how are critical thinking leaders beneficial to an organization

The Crucial Role of Critical Thinking in Leadership

Leadership is more than just guiding a team; it's about making decisions that shape the future of an organization. Critical thinking plays a pivotal role in effective leadership. Here are five key reasons why it's essential for a leader to have critical thinking skills:

1. Informed Decision-Making

Leaders are constantly faced with complex challenges. Critical thinking empowers them to gather information, assess options, and make well-informed decisions. It ensures decisions are based on facts and analysis rather than assumptions.

2. Problem-Solving Abilities: 

Leaders encounter obstacles and problems regularly. Critical thinking enables them to identify root causes, analyze potential solutions, and implement effective problem-solving strategies. It encourages a proactive approach to challenges.

3. Adaptation to Change

In today's dynamic business environment, change is inevitable. Critical thinking allows leaders to adapt to new circumstances, evaluate the impact of change, and make adjustments swiftly. It fosters resilience and flexibility.

4. Effective Communication

 Leaders must convey their vision and ideas clearly. Critical thinking helps them structure their thoughts logically, present ideas persuasively, and engage in constructive dialogues with their team, fostering collaboration.

5. Innovation and Creativity

To stay competitive, leaders need to foster innovation. Critical thinking encourages creative problem-solving and the exploration of new ideas. It allows leaders to identify opportunities for growth and adapt to evolving trends.

In conclusion, critical thinking is the cornerstone of effective leadership. It equips leaders to make informed decisions, navigate challenges, adapt to change, communicate effectively, and drive innovation. Leaders with strong critical thinking skills not only steer their organizations to success but also inspire their teams to reach new heights.

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The Importance of Critical Thinking to Successful Leadership

Bryan zaslow.

Nov 16, 2021

There’s a crisis brewing in the business world, but almost nobody has been paying attention to it.  

More and more evidence points to a lack of critical thinking skills in today’s youngest aspiring leaders down to today’s college graduates. The Wall Street Journal reported that after four years of classes,  students at some of the country’s most prestigious universities don’t show any improvement in critical thinking skills .

This lack of critical thinking skills is causing what one expert calls a “competency gap” in the newest crop of leaders. According to a survey released by Morning Consult,  64% of employers say it’s difficult to find qualified applicants with critical thinking skills . That’s more than any of the other so-called “soft skills” that employers say they urgently need.

In business, critical thinking is independent thinking that isn’t clouded by bad advice, misleading assumptions, or personal biases. It is the ability to see past public opinion and popularity polls. Do you see a correlation between this and emotional agility, which I discussed in great detail in  one of my previous posts ? Critical thinking allows leaders at every level to evaluate their decision-making and how these decisions ultimately impact results across every part of an organization. 

The leaders who stand out from the crowd as critical thinking rock stars are balanced thinkers who are aware of their own feelings and emotions, as well as those of the people around them, but can set them aside when making a decision. An example could be reacting emotionally to a story. A critical thinker knows there are always at least two sides to the truth and takes the time to put away their initial reactions, uncover the facts, and react thoughtfully. 

Personally, I think that critical thinking is one of the top job requirements for me as a parent of two teenagers. I want to spring into action every time my daughter shares a story filled with emotions about how someone has been mean. The reality is that her story is best handled by setting aside my own emotions and guiding her with care and thoughtfulness that perhaps she is a participant to that chaos as well.

Critical thinking is crucial in the current economic climate. In the “new normal” of the post-pandemic era, leaders have to be more than brilliant spokespeople or charismatic figureheads. They also have to be strategic and forward-thinking, with an emphasis on forward thinking. What made a leader successful in the past is often not what will make them successful in the future.

I want to offer a couple of things to help you work on and develop your critical thinking. Here are a few traits leaders with good critical thinking skills share:

They question assumptions.  Just because something is true today, or has been true for a while, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be true tomorrow. Financial firms learned that lesson after the meltdown in 2008. We all faced that fact in 2020 when Covid-19 shut down offices and businesses around the world. “Crisis can bring out the best critical thinking,” John Baldoni wrote in Harvard Business Review, “because it forces you to question how and why you ended up in trouble.”

They are open-minded and curious.  We all have certain biases based on our personal experiences. We were successful when we did something before, so there’s no reason to do it differently now. But critical thinkers know that the latest data can point to different ways of accomplishing something. New technology can speed up a process that was otherwise working just fine. They gather all the information they can before making a decision. Exceptional leaders know they need to draw on past experiences, but can’t let them be their only criteria. Leaders must ask questions.

They seek out other perspectives.  We all fall into this trap: We trust the people that we work most closely with, so we don’t see the need to cast a wider net. But the best leaders look for other opinions. They talk to people outside of their inner circle who might have an interesting point of view. They reach out to peers outside their company or even outside their industry. They might end up making the same decision, but they have heard what others have to say.

They observe and listen intently.   There is so much to learn from the people that you lead, both individually and in groups. Whenever possible, spend time with them. Be inquisitive and curious. Ask them questions and listen to their answers. Pay attention to their concerns and challenges. You might find valuable information about what can be improved in your organization. A deeper exploration of the situations people bring to your attention can result in a big win for you, your teams, and your companies.

They are comfortable with change.  If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that we can’t predict everything that’s going to happen. We all have to be adept at what’s known as “managing ambiguity,” or being comfortable not knowing every possible variable. We must be able to make decisions often with limited knowledge.

Business schools have largely given up teaching critical thinking and other soft skills, largely because education has become more and more transactional: “If I’m paying this much for a college degree, how much can I expect to make when I graduate?” Also, business degrees have become more and more specialized. There are additional required courses in their major, so what gets left behind are the liberal arts classes. The only business school students learning critical thinking are those that specifically seek them out (or those, like me, that put their entrepreneurial spirits to work in startups and side hustles while still in school).

The good news is that like any other skill, critical thinking gets better with practice. If you have team members who you can see moving into leadership positions, it’s time to start passing along some of your knowledge. When you can, include them in the decision-making process, taking them through the steps you go through when solving a problem. Talk about why this particular solution made sense for your teams or company.

When they grasp the concept, let them come up with the solutions on their own. Don’t weigh in until they have explained their thought process. Ask them about alternatives they considered and the pros and cons of each.

You’ll know when one of your employees is a potential leader when they can move from making recommendations about a problem you bring to them to generating ideas on their own. Chances are they’ll become an even more valuable member of your team as time goes by. As it gets harder and harder to hire people with great critical thinking skills, you’ll be able to promote from within.

We’re in the middle of a crisis of leadership, but you can turn the “competency gap” into an advantage for your company. Make critical thinking a priority in your organization. Nurture your staff’s abilities. As your competition is searching for candidates with the right skills, you’ll already have them on your team.

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Critical Thinking in leadership: Is it necessary?

October 23, 2020 by Lauren Dunleavy

Critical thinking in leadership;Is it Necessary?

Is critical thinking an important component of leadership? One would think it is a useful tool to have in your thinking toolbox. So, what exactly is critical thinking? It was easy to find many similar definitions but; Critical thinking is defined as “ the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement” (Merriam-Webster, 2020). Critical thinking has been around for at least 2500 years. Mr. Socrates himself supposedly established a method of questioning that was able to shut down claims of knowledge back in the BC era that was very similar to critical thinking as we know it today(Paul et al., 1997). So what is critical thinking used for? It should be used for many things, but mainly we use critical thinking when we want to analyze options in making decisions(Paul et al., 1997). 

How and why is critical thinking applied in the workplace? Critical thinking in the workplace comes in many forms. We see critical thinking being used in teams to help effectively resolve problems. We even see critical thinking being used in the workplace to help teams figure out what issues exist, and then we see teams come up with possible answers for those issues. Why is critical thinking applied to research theories? Lets evaluate this question! 

One place where critical thinking has become a necessity is in leadership. Leadership is defined as a process where a person influences a group of people to achieve a set of common goals (Northouse, 2016). Leadership in theory has dated back to over 5000 years ago, where it was found to have been written in ancient Hieroglyphics (Paul et al. 1997). In ancient times, leadership was suggested that those who appeared powerful were to be followed. The need for critical thinking in leadership has always been around. A model was developed in 1925, called the watson-glaser critical thinking model which helps organizations identify factors in people that are important for critical thinking and judgement making, which explains why critical thinking needs to be a part of leadership approaches (Cox, 2011). 

