Business strategy. Plan and secure success.

This critical and creative thinking course will allow you to apply critical thinking skills to the workplace so you can clarify concepts and evaluate knowledge, especially the sources of truth. The development of your creative thinking skills will stimulate you to generate ideas, explore new possibilities and solve problems in novel ways, both individually and with others.

The focus in today’s workplace is on innovative solutions. Exercising critical and creative thinking skills is vital for creating competitive offers and being first to offer new advantages for your organisation through innovative services and products. The key is to continue to develop your critical and creative thinking skills so that they manifest spontaneously when needed.

Aims

The aim of this course is to build your skills in critical and creative problem solving in both workplace and everyday situations. The development of your critical and creative thinking will enable you to deliver stronger outcomes to the workplace and in leading others.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• describe the concept of critical thinking and why it is so important for establishing facts before making workplace decisions
• demonstrate skills in creative thinking by identifying and refining a ‘problem’ and approaching problem-solving from different angles with a fresh perspective
• build stronger arguments with evidence-based decision making by discerning fact from fiction, and drawing on reasoned arguments for solving problems
• combine both critical and creative thinking to approach problems with sound judgement, and by offering innovative solutions, by yourself and with others.

Content

The “Thinking” process

• How to define a problem and separate fact from opinionated fact and opinion
• Understanding heuristics, mental shortcuts, emotions and cognitive biases that influence our thinking
• Understanding sources of inspiration for creative thinking and the importance of perspective in redefining the problem

Critical thinking

• The nature of critical thinking
• How not to judge prematurely
• The importance of maintaining a broad perspective, acquiring facts, listening and reflecting
• How to make judgments in a disciplined way, with rationality whilst minimising emotion

Creative thinking

• The nature of creative thinking
• The importance of defining and redefining the problem
• The development of skills in ideation, illustration, refection, asking good questions and iterative reconsideration of the problem/ solution process
• The role that intuition plays
• Ways of thinking laterally by yourself and with others

Combining creative and critical thinking in the problem-solving process

• Development of skills using class-based problems and real-life scenarios for practical application

Intended audience

This course is intended for anyone in business, government or creative industries who are seeking to apply critical and creative thinking to solve problems in robust and creative ways, whilst discerning the sources of truth.

Prerequisites

None

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught workshop
• Online workshop via the platform Zoom

Materials

Course materials are distributed electronically.

Recommended reading

Birgili, B., 2015, Creative and Critical Thinking Skills in Problem-based Learning Environments, Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 71-80.

Paul, R. and Elder, L., 2006, Critical Thinking: The Nature of Critical and Creative Thought, Journal of Developmental Education, vol. 30, no. 2, p.34.

Paul, R. and Elder, L., 2019, The Nature and Functions of Critical & Creative Thinking, Rowman & Littlefield.

Wechsler, S.M., Saiz, C., Rivas, S.F., Vendramini, C.M.M., Almeida, L.S., Mundim, M.C. and Franco, A., 2018, Creative and Critical Thinking: Independent or Overlapping Components?, Thinking Skills and Creativity, vol. 27, pp. 114-122.