Importance of Critical Thinking

Discuss about the Reflection on Critical thinking and Managerial Decision Making.

Critical thinking and managerial decision making is important to the success of any organization. The theories that I have learnt through this course have helped me analyze my strengths and weaknesses. This reflection highlights upon the various topics that I have learnt in this course as well as their impact on my life, career choices and decision making abilities.

Unlike Automatic thinking, Critical thinking allows people to think things through before making decisions and hence results in better decision making ability of individuals (Halpern, 2013). This presentation was important for me to understand that I need to adopt a critical thinking process. My DISC personality test also demonstrated that I tend to make rather quick decisions without fully comprehending the outcome. This lecture helped me understand that instead of Automatic thinking, I should focus on becoming a critical thinker. This would even help me in making better decisions.

There are two kinds of motivators in the work place for every person. These are intrinsic and extrinsic motivators (Reiss, 2012). Intrinsic motivation is a result of enjoying work or being passionate about it. Extrinsic motivation is a result of external awards, rewards and recognitions (Legault, 2016). After deeply studying this course, I identified that I am in intrinsically motivated person. I would seek a job in the career field of my interest in order to remain motivated in the long run. I have also understood that through my work, I would like to give back to the society as that would truly help me have sense of fulfillment.

Prospect theory is an analysis of a decision under risk (Kahneman & Tversky, 2013). I found this theory interesting because it helped me learn how various businesses market their products or services by understanding that losses are weighed more heavily than gains. This theory helped me become a more aware consumer. For example, most businesses selling shampoos or creams tend to market the disadvantages of not using the product. This strategy has often led me to buy unnecessary goods. But now I would be careful and again use the critical thinking theory while making my purchase decisions. My DISC personality results have also helped me in understanding that I need to work upon my decision making skills.

In this course, I learnt an interesting thing, which are the ten tools of clarity. These ten tools help people in gaining a clear idea and analyzing situations better. I have also learnt that the predominant reason why projects, decisions or tactics go wrong is because they were not clear in the first place. As a working employee, I would be working on various projects in the future. In fact, my DISC personality result also reflects that I tend to introduce new ideas owing my creative thinking attitude. Carefully, analyzing these tools would help me understanding my future projects effectively and hence see through them in an efficient manner.

Motivators in the Workplace

Week three helped me in understanding the importance as well as the difference between persuasion and influencing. I have understood that persuasion is less subtle than influencing. In the workplace, a leader is often required to persuade team members to perform betters or influence their work culture (Hackman & Johnson, 2013). As an individual, I am fairly convincing owing to my communication skills but now I understand the importance of being influencing as a leader in a business. I even understood that in a team, not every member would possess the same thought process. But as a leader, it would be imperative to influence team members and motivate them to work in a single direction.

I have also understood the thin line of difference between facts, observations, experiences, assumptions and beliefs. These are all important in our critical thinking process and it is important to note how each of them is likely to become a conclusion. Different personalities apply different premises.

Johari window is a self-reflection analysis that helps people in understanding and identifying personality aspects that are known to self and unknown to others, known to self and known to others as well as unknown to self and known to others (Rasheed, 2015). The tools helps in improving communication and analyzing weaknesses (Saxena, 2015).

By conducting this analysis, I identified that, I am very open to others. There are various attributes of my personality which are known to me as well as all my friends and peers. I was also able to seek feedback and gain an insight upon my weaknesses which includes my lack of assertiveness. This forms a part of my blind area. The hidden arena of mine includes my massive stage fear and difficulty to socialize. The results of my Johari Window analysis were also in line with my DISC personality results. After conducting both, I was able to better analyze myself and start a self-improvement course to address my weaknesses.  

Self-efficacy theory highlights upon an individual’s belief in their own capability (Farkas, 2011). I reflect that I believe I am very efficient, active and self-determined. I rarely have a fear of the environment and I can withstand severe stress. My high self-efficacy has resulted in my confident, optimistic and motivated personality.

Innovation involves the process of providing a new or modified conclusion that obtains positive results (Huizingh, 2011). We have learnt in this course that conclusion has various levels of hierarchy and one needs to push the hierarchy in order to be innovative (Walton, 2014). During this course, I understood the importance of innovation in the workplace. Therefore I have started putting an extra effort in thinking out of the box. We even conducted various activities and I am sure these activities will help me widen my horizon and think more creatively.