Critical thinking is applied to leadership approaches because it’s important for leaders to have critical thinking skills, be able to understand logical relationships between ideas, recognize the importance and the relationship of an argument, as well as recognize mistakes in reasoning and then be able to make the right decisions (Sanscartier, 2013). 

There are many different leadership approaches to look at in applying critical thinking. Let’s evaluate critical thinking within the transformational approach of leadership. Transformational leadership theory suggests that it is a process that changes people(PSU WC L10 P2).  It is a leadership approach that is able to get leaders to motivate followers to do more than what is expected (PSU WC L10 P2). A leadership approach that enables a leader to generate and build an empire. It is part of the “new leadership paradigm” which focuses more attention on charisma and affect in leadership (Northouse, 2016). There is a lot of evidence that Transformational leadership focus is highly successful (Northouse, 2016). One factor affects another, in that a leader must appeal to the followers by appealing to their principals and higher cause (PSU WC L10 P4). Critical thinking is a larger component of the transformational theory because, in order to go through a process and be able to transform a person would need to make real, sometimes hard decisions. 

What if a person is not a good critical thinker? Can they still be a good leader? Having poor critical thinking skills can lead a person to make bad decisions, errors, repeated mistakes and even make bad assumptions. Weak critical thinking skills can cause a person to be unable to evaluate and prepare for situations (Sanscartier, 2013). So it looks like being a leader may require some critical thinking skills. So, are leaders that lack critical thinking skills doomed forever? WIll they be able to lead in a productive way? Apparently, there are still ways to develop and master critical thinking skills. 

So what does this all mean? Catherine Rezak from the International Institute of Directors and Managers suggests that leaders should take control of their critical thinking processes, evaluate them and then take action on them (Rezak,2020). So critical thinking skills could be learned, it just depends on a person’s discipline and drive to follow through with the learning process as well as adaptations to understanding it. Whether or not a person has critical thinking skills, the implications of the research suggest that critical thinking skills can be learned, or they can be innate and either way, they are useful in leadership. This is significant because although not everyone may have these skills, they still have an opportunity to learn them. 

       So what’s next? Being able to attain critical thinking skills means that possibly anyone could be a leader because the skills are transferable as long as the person is able to take control and use discipline to learn.  All of this information suggests that a less than good leader, who lacks critical thinking skills may make bad decisions, misjudge an issue, and ultimately fail the leader systems in place. One example of this is when I first started working in wraparound as a family support worker. WHen i first started I had no idea what I was doing. The job was really a fly by the seat of your pants kind of job, until you can learn the skill sets. There was a lot of critical thinking involved, when I was untrained. I had to be able to understand a full situation that I had never experienced before and know when and what skillset to use with the family member. When I used the wrong skill set, the team was unable to plan with a family, in turn creating turmoil. Being able to understand, evaluate and come to the correct decision is such an important part of leading a team. The good thing is that if we don’t know what we are doing, there is always an opportunity to learn! 

In conclusion, the evidence presented today suggests that leaders who have, or attain good critical thinking skills will be able to evaluate, judge, better understand and resolve issues more efficiently. We need more critical thinkers in this world! Using critical thinking within leadership approaches is an important component and probably should not be overlooked. A leader should have good critical thinking skills. 

Paul, R., Elder,L., Bartell, T. (March 1997). Critical Thinking: Research, findings and policy recommendations. Retrieved from: https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/a-brief-history-of-the-idea-of-critical-thinking/408 

Cox, K. (November 25, 2011). The evolution of leadership. A look at where leadership is heading. Retrieved from: https://cvdl.ben.edu/blog/the-evolution-of-leadership-a-look-at-where-leadership-is-heading/

Rezak, C. (April, 2020). Developing your Critical thinking skills. Retrieved from: https://www.marchfifteen.ca/leadership-the-importance-of-critical-thinking/#:~:text=A%20leader%20with%20critical%20thinking,reasoning%2C%20and%20make%20proper%20decisions .

https://www.iidmglobal.com/expert_talk/expert-talk-categories/leadership/leadership_skill/id45293.html#:~:text=Developed%20in%201925%2C%20the%20model,Inference

Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. 7th Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Pennsylvania State University (2020). Leadership in work. Module 7: Power and influence Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075467/modules/items/30110461

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How Critical Thinking Helps Leaders Work Through Problems

March 10, 2022 | Category: Blog , Critical Thinking

When it comes to drawing the right conclusions and making the right decisions to benefit an organization, critical thinking is a vital leadership skill, indeed.   Critical thinking allows leaders to rise above the noise, assumptions, and biases that sabotage decision-making. Leadership coaching can help develop and train critical thinking skills in many ways.  

Critical thinking is an analytic approach to problem-solving and decision-making. By developing their critical thinking skills, leaders take direct action to improve their decision-making and their organization’s position. Leadership coaching can help leaders develop critical thinking, training their minds to think instead of merely learning facts.

Critical thinking helps you differentiate facts from assumptions.

Why Critical Thinking is Vital for Leadership

Critical thinking optimizes decision-making. But in the context of intelligent leadership, it does more. Critical thinking makes desirable outcomes more likely.

Like intelligent leadership itself, it is reasoned, purposeful, and goal-focused. It allows leaders to formulate informed and relevant inferences, solve problems, calculate probabilities, and make better decisions.

In my book,  Wheel of Intelligent Leadership , I have  defined   critical thinking as an essential outer-core leadership competency. Since the quality of leadership depends on the leader’s quality of thoughts, critical thinking skills define one’s effectiveness as a leader. Critical thinking is the core component of strategic thinking, a less abstract measure of one’s ability to lead. In addition to strategic thinking, critical thinking allows leaders to:

• Embrace change
• Inspire others
• Create a vision and rally the “troops’ around it
• Understand how the different parts of the organization work together as a whole

Shallow thinking on the part of the leader is costly. It hurts the organization, the employees, and the clients.  Critical thinking  enables leaders to apply their knowledge to the everyday challenges of their work. Thus, instead of walking-talking encyclopedias, they become valuable decision-making assets for their organizations and employees.

Leaders with good critical thinking skills can model this behavior for their peers and reports, further improving the company’s talent pool.

Can Critical Thinking Skills Be Trained? 

As a leadership coaching expert, I firmly believe that it is possible to learn and practice all inner and outer-core leadership competencies. That includes critical thinking.

In my executive coaching books and blog posts, I have deconstructed critical thinking into three components.

• The ability to recognize assumptions .  An assumption  is a conclusion one reaches through the filter of one’s biases, desires, and views. Facts are observable. They exist without the need for validation. Basing decisions on assumptions instead of facts is risky and ill-advised.
• The ability to evaluate arguments.  Leaders capable of critical thinking look to break problems down to basic principles, consider alternatives, and challenge or test assumptions.
• The ability to draw conclusions.  Having gathered plenty of quality data and putting it through the filter of their critical thinking skills, intelligent leaders can draw better, more relevant conclusions that lead to better decisions.

Executive coaching  can improve  critical thinking by improving the sub-skills that contribute to it.

How Leadership Coaching Can Help Develop Critical Thinking Skills

Leadership coaching, at least the way I understand it, views critical thinking as one of the fundamental levers through which it can effect meaningful, sustainable positive change.

Leadership coaching can make you a better critical thinker. 

Business coaching and executive coaching professionals work with leaders, helping them gain a measure of their existing critical thinking skills, providing them practical solutions to improve their skills, and helping them measure the progress they make.

• A leadership coach can give you an objective assessment of your critical thinking skills.
• Executive coaches know how to ask the right questions to steer their coachees onto the path of improvement.
• Leadership coaching considers self-awareness and emotional intelligence the cornerstones of intelligent leadership. Self-aware and emotionally intelligent leaders understand the value of different perspectives.
• Business coaching encourages leaders to understand the strategic drivers of success for their organization in practical, financial terms.
• Coaches can provide valuable input, critique, and opinions, introducing alternative views and improving the decision-making skills of their clients.

Critical thinking is the leader’s best friend when it comes to decision-making. This outer-core leadership competency allows you to rise above the fray, eliminate distractions, and draw the correct conclusions.

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Why Critical Thinking Is Crucial for Leadership Success

As a CEO, you are the driving force behind your organization’s success. Your ability to navigate complexities, make informed decisions, and inspire others is what sets you apart as a leader. But when establishing yourself as a leader in business, how can you ensure that you are making the best choices for your company? The answer lies in critical thinking. What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the process of analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information to make well-reasoned judgments and decisions. It involves:

• Questioning assumptions
• Considering multiple perspectives
• Using logic and evidence to draw conclusions

The key components of critical thinking are analysis, evaluation, problem-solving, and decision-making. By applying these skills, you can break down complex issues, assess the credibility of information, generate innovative solutions, and choose the best course of action.

