships between all the elements.
All these skills make you good at evaluating problems and developing logical solutions through logical reasoning – a business-critical function.
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking is broader than analytical reasoning, and critical thinking involves evaluating information objectively, asking meaningful questions, and considering alternative viewpoints. As a critical thinker, you consider all the facts and figures as presented and make judgements based on these and a range of other inputs. These may include opinions, views, and potential solutions put forward.
The critical thinking process includes gathering and evaluating information, asking essential questions, considering existing information, evaluating others’ arguments, and testing conclusions against evidence. You don’t automatically accept information as fact. You probe, prompt, question, and research to ensure solid data, and from all you know you draw conclusions. You use all you learn to develop creative solutions.
Critical thinking skills increase your ability to be purposeful, logical, and innovative when decision-making.
Analytical skills vs critical thinking – can they be separated?
Analytical reasoning is a more linear approach to gathering and analysing data, while analytical thinking and critical thinking together provide a comprehensive approach to problem-solving. It takes a step-by-step flow that breaks down information in a logical pattern.
Critical and analytical thinking skills enable you to question the data, verify it, and analyse outside information before developing a more holistic solution.
Which matters most depends upon your point of view. Analytical reasoning is a crucial step in the process of critical thinking. You analyse data before applying critical thinking to it.
If only using analytical skills, you use the data and facts to support your solution.
By then applying critical thinking, you evaluate all sources of information before making a judgement based on your opinion, knowledge, experience, and expertise.
By integrating both skills, you can gain a deeper understanding of complex problems and develop more informed and effective solutions.
While both are unique skills, and can be used individually, the nature of them makes them completely complimentary. However, the nature of them also means that critical thinkers typically use their analytical skills as the first step to developing holistic solutions that have a positive impact on their teams and organisations.
In short, analytical skills are usually developed first and are a necessity to meaningful application of critical thinking skills.
Do your employees possess the analytical and critical thinking skills to accelerate your organisation toward its goals? Take a look at our Scaling Talent and Prime Leadership programmes, designed to develop skills and talent across your organisation.
We’d love to talk to you about how we can help you and your organisation develop outstanding learning and development programmes – Virtual Instructor Led or face to face as this becomes possible. Email our team here or call our client relationship team on +44 (0)1423 531083.