Prospect Theory

DISC personality test reflects upon the analyzing an individual’s personality over 4 basic attributes. These include dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance (Lykourentzou et. al., 2016). In this course, we took the DISC test to gain a deeper insight about our personality. The first thing the test result mentioned was that I tend to deal handle aggressive people in a blunt way. This can get intimidating for others and hence it is imperative that I try to adapt to a softer approach. Secondly, I am considered as a pacesetter or someone who comes up with new ideas.

Few feedbacks that I have received from the test also reflect upon my weakness to take quick and often rash decisions. Another, noticeable factor about the test result was that I lack consistency. I tend to have phases of excessive work and phases of complete relaxation. This also indicates that I am unable to motivate myself.

DISC personality test also helps in identifying appropriate career choices and highlights upon strengths and weaknesses of an individual.

There are five decision contexts and before making a decision it is important to identify which of these contexts does the decision belong to. These decision contexts are simple, complicated, complex, chaotic and unclear. In order to make complex decisions, I must also possess excellent communication skills. Decision making often requires improved levels of communication and interaction. As mentioned before, I tend to make reckless decisions and hence it important for me to understand these contexts and treat every decision differently.

There are various crucial decisions that need to be made in the workplace and it is imperative for the stakeholders of the business to make the right decisions for the success of the business (Griffin & Moorhead, 2011). I understood through this course, that decision making involves the understanding of who, need, when, criteria and risks. It is important to understand and analyze all these factors before making a decision and I would keep this in mind in order to get a clearer idea of the decision making situation.

There are two kinds of risk that an individual encounters while making a decision. The upside risk is the risk of something good not happening while a downside risk is a risk of something bad happening. Before making decisions, it is therefore important to check the probability of both the upside and downside risks and the decision must be made by keeping this in mind. At this point of time, I am in process of making some serious decisions regarding the industry that I wish to work in. I even have a few career options in hand. However, now before making a final decision, I would like to analyze the upside and downside risks of each of the options.

Ten Tools of Clarity

In the workplace, it is essential to balance rational as well as non-rational approaches. Rational decision making is a multi-step process starting from the identification of a problem to finding a solution (Secchi, 2011). Initially, I thought rational decision making is the most appropriate form of decision making. However, it is the balance of rational and irrational approaches that is important to successful decision making.

Bounded rationality is ideally the idea that reflects various limitations that an individual faces while making decisions. The decisions made by individuals are impacted by the time available to make the decision, cognitive limitations of the individual and tractability of the decision problem. I have often noticed in my personal life as well that while making a decision, the time available for making the decision largely impacts the quality of my decision. Even choice architectures are modified in the light of bounded rationality. After understanding this, I started keeping healthy food at my sight level in my house and slowly built an inclination towards it.

Conclusion

I am sure that the learnings from this course will continue to guide my work life. I would also continue to conduct frequent self-reflection in order to gain a deeper insight about my personality.

References

Farkas, K.J., 2011. Self-efficacy theory. Social work treatment: Interlocking theoretical approaches, pp.428-436.

Griffin, R.W. and Moorhead, G., 2011. Organizational behavior. Cengage Learning.

Hackman, M.Z. and Johnson, C.E., 2013. Leadership: A communication perspective. Waveland Press.

Halpern, D.F., 2013. Thought and knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking. Psychology Press.

Huizingh, E.K., 2011. Open innovation: State of the art and future perspectives. Technovation, 31(1), pp.2-9.

Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A., 2013. Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. In Handbook of the fundamentals of financial decision making: Part I (pp. 99-127).

Legault, L., 2016. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation. In Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences (pp. 1-4). Springer International Publishing.

Lykourentzou, I., Antoniou, A., Naudet, Y. and Dow, S.P., 2016, February. Personality matters: Balancing for personality types leads to better outcomes for crowd teams. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 260-273). ACM.

Rasheed, S.P., 2015. Self-Awareness as a Therapeutic Tool for Nurse/Client Relationship. International journal of caring sciences, 8(1).

Reiss, S., 2012. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Teaching of Psychology, 39(2), pp.152-156.

Saxena, P., 2015. JOHARI WINDOW: An Effective Model for Improving Interpersonal Communication and Managerial Effectiveness. SIT Journal of Management, 5(2), pp.134-146.

Secchi, D., 2011. Bounded Rationality. In Extendable Rationality (pp. 19-25). Springer, New York, NY.

Walton, D., 2014. Abductive reasoning. University of Alabama Press.