How Critical Thinking Benefits You as a Leader

As a CEO, you face countless decisions and challenges that can make or break your organization. By honing your critical thinking skills, you can unlock many benefits, such as making better-informed decisions and providing the inspiration that will elevate your leadership and drive your company’s success.

Make Better Decisions

Applying critical thinking involves gathering and analyzing relevant information, considering multiple viewpoints, and weighing potential consequences before taking action. Critical thinking should apply a systematic, objective approach that leads to sound judgments that benefit your organization.

Consider how Patrick Doyle, CEO of Domino’s Pizza, applied critical thinking to turn the company around. When Doyle became CEO in 2010, Domino’s suffered from poor customer satisfaction scores and lost market share. Doyle identified the problem as the taste of the pizza.

He then gathered information using taste tests, surveys, and focus groups to get feedback about the pizza, Domino’s service, and the brand. After analyzing the data, Doyle decided a complete overhaul was needed, including research and development to change the recipe, retrain staff, change the supply chain, etc.

Doyle also made the bold decision to communicate what the company was doing, acknowledging poor customer feedback and being transparent about the changes made to improve the product. The outcome has been highly successful, as reflected in Domino’s increased revenue and stock price.

Solve Problems Effectively

As Domino’s example shows, critical thinking enables you to approach problems methodically and find creative solutions. By breaking down issues, identifying root causes, and evaluating options, you can select the most appropriate course of action.

Here’s another example. When faced with supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple CEO Tim Cook demonstrated the power of critical thinking in problem-solving. He rapidly assessed the situation, explored alternative suppliers, and implemented contingency plans to minimize the impact on production, ensuring that Apple could continue to meet customer demands despite the challenges.

Adapt to Change

In a rapidly evolving business environment, your ability to navigate uncertainty is vital. Critical thinking helps you anticipate challenges, identify opportunities, and adjust your strategies as needed.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella exemplified this adaptability when considering AI opportunities. By evaluating the situation, assessing the company’s capabilities, and moving quickly, Nadella used critical thinking to invest in OpenAI, enabling Microsoft to emerge as a market leader.

Communicate Persuasively

As a leader, you must communicate clearly and persuasively to inspire action. Critical thinking improves your ability to craft logical arguments, anticipate objections, and tailor your message to your audience.

Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi demonstrated the power of persuasive communication when presenting a new strategic vision to stakeholders, “Performance with a Purpose.” By analyzing her audience’s concerns, she develops a compelling narrative that is aligned with societal needs and environmental stewardship.

She also categorized Pepsi products into three categories: “fun for you” (e.g., regular soda and potato chips), “better for you” (diet or low-fat versions), and “good for you” (nutritious options like oatmeal). Nooyi used critical thinking to assess, research, and validate the strategy and provided evidence to gain buy-in for her transformative agenda and lead PepsiCo to new heights of success.

Overcoming Challenges to Critical Thinking

Despite the clear benefits of critical thinking, several challenges can hinder its application in leadership situations:

• Cognitive biases : Systematic errors in thinking can create cognitive biases. For example, confirmation bias, which seeks information that confirms pre-existing beliefs, and groupthink, which prioritizes consensus over critical evaluation, can lead to flawed judgments. You must actively work to counteract such biases.
• Time constraints : In fast-paced environments, you may face pressure to make quick decisions with limited information. While extensive analysis may not always be possible, you can still apply critical thinking principles by considering multiple perspectives, questioning assumptions, and anticipating potential consequences.
• Information overload : When vast amounts of data are available, you can easily become overwhelmed. Critical thinking helps you filter information, prioritize what’s most relevant, and make sense of complex data sets.

Developing Your Critical Thinking Skills

Like any skill, critical thinking can be developed and strengthened over time. Here are some strategies you can use:

• Practice self-reflection : Regularly examine your thought processes, assumptions, and biases to become more aware of your mental models so you can refine them.
• Seek diverse perspectives : Surround yourself with people from different backgrounds and areas of expertise to challenge your assumptions and spark creativity.
• Engage in continuous learning : Stay informed about industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies to expand your knowledge base and gain new insights.
• Work with a coach or mentor : An experienced coach or mentor can provide personalized guidance, feedback, and accountability as you enhance your critical thinking abilities.

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is a prime example of a leader who has honed his critical thinking skills through continuous learning and openness to diverse perspectives. By voraciously reading and exposing himself to new ideas from a wide range of sources, Gates has made better decisions and driven innovation throughout his career. Unlock Your Leadership Potential with Critical Thinking

As a CEO, you have the power to shape the future of your organization. By embracing critical thinking, you can make better decisions, solve problems more effectively, adapt to change, and communicate persuasively. However, developing these skills requires intentional effort and practice.

If you’re ready to take your leadership to the next level, I invite you to work with me as your CEO coach . With my expertise in critical thinking and decision-making, I can provide you with the personalized guidance and support you need to thrive in today’s ever-changing, competitive business environment.

Together, we will:

• Assess your current critical thinking abilities and identify areas for improvement.
• Develop a customized plan to strengthen your skills through targeted exercises and real-world applications.
• Work through the specific challenges you face, using critical thinking techniques to generate innovative solutions.
• Build your confidence as a leader and decision-maker.

Don’t let cognitive biases, time constraints, or information overload hold you back. Invest in yourself and your leadership capabilities by mastering the art of critical thinking. Schedule a consultation with me today to discuss how I can help you achieve your goals and drive your organization to new heights of success.

My name is Glenn Gow , CEO Coach. I love coaching CEOs and want to help make you an even better CEO. Let’s decide if we are a fit for each other. Schedule a time to talk with me at calendly.com/glenngow . I look forward to speaking with you soon.

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Mindshifting: The Critical Thinking Leader

• First Online: 02 August 2018

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• James Laub 5  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Workplace Spirituality and Fulfillment ((PSTWSP))

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How does a leader shift their underlying perceptions about leadership? How might someone transform their thinking from an autocratic or paternalistic view to a servant-minded view? The mindshifts considered will deal with the leader’s view of himself or herself, the leader’s view of the led, and the leader’s view of the true purpose of leadership. Models of critical thinking will be applied to the practical challenge of addressing and changing our mental models to leverage our servant leadership power. The Mindset Pathways Model is presented, providing a way to seek lasting leadership mindset change. Multiple mindsets are considered and contrasted in this model to provide direction for the critical thinking leader.

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Laub, J. (2018). Mindshifting: The Critical Thinking Leader. In: Leveraging the Power of Servant Leadership. Palgrave Studies in Workplace Spirituality and Fulfillment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77143-4_12

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• Jul 12, 2023

Balancing Critical And Creative Thinking For Effective Leadership

Written by: konstantina karatza , executive contributor, executive contributors at brainz magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise..

In the dynamic and ever-evolving world of leadership, two modes of thinking play a crucial role in driving success and innovation: critical thinking and creative thinking. These two cognitive processes, though distinct, are equally valuable for effective decision-making and problem-solving. While critical thinking enables leaders to analyze and evaluate information objectively, creative thinking empowers them to generate novel ideas and explore alternative possibilities. Striking a balance between these two thinking styles is essential for leaders to navigate complex challenges and inspire their teams toward meaningful achievements.

Critical thinking, characterized by logical reasoning and evidence-based analysis, is a systematic approach to problem-solving. Leaders who engage in critical thinking meticulously examine information, question assumptions, and evaluate the validity of arguments. They rely on data-driven insights, explore cause-and-effect relationships, and seek objective evidence before making informed decisions. By analyzing risks, identifying potential pitfalls, and weighing pros and cons, leaders employing critical thinking minimize errors and make sound judgments.

Furthermore, critical thinking helps leaders uncover biases and challenge the status quo. By adopting a skeptical mindset, they can identify flaws in existing processes and propose improvements. This kind of thinking ensures that leaders are not swayed by popular opinions or conventional wisdom but instead base their decisions on logical analysis and objective facts.

On the other hand, creative thinking is a cognitive process that allows leaders to transcend conventional boundaries and envision innovative solutions. It involves the generation of fresh ideas, combining unrelated concepts, and thinking beyond traditional approaches. Creative leaders encourage divergent thinking, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty as catalysts for breakthroughs. By encouraging their teams to explore different perspectives and experiment with new approaches, leaders foster an environment that nurtures creativity.

Creative leadership thinking also involves connecting seemingly unrelated dots and identifying patterns or opportunities that others might miss. It allows leaders to approach problems from different angles, considering multiple possibilities and brainstorming creative solutions. Leaders can inspire their teams to take risks, embrace change, and think outside the box by cultivating an environment that values and encourages creative thinking.

While critical thinking and creative thinking offer unique advantages, the most effective leaders recognize the importance of balancing these two approaches. A leader who solely relies on critical thinking may find themselves confined by traditional norms, missing out on innovative solutions and growth opportunities. Conversely, leaders who overly prioritize creative thinking without critical evaluation risk making impulsive decisions that may not be based on a solid foundation of evidence.

Achieving the ideal balance between critical thinking and creative thinking is a challenging task. Leaders must be adept at leveraging critical thinking to evaluate and validate creative ideas while embracing the potential of creative thinking to explore new possibilities. By effectively combining these thinking styles, leaders can make informed, well-rounded decisions that embrace both logic and innovation.

Organizations can implement strategies such as cross-functional collaboration, diverse teams, and encouraging open dialogue to foster critical and creative thinking in leadership. By creating an environment that values diverse perspectives and challenges conventional thinking, leaders can harness the power of both critical and creative thinking to drive growth and success.

Let's explore strategies to balance critical and creative thinking in leadership

Embrace an Open Mindset: To achieve a balance between critical thinking and creative thinking, leaders must adopt an open mindset that welcomes diverse perspectives and ideas. Encourage your team members to challenge assumptions, question existing processes, and explore alternative solutions. Create a safe space where innovative thinking is encouraged and dissenting opinions are valued. By fostering an environment that embraces both critical and creative thinking, leaders can set the stage for productive collaboration and breakthrough ideas.

Define Clear Objectives: When tackling complex problems or making important decisions, it's essential to define clear objectives. Critical thinking comes into play when evaluating options and assessing potential risks and outcomes. Ensure that you have a solid understanding of the problem at hand, gather relevant data, and objectively analyze the available information. Critical thinking helps you assess the viability and feasibility of different solutions, ensuring that your decisions are based on sound reasoning.

Encourage Divergent Thinking: Creative thinking flourishes when leaders encourage divergent thinking. Create brainstorming sessions or ideation workshops where team members can freely share their ideas, regardless of how unconventional they may seem. Foster an atmosphere that promotes curiosity, experimentation, and exploration of different possibilities. By allowing your team members to think creatively, you open the door to innovative solutions that can drive your organization forward.

Seek Input from Various Sources: To balance critical and creative thinking, it's crucial to seek input from diverse sources. Engage with people from different backgrounds, disciplines, and perspectives. This diversity of thought can help challenge your assumptions, broaden your understanding of the problem, and expose you to fresh ideas. By incorporating a wide range of inputs, you can enrich your critical thinking process and inspire creative insights that you may not have considered otherwise.

Foster Collaboration: Collaboration is a powerful tool for combining critical and creative thinking. Encourage interdisciplinary teamwork, where individuals with different expertise and thinking styles can collaborate on projects and initiatives. When team members with diverse perspectives come together, they can leverage critical thinking to evaluate ideas and creative thinking to generate innovative solutions. Foster a culture of collaboration that values both rigorous analysis and imaginative thinking.

Iterate and Refine: Balancing critical and creative thinking is an iterative process. As a leader, be open to revisiting and refining your ideas and decisions. Recognize that initial solutions may require adjustment or modification based on feedback and new insights. Critical thinking enables you to evaluate the effectiveness of your chosen course of action, while creative thinking allows you to explore new possibilities for improvement. Embrace a growth mindset that values continuous learning, adaptation, and refinement.

Develop a Balanced Skill Set: Leaders must strive to develop a balanced skill set that encompasses both critical and creative thinking. Sharpen your critical thinking skills by honing your analytical abilities, understanding logical reasoning, and staying informed about relevant industry trends. Simultaneously, nurture your creative thinking by engaging in activities that stimulate your imagination, such as reading, art, or brainstorming exercises. By continuously developing both sets of skills, you'll be better equipped to strike the right balance in your leadership approach.

In conclusion, balancing critical thinking and creative thinking is vital for effective leadership. Embracing this balance enables leaders to make informed decisions while also driving innovation and fostering a culture of creativity within their organizations. By leveraging the power of critical and creative thinking in tandem, leaders can navigate complex challenges, inspire their teams, and lead their organizations to long-term success in today's rapidly changing business landscape.

For more info, follow Konstantina on Linkedin or visit the Sisu Communication site .

Read more from Konstantina!

Konstantina Karatza, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine

Konstantina Karatza, a seasoned professional with nearly 20 years of experience in the advertising industry, made a career transition five years ago to pursue her passion for Leadership Coaching. As the founder of Sisu Communication, she is dedicated to empowering individuals and organizations to reach their full potential by embodying values such as creativity, communication, and trust. Konstantina's deep passion for traveling and exploring diverse cultures has enhanced her understanding of human dynamics and enriched her ability to connect with individuals from all walks of life, enabling her to foster inclusive environments and promote cultural awareness within organizations.

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6 Critical Thinking Skills That Create Great Leaders

5 steps to becoming a good critical thinker, a list of critical thinking skills, the impact of changed critical thinking.

“Thinking is hard work; that’s why so few do it.” Those words from Albert Einstein ring true in so many areas of life. In the business world, a lack of thinking often leads to disappointment and disaster. As important as it is to think in the first place, it’s also crucial for leaders to change  how  they think. In Thinking for a Change , John Maxwell states, “One of the reasons people don’t achieve their dreams is that they desire to change their results without changing their thinking. ” To do so, people need to adopt critical thinking skills.

When someone uses critical thinking skills, they begin to transform into the best version of themselves. Doing so is no small feat, though. Your level of critical thought is tied to your beliefs and your expectations.   Because the critical thinking process requires growth and introspection, there are few critical thinkers out there.

However, if you’re reading this article, you’re likely interested in developing the mindset of a critical thinker—someone who is capable of solving the world’s greatest problems. 

Take the next five minutes to learn how to become an effective critical thinker who can successfully tackle any challenge. 

Determining how to think critically can be a challenge, but  John Maxwell  provides a helpful guide to transforming how you think. By adopting this process, you’ll be able to solve problems and embrace an  entrepreneurial spirit  that will change you and your business. Here are the five steps to gaining critical thinking skills as Maxwell describes.

1.  Expose yourself to good input.  Read as much as you can from reputable sources and other good thinkers. When you come across a great idea, record and save it. Use the idea in the future as a way to stimulate more thinking.

2.  Expose yourself to good thinkers.  Don’t just sit at your desk and read a book or article from a critical thinker. Seek out other people (in person) who will challenge your thinking as well. These should be people who are also trying to grow and learn. One way to do this is by joining a mastermind group full of high-performers and entrepreneurs like yourself. 

3.  Choose to think good thoughts.  Be intentional about your thinking process. Focus on the positive. If you dwell on the negative, it should come as no surprise when adverse outcomes happen.

4.  Act on your good thoughts.  It’s not enough to simply think good thoughts. Act on them as well. More importantly, act on them quickly. Ideas end up having a short shelf life, so you must work on them before they hit their expiration date.

5.  Allow your emotions to create another good thought.  Use the momentum of good thinking as a tool to fuel more good ideas. Allowing your emotions to feed that process continually creates a self-feeding system you can capitalize on.

So, what are critical thinking skills?  Maxwell provides a helpful list in  Thinking for a Change . After all, critical thinking is the ability to think rationally and put together logical connections. These skills can help in all aspects of your life as they cultivate  innovative leadership . To become a skillful critical thinker, master the following critical thinking skills from Maxwell’s book.

1. Big Picture Thinking

Someone who looks beyond the immediate moment and considers the ramifications of their actions is a person who engages in big picture thinking. They understand that others think and see the world differently.

To practice big picture thinking, actively listen to others and set aside any agendas. All of this is in service to greater goals. As Maxwell puts it, “The person who forgets the ultimate, is a slave to the immediate.”

To practice big picture thinking:

• Have a vision for the future.
• Think like a leader.
• Account for all the variables you may encounter.
• Note what obstacles you may find.
• Draw a road map of where your team is going.
• Connect the past with the future to show a meaningful journey.

2. Realistic Thinking

Though leaders may have far-reaching dreams, they must also be realistic in their thinking. That includes developing a deep appreciation for the truth, which can be challenging for some. 

Winston Churchill famously said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.” To be a realistic thinker, you need to become comfortable with facing the truth, even if it’s difficult.

To become a realistic thinker:

• Show appreciation for the truth.
• Do your homework, including making sure you collect concrete facts.
• Consider the pros and cons of each solution.
• Imagine the worst case scenario just to be ready for it.
• Align your thinking with the truth to promote the right solution.

3. Strategic Thinking

Every solution and goal requires having a plan. Without a plan, you can’t expect to make much progress in achieving your top objectives. 

Planning means developing strategic thinking. While some challenges may feel insurmountable, strategic thinking helps to break the journey down into more manageable “bite-size” parts. When you do this, you can focus on each step more effectively. 

Which parts can you tackle yourself, and which can involve  delegation  to others? Strategic thinking shows that it’s not just what you hope to accomplish that matters, it’s  how  you do it.

4. Focused Thinking

As much as you might like, you can’t devote all of your thinking to every topic under the sun. While you might feel tempted to engage in exhaustive thinking, you must be more selective. 

In other words, practice focused thinking. 

Understand that it’s impossible to know everything and everyone. If you focus your energies, you can concentrate on the most important things you want to learn.

To get more focused:

• Remove all distractions.
• Set aside time dedicated to focused thinking.
• Establish specific goals.
• Monitor your progress toward your goals.
• Keep items of focus in sight when you work.
• Identify your strengths and areas of expertise.

5. Unselfish Thinking

John Maxwell describes unselfish thinking the best when he wrote, “There is no life as empty as the self-centered life. There is no life as centered as the self-empty life.”

Unselfish thinking means not thinking of yourself all the time. Think of others and what their needs are first, and identify how you can provide value to their lives.

To practice unselfish thinking, you must examine your motives carefully. Is what you’re doing for your benefit or the benefit of others? If you’re not careful, you could slowly, but surely, slide back into selfish motives.

6. Bottom-Line Thinking

When referencing bottom-line thinking, John Maxwell doesn’t mean thinking of the bottom line in financial terms. Instead, it means setting standards that you have to meet if you want to succeed. 

Bottom-line thinking involves thinking about what has to occur to reach the most important goal in various areas of your life. Once you set aside any emotions and wants, you can determine what accomplishments really matter to you. 

Take a moment to think of what your bottom line is in the following areas:

• Life Purpose

As you develop your critical thinking skills and become a critical thinker, you’ll understand the power of change. Any significant change has to come from within, and that all starts with how you think.

As a leader, you can not only change the way you think, but you can inspire others to think differently as well. From there, the impact of critical thinking spreads to touch all parts of your life, leading to beneficial results.

For those wanting to change the world, it begins with what’s in your head.

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The Link between Critical Thinking and Organizational Performance

The Ultimate Guide to Soft Skills for Managers wouldn’t be complete without a look at the links between critical thinking and organizational performance. Like most soft skills, critical thinking is difficult to quantify and define. But you admire it when you see it, and you recognize the gap when it’s missing. Because it’s often easier to spot the gap, consider these indicators that you might need to brush up your critical thinking skills: 

The Indicators You Might Need to Brush Up On Your Critical Thinking Skills

• Forming opinions and taking positions based on feelings vs. facts
• Justifying decisions with a single anecdote vs. a body of evidence
• Relying on ideology vs. individual thought and your own independent views
• Rejecting input due to a closed mind vs. soliciting input with an open mind
• Reciting the indoctrinated “party line” vs. pursuing new options inquisitively
• Proceeding aimlessly or with uncertainty vs. striving for clarity and knowing the purpose
• Making unilateral decisions vs. collaborating to include everyone impacted by decisions
• Protecting the status quo with rigidity vs. adapting to changes with agility
• Responding defensively when challenged vs. receiving critique graciously
• Having a narrow and short-term perspective vs. looking broadly, big picture, and long-term

 Here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re an HR executive who has seen the same situation over and over again throughout your career. You have a mental playbook for how to respond. You’re conditioned to do things a certain way. So, when yet another manager approaches you with a similar situation, you reflexively respond. You have your answers prepared before you hear the full situation. You give the playbook solution and expediently handle the matter.

 This happens to the best of us. We leapfrog over important details that are not immediately apparent. We’re blinded to them by our assumptions and lazy thinking. It happens even more when we are also swayed by our emotions and unconscious biases (we all have ‘em!). Critical thinking requires time, effort and discomfort. Lazy thinking, by contrast, is very tempting.  

Critical Thinking: What Is It Anyway?

  Critical thinking is generally defined as skillful analysis, assessment, evaluation and synthesizing of information. It requires objectivity, logic, openness, and a willingness to challenge your own and others’ biases, beliefs, and conclusions.

 Critical thinking goes beyond learning and remembering information . It’s about how you process and use the information you’ve been exposed to. Rather than automatically accepting what’s familiar and comfortable or rejecting what doesn’t fit your preconceived ideas, critical thinking kicks in when you ask questions before reaching a conclusion. That includes asking yourself introspective questions.

Critical thinking also goes beyond thinking. Routine thinking involves awareness, recollection, idea-generation, and reflection. When thinking critically, you’re also accessing objective judgment and analyzing your thoughts . This requires self-discipline and rationally considering more than what’s easy, familiar, comfortable, readily available, or emotionally gratifying.

Strong critical thinkers look for evidence to back information before they accept it. They appraise the quality of the evidence and seek diverse points of view to make sure they aren’t missing anything. They consider emotions but balance them with rational evaluation. They don’t favor a single source but consult multiple sources that provide opposing views.

 They know that confirmation bias – selecting sources and information that support your own views -- is the enemy of critical thinking. They remain vigilant to avoid lazy thinking that makes them less effective in their problem solving, decision making, and leadership. 

 There are three qualities that are essential for building critical thinking skills. They are: 

  Skepticism

 When you don’t accept things at face value, you probe by asking questions. You remain doubtful until you get enough information to confidently accept the information offered. Skepticism is a positive quality, so long as it doesn’t become cynicism. Healthy skepticism leads to new ideas, better understanding, and dialogue. Questions open the conversation when someone is skeptical and not overly eager to agree and move on. Cynicism shuts others down because, unlike skepticism, it comes with contempt, distrust, and disparagement. Cynics don’t ask questions, they pronounce judgments. 

 Skepticism is what enables you to recognize that there might be alternate ways (even better ways!) of solving a problem. It’s what launches critical thinking.     

  Curiosity

When you have a genuine desire to learn and know more, you’ll ask more questions and listen more carefully to the answers. You’ll explore possibilities you haven’t considered before. You’ll investigate options without dismissing them prematurely. 

 Curiosity is what enables you to take in more and different kinds of information for critical evaluation. 

  Humility

When you maintain a modest estimation of your own opinion, it’s easier to accept others’ input and ideas. This openness is a prerequisite for critical thinking. Without it, you’re inherently limited to what you already know. No matter how smart or experienced you are, you’re just one person. There’s a lot more out there that you don’t know! 

 Humility is what enables you to objectively weigh information and options without arrogantly favoring your own ideas and opinions. 

With an appropriate mix of skepticism, curiosity and humility, you will naturally want to know more. You’ll be asking questions like these and objectively evaluating the answers.

• What is the evidence to back your claim ? What is the source of that evidence?
• How do you know this is true?
• What role are feelings playing in this conclusion?
• What are the alternatives? How do others view this situation ?
• What are we missing? Who else could we consult for an entirely different perspective?
• What are the pros and cons for each option?
• Who is affected and how ? Who benefits? Are they presenting objective information?
• What has been done before and how is that relevant to this situation?
• What is the real, underlying problem that we’re trying to resolve?
• What are the ideal outcomes? How many of those ideals will this response provide?

  The purpose of critical thinking is to draw sound conclusions , make quality decisions, and solve problems effectively. It can also help you feel more confident about the choices you make while also building credibility as others become more confident in you, too. There’s also a myriad of benefits for an organization when managers and team members are strong critical thinkers. 

Critical Thinking and Organizational Performance – Links and Benefits

  Group think and unproductive conflict are equally damaging to a team and organization. Critical thinking helps managers avoid both. 

Group think is a trap that teams fall into when everyone wants to preserve harmony or avoid the conflict that comes from offering opposing views. When there is a dominant figure in the group, other voices may be suppressed as people withhold input because they believe it won’t be valued. Group think discourages idea generation and innovation. 

 Unproductive conflict is a trap, too, that teams succumb to when there are competing interests (or the perception of them). Infighting, undermining, sabotaging, personalizing, and refusing to collaborate all stem from issues that could be addressed with a rational approach. Unproductive conflict saps morale and impairs overall effectiveness .

 Healthy conflict is another matter. When team members respectfully engage in open discussion and two-way dialogue, they feel more committed to the eventual outcomes. They feel dignified because their opinions were heard and valued. They are more willing to offer ideas and challenge existing processes with an toward incremental improvement.

 A manger’s critical thinking unleashes a team’s unrestrained contributions.

 Critical thinking generates new ideas and explores them when they’re offered. Critical thinkers don’t reflexively or defensively respond with conversation-enders like “we always do it this way” or “we’ve never done it that way.”  When more new ideas bubble up, innovation naturally occurs. In an era of disruption and rapid change, long-term organizational performance depends on innovation.

 Critical thinking fosters teamwork, too, and strengthens inclusion. Employee engagement increases when people feel a sense of belonging and emotional commitment. By bringing in all voices and remaining open to truly consider others’ input, managers create cultures where everyone listens more, respects others more, asks more questions, and understands others’ needs better. The research that demonstrates how engagement affects every aspect of organizational performance is compelling.

 When a manager exhibits good critical thinking, it also sets a standard for others. Employees who see quality decision making and effective problem solving are more likely, themselves, to develop and use these skills. That means you’ll be able to trust others with decision authority. It means team members will solve their own problems instead of bringing them to you. No more need for managers to constantly “put out fires.”

 The obvious benefits of improved decision making and problem solving also boost organizational performance . No more endless meetings to admire the problem but never solve it. No more backtracking on decisions once unintended consequences emerge or because team members revolt. No more clash over how conclusions were reached. No more people feeling disenfranchised by decisions that affect them but they had no part in making.

 Obviously, bad decisions negatively impact business results. That’s why one AMA/CMCS study found that critical thinking was the single most important skills of senior leaders . The same study also found that most executives believe there will be even more need for critical thinking skills in the workplace in the future.

  Numerous studies validate that organizations with strong critical thinkers outperform those with a deficit in these skills. Unfortunately, the same research shows that there are critical gaps in critical thinking abilities in the leadership ranks and in mid-management (the future senior leaders).

The good news is that critical thinking skills can be learned, practiced and mastered.

How You Can Build Your Mental Might and Eradicate Lazy Thinking Habits

If you’d like to set yourself apart from others who lack critical thinking skills, there are three things you can do .

 First, you can measure your critical thinking skills. The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal is an excellent assessment that measures your ability to recognize assumptions, evaluate arguments, draw conclusions, and view a situation critically, objectively, and logically.  It’s available through organizations. For a free test you can access individually, check out this one that assesses you abilities in argumentation, interpretation, and drawing conclusions.

 Second, you can take a course that will help you identify your gaps in critical thinking and work on those. The No More Lazy Thinking course from PFPS focuses on helping managers build their mental might . Organizations interested in learning more about this 2-day workshop can contact PFPS directly .

 Finally, for an introduction to the skills you can build and the mindsets you may need to address, subscribe to the PFPS YouTube Channel and view the 40-part video series in this playlist . This is a free, low-risk way to begin thinking differently and to build your mental might.

In addition to any of the learning strategies you choose, remember that critical thinking is a choice and a discipline. You’ll have to step outside your comfort zone and challenge your own assumptions, biases and perceptions. Doing this alone will make you a stronger critical thinker .

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Strategic Thinking: Because Good Ideas Can Come From Anywhere

As part of our update to the Harvard ManageMentor Strategic Thinking topic, we asked Mason Weintraub, Director of Digital Engagement at Oxfam America, about the importance of strategic thinking. Here’s what Mason had to say:

I often think I’m expected to have all the answers about what to do with digital strategy. But the reality is that I lead a very talented team, and one of the ideas that we have tried to engender on the team is that good ideas can come from anywhere.

“Good ideas can come from anywhere.” Most of us recognize the wisdom embedded in that statement, yet we still see strategy as the realm of our organization’s senior leaders. That may be because of our tendency to equate strategic thinking with strategic planning. Although these practices are related and equally necessary for organizational success, they are actually quite distinct.

Strategic planning vs. strategic thinking

In strategic planning, leaders gather data and decide on the path the organization will take to achieve its goals. With strategic thinking, employees at all levels and in all functions continually scan for new ways to contribute to the organization’s success. They apply those insights as they carry out organizational priorities and provide input to the overall strategy. In this way, strategic thinking is part of everyone’s job – whatever their role or level of responsibility.

Why is this ability to think strategically especially important now? Today’s organizations are more dispersed and less hierarchical than ever before. With the pace of change continuing to rise, it’s no longer feasible for people to wait for “orders from above.” All employees must keep an eye on the future, not just react to what’s happening in the present. They need to look beyond their functional areas to become aware of the bigger context in which they operate. And they have to be agile learners who identify opportunities by challenging their own and their team’s assumptions about how things work in their organization and industry.

Becoming a strategic thinker

With strategic thinking taking on even greater importance in organizations, we’ve made key updates to the Harvard ManageMentor Strategic Thinking topic. The content we’ve added is geared to helping people boost their productivity and effectiveness by making strategic thinking a habit, and includes practical ways that enable them to do so.

One practice is simply making the time to think strategically – something that’s not always easy in today’s fast-paced business settings. Another involves inviting dissent on your team. To make strategic decisions, you need people on all sides of an issue to speak their minds. By letting team members know that speaking up is an important part of their jobs, you free them to provide important input.

Other strategic thinking practices are useful for training yourself to see opportunities and threats well before they happen. For example, most of us are comfortable using convergent thinking – analysis, logic, and reasoning – to come up with the “best” option from a set of choices. We tend to be less adept at divergent thinking, which involves generating lots of ideas with the goal of finding innovative solutions. This isn’t an either-or process: When you first diverge as a team to generate ideas and then converge on a path forward, you improve your ability to design and implement strategic actions.

Don’t let the future surprise you

The future will undoubtedly look a lot different from today. No one can predict tomorrow, but by identifying different scenarios, you and members of your team stretch your thinking about what opportunities and threats might emerge, how they might impact your organization, and what you can do about them. You learn to enact truly meaningful change rather than make incremental improvements. And it all begins with strategic thinking.

How do you foster strategic thinking throughout your organization?

Janice Molloy is a content researcher with Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at  [email protected] . 

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Organizational Leadership: What It Is & Why It's Important

• 24 Jan 2023

Leadership is essential to organizations’ success, but many struggle to implement the right training. According to job search site Zippia , 83 percent of businesses believe it’s important to develop leaders at every level, but only five percent successfully do.

If you want to become an effective leader, here's an overview of what organizational leadership is, why it’s important, and how you can make an impact on your company.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Organizational Leadership?

Leadership is the ability to implement change by creating and communicating a vision to others. Organizational leadership is the qualities and skills required to run a company or one of its divisions. It’s greater in scale and scope than many other forms of leadership.

“Scale refers to the sheer size and magnitude of what you’re leading,” says Harvard Business School Professor Anthony Mayo in the online course Organizational Leadership , “how many people; how large a budget; and how many teams, locations, and operations you oversee. Scope refers to the range and diversity of what you’re responsible for—the range and diversity of the people, teams, business lines, locations, operations, and facilities you’re leading.”

Although leadership doesn't inherently require business acumen, it’s helpful for organizational leaders to have, so they can guide their organizations, drive innovation, and manage organizational change .

Organizational leaders must consider what’s happening outside and inside their businesses. They often don’t directly interact with everyone they lead—engaging in what’s known as capital “L” leadership.

The Capital "L" in Leadership

Many senior-level leaders hold capital "L" leadership roles. According to Organizational Leadership , those leaders no longer have direct contact with everyone in their organizations and must:

• Inspire and motivate their employees
• Lead their organizations into the future
• Anticipate and respond to internal and external threats
• Pursue opportunities that range from money makers to risky bets
• Handle crises quickly and assuredly

As your duties increase as a leader—overseeing or guiding those you don’t directly supervise—it's essential to learn how to communicate effectively and execute tasks. This is particularly important when considering the differences between organizational leadership and traditional management.

Organizational Leadership vs. Traditional Management

Leadership and management differ in several ways. At an organizational level, the two are highly intertwined but have three primary differences.

• Proximity to the team: Managers work closely with the individuals they oversee, whereas organizational leaders don't always have direct contact with those they lead.
• Scale: Like leadership, management is a broad term that can be big or small in scale, whereas organizational leadership involves managing larger populations.
• Role: Managers are hired for specific roles; organizational leaders oversee managers and ensure their companies’ visions are reflected in how they guide and align teams.

What Makes Organizational Leaders Effective?

Organizational leaders bring unique qualities, competencies, and practices to their roles. In Organizational Leadership , this is called a leadership constellation .

A leadership constellation includes:

• Qualities: The aspects of who you are as a person. They contribute to how others perceive you.
• Competencies: The skills and knowledge you've developed over time that enable you to fulfill responsibilities—either by yourself or by leading others.
• Practices: The routine actions you engage in to complete tasks, guide your team and organization, and enhance your and others’ skills.

According to Organizational Leadership , you can leverage these attributes in three ways:

• Leader as beacon: Creating and communicating a vision to your organization and embodying it in your conduct (i.e., leading by example)
• Leader as architect: Ensuring your organization can follow the direction you set, and creating value using the tools and resources at your disposal
• Leader as catalyst of change: Leading organizational change by encouraging and enabling it

To be an effective leader , strive to be proficient in each.

Why Is Effective Organizational Leadership Important?

Leadership is vital in business. Organizational leaders assume an additional role because they often set the tone for the directions their companies—and sometimes even their industries—will take.

Here are four reasons why effective organizational leadership is important.

1. Motivates Team Members

Leaders play a critical role in employee engagement. According to Zippia , 69 percent of employees say they would work harder if their efforts were better recognized. This is an important statistic to consider if you struggle to retain talent or want to boost team performance .

Motivated, engaged employees can lead to higher productivity. A Gallup analysis of employee engagement data shows that highly engaged employees resulted in a 14 percent increase in productivity compared to those who were less engaged.

Leaders focus on improving team morale and their companies. Those at higher levels face the challenge of improving employees’ motivation without direct lines of contact.

According to Organizational Leadership , you can improve employee morale by:

• Hiring for leadership: If you’re involved in the recruiting process, ensure you hire effective leaders for management positions.
• Creating a positive company culture: If your company’s culture is positive and encouraging, your employees will likely be more motivated.
• Structuring effectively: For your organization to deliver value, its structures, systems, and processes must align with its people and culture.
• Openness to feedback: Even if you're not directly responsible for leading every employee, making yourself available to them can go a long way toward ensuring they feel valued.

Related: 6 Strategies for Engaging Your Employees

2. Promotes Problem-Solving and Decision-Making

Leadership requires a large degree of adaptability. Many problems require creative solutions , especially when their causes are hard to identify. As a leader, you’re responsible for helping others navigate difficult situations and making decisions that benefit your organization.

Even if you don't encounter most of your company’s daily high-level problems, you can be a role model for other employees and establish a structured approach to becoming a creative problem-solver .

3. Fosters Open Communication

Communication skills are essential for leaders. Poor communication in the workplace can lead to a host of problems , such as stress, project delays, and decreased morale.

Organizational Leadership offers four ways to foster open communication in your company, including:

• Providing information about what's going on in a way that encourages and enables employees to act
• Explaining your organization's direction in a logical manner that appeals to employees’ emotions
• Ensuring employees know how their everyday tasks connect to your organization's overarching mission
• Accomplishing tasks with individual employees and groups, virtually and in-person

Neglecting these actions can hinder your company’s success.

4. Allows Leaders to be Goal-Oriented

Organizational leaders typically set the direction for their company and enable others to follow it. According to Organizational Leadership , a good direction must be:

• Clear: An unclear direction can prevent others from supporting it. Ensure you convey your expectations so they can be met.
• Compelling: Make sure it's a direction people are willing and eager to follow.
• Concise: If others in your organization can't understand the direction, they won't follow it.

Once the path forward is clear, exciting, and accessible, it becomes much easier to set and achieve organizational goals.

Taking the First Step to Becoming an Organizational Leader

To be a successful leader, it's crucial to continuously develop your skills. Identify which leadership style resonates with you and seek opportunities to grow and adapt.

Whether you're already an organizational leader or hoping to become one, you can benefit from pursuing educational opportunities that enhance your leadership knowledge and abilities.

Ready to take the next step in your career? Consider enrolling in Organizational Leadership —one of our online leadership and management courses—to discover how to lead at scale. To learn more about what it takes to be an effective leader, download our free leadership e-book .

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3 Simple Habits to Improve Your Critical Thinking

• Helen Lee Bouygues

But simple doesn’t mean easy.

Too many business leaders are simply not reasoning through pressing issues, and it’s hurting their organizations.  The good news is that critical thinking is a learned behavior. There are three simple things you can do to train yourself to become a more effective critical thinker: question assumptions, reason through logic, and diversify your thought and perspectives. They may sound obvious, but deliberately cultivating these three key habits of mind go a long way in helping you become better at clear and robust reasoning.

A few years ago, a CEO assured me that his company was the market leader. “Clients will not leave for competitors,” he added. “It costs too much for them to switch.” Within weeks, the manufacturing giant Procter & Gamble elected not to renew its contract with the firm. The CEO was shocked — but he shouldn’t have been.

• HB Helen Lee Bouygues is the president of the Paris-based Reboot Foundation . A former partner at McKinsey & Company, she has served as interim CEO, CFO, or COO for more than one dozen companies.

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Critical thinking enables leaders at every level to understand the impact of their decisions on the business as a whole and ensures both alignment with organisational goals and accountability for results.  

The "new normal" is a different kind of competitive landscape, buffeted by geopolitics and global instability, rapid technological change, unique financial pressures, a rising tide of data and information to filter through, and the proliferation of new corporate business models.

The mind-set that made leaders successful in the past probably won't ensure success in the future. In fact, several recent studies and surveys have identified critical thinking as the number one requirement for successful leadership in the 21st century. Yet there is mounting evidence that many current and emerging leaders lack this quality. And it is this competency gap that is shaking up and reshaping leadership as we have come to know it.

Leadership in the "new normal"

In the wake of the economic crisis, we all know what a failure of leadership looks like. The companies that folded in the GFC serve as stark examples of what happens when decisions are based upon erroneous, partially false or incomplete information and when management fails to think clearly and strategically about the full implications of its actions. The resulting fall-out put an end to business as usual and created a "new normal" that looks markedly different from anything anyone has seen before.

Business organisations must be prepared to do things differently if they expect different results. In this demanding, dynamic landscape, it is only natural that they also require a different mind-set from those in charge.

The equation works like this: Thinking drives behaviour; behaviour drives results. So enterprises that want to change the results - and, indeed, change the organisation itself - can achieve the highest leverage by changing the thinking of leaders and managers throughout the organisation.

But what kind of thinking - or rather rethinking - will be required of leaders if they want to succeed in the "new normal"?

Why critical thinking is critical

Critical thinking appears to be exactly what is needed from leaders who are navigating the volatility of the "new normal". Diane Halpern, an award-winning professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College and a widely read author on the subject, offers this definition in her seminal book, Thought and Knowledge :

"Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. It is used to describe thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal-directed - the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions ... it's the kind of thinking that makes desirable outcomes more likely."

If ever there was a time for clear, discerning, solution-centric thinking, this is it.

Every two years since 1983, Executive Development Associates (EDA) has conducted an extensive survey on trends, growth and the evolution of executive development. The 2009/2010 EDA Trends in Executive Development: A Benchmark Report revealed trouble on the horizon for corporations seeking future business leaders.

To gauge the readiness of the next generation of leadership talent, EDA asked senior executive development professionals to share their views on the strengths and weaknesses of the incoming leadership group - the people who are most likely to fill executive-level positions in the next three to five years - and the subsequent impact on executive development.

The survey identified "hot topics" in executive development for the next two to three years. At the top of the list was leadership, followed by "business acumen, honing skills in strategy execution, leading / managing change, and talent management."

But when asked "What competencies are your leaders lacking?" their responses indicated little confidence that leaders had what it takes to execute in these critical areas successfully. Here's what they said was missing:

• Strategic thinking
• Leading change
• Ability to create a vision and engage others around it
• Ability to inspire
• Understanding the total enterprise and how the parts work together

What critical thinking looks like

Having established the need for a mind-set shift to more critical thinking, we need to be clear on what that means in the workplace.

In general, critical thinking is the ability to deal with the contradictions and problems of a tumultuous environment in a reasoned, purposeful, productive way. Decisions are made using an approach that is fair, objective, accurate and based on information that is relevant to the situation.

Critical thinking is also reflective and focused, constantly evaluating the thinking process itself. It is thinking with a purpose. Critical thinking requires a healthy dose of skepticism and an equal measure of good judgement.

For decades, companies have relied on the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal , a widely used assessment tool for evaluating the cognitive ability of current and future leaders. Developed in 1925, the model identifies factors that are key to critical thinking and decision making and predicts judgment, problem solving, creativity, openness to experience and other leadership behaviours.

Five sub-tests measure critical thinking as a composite of attitudes, knowledge and skills:

• Recognition of assumptions
• Interpretation
• Evaluation of arguments

Professionals with high scores in these sub-tests are able to identify and examine the assumptions, influences and biases that might sway them. They stand back from the fray and strategically assess the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems. They make business decisions that answer the right questions, solve the right problems, mitigate risk and improve productivity. They also lead from a position of strength, being able to motivate and move people both inspirationally and intellectually by providing solid reasons for actions.

Whether they lead teams, departments or entire enterprises, leaders who apply the skills of critical thinking to their roles perform at a higher level and offer their organisations a distinct competitive advantage.

Critical thinkers think differently about their impact on the organisation - understanding how their decisions and actions influence business both inside and outside their narrow functional silos. These leaders are able to balance department or team issues with broader company issues and embrace a larger responsibility for the success of the organisation. This keen sense of accountability is what enables them to execute for results now while fulfilling their obligations to positively impact the future.

Leaders who engage in critical thinking also understand the total organisation and how the individual parts work together. Context is key. Now more than ever, business acumen is foundational to effective leadership. It is impossible to apply critical thinking skills to the business of making money without an understanding of the business drivers that connect day-to-day decisions and actions to key financial and strategic performance goals of the organisation. It is one thing to understand one's role as a leader. It is altogether another thing to understand how to set direction and directly affect the outcomes.

Critical thinking is big-picture thinking too. As Hagemann describes it, "Leaders need to be able to comfortably climb to the 30,000-foot view and analyse a dynamic system, while simultaneously and adeptly analysing information to quickly make decisions across levels." Critical thinkers operate from a broad perspective in order to make sure the correct problems are addressed and they are taking acceptable risk. They recognise the difference between short-term gains and sustainable, long-term results and lead accordingly.

The advantages of this kind of leadership behavior are readily apparent. Critical thinking enables leaders at every level to understand the impact of their decisions on the business as a whole and ensures both alignment with organisational goals and accountability for results. It's exactly the type of leadership behaviour demanded by the "new normal" - and exactly what's missing. And this disconnect is likely to intensify over time.

Given the critical-thinking competency gap exposed by the EDA survey and other research, the obvious assumption is that the traditional development process that businesses have relied upon in the past to prepare leaders simply hasn't kept up. So, what's the solution? To accelerate development and raise leadership accountability to a whole new level of awareness and action, there needs to be a new emphasis on critical thinking in leadership development.

Learning to think like a leader

The good news is critical thinking is a skill that can be taught. According to Halpern, "There is a large body of evidence showing that people can learn to think better. Of course, education makes us all more intelligent, but critical thinking is more focused. Everyone can learn to recognise and use the skills of critical thinking, and we can always get better."

New competencies, however, may require a deeper, more analytical approach. The challenge today is not to discard what has been learned in the past, but to build upon traditional competencies with a whole new and more complex set of skills, tools and sensitivities.

Leaders in the new normal need to learn how to be discerning, how to think clearly and wisely, and how to be accountable for their impact on the business.

Discovery learning in leadership courses

Critical thinking can be impacted by the right leadership courses. However, the process can be more challenging than improving a behavioural skill, because you can't easily measure it. Success is demonstrated in results.

As with any skill, intellectual or otherwise, the key to building critical thinking - and achieving successful results - is practice. Research has demonstrated that people learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process and engaging in the behaviours they want to learn. But what's vital in developing critical thinking skills is framing the concept of practice within a relevant, job-related context.

Acquiring critical thinking skills requires participating in learning experiences that force you to consider new ways of thinking about and acting within complex situations that are directly related to the work you do. You need the opportunity to respond to issues, reflect on and reframe your experiences, develop new thinking, and, in turn, engage in new behaviours and actions that are relevant to your position and objectives.

Developing your critical thinking skills

In addition to participating in these types of leadership courses, leaders can take charge of their own critical thinking development by taking these actions:

• Get some feedback about your critical thinking skills from a trusted boss, colleague or coach Are you jumping to conclusions or using a reasoned, analytic process as you work toward a goal? Are you able to put aside biases and assumptions during analysis and decision-making? What kind of "thinker" are you perceived to be and why?
• Challenge yourself to develop a deeper understanding of your company's business, especially its financial and strategic drivers of success Are you clear about what drives the organisation's decisions, how financial success is achieved and how you impact both strategy and the bottom line? Are you making decisions that are aligned with this understanding?Is your knowledge of the business strong enough to drive behaviour and to engage teams and employees?
• Use multiple sources of data to form an "information web" before making a decision or forming a conclusion Are you asking a lot of questions? Identifying stakeholders and their issues and opinions? Separating facts from assumptions?Are you using the Internet as "one" source of information rather than "the" source? Can you analyse information from different perspectives and viewpoints?
• Take time to think Are you rising above the fray when it's important to make a decision, take action or form an opinion? Are you aware of the distractions getting in the way of your thinking time and taking action to minimize these distractions? Are you finding time and space to let your mind focus and reflect on important issues?
• Ask for input, critique and opinions from others as you analyse alternatives Are you checking tentative conclusions with others? Using peers, coaches or mentors to critique your thinking process? Are you willing to open your mind to other ideas or alternatives?

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Purpose in Leadership: Why & How

What Is Purpose-Driven Leadership?

As news headlines proliferate about what today’s employees want from work and how much organizations can expect from their people, purpose is emerging as a critical success factor. Purpose in leadership supports improved individual and organizational outcomes.

Purpose-driven leadership means helping employees find personal meaning in their work and fostering a deeply committed workforce that thrives on shared goals and aspirations. Purpose-driven leaders model value-based decision-making, take time to learn what truly matters to their employees, connect work to a greater objective, and help employees understand their organization’s mission and find ways to personally connect to it.

But purpose, just like organizational culture change, doesn’t thrive without intentional effort. To create a sustainable culture of purpose-driven leadership, managers must embody and promote a sense of purpose in their leadership, daily operations, and decision-making.

Why Is Purpose-Driven Leadership Important?

Understanding the role of purpose in leadership.

Purpose-driven leadership helps create a shared sense of direction, alignment, and commitment and fosters greater performance, persistence, and belonging at the organization. In fact, purpose is often one of the main drivers of employee engagement and satisfaction. Our research with emerging leaders around the globe suggests that purpose is one of the greatest predictors of whether young professionals pursue leadership positions and, for those in a leadership role, whether leaders feel empowered to make a difference. Purpose-driven leaders are more likely to develop and maintain strong relationships with their direct reports and are better equipped to navigate leadership challenges.

Articulating a clear, inspiring vision that resonates with direct reports and colleagues is key for purpose-driven leadership. Purpose-driven leaders also create space for alignment of goals and values between individual employees and the overall organization. When employees understand why they’re carrying out their work, they care more about what they accomplish.

Though critical for all employees, value alignment is especially key for younger generations in the workforce. At a time where Gen Z and Millennials are at the heart of the Great Reshuffling, organizational mission and vision can be an important deciding factor in recruitment and retention — especially among younger workers — in the post-pandemic world. Finding purpose in day-to-day work also helps employees persist, even through challenging tasks.

Purpose Is Universal, But Not Uniform

6 things that drive a sense of purpose.

While the desire for purpose is a fundamental human need, what employees value is not. Research suggests that purpose can arise from a range of sources, such as:

• Utility: Work is practically relevant to our goals and aspirations, either now or in the future.
• Personal Development: Work facilitates opportunities for self-growth, developing either skillsets or mindsets in personally meaningful ways.
• Impact: Work empowers us to make a tangible and positive difference in the world, contributing to the greater good of society, our communities, or those close to us.
• Identity Reinforcement: Work reinforces our sense of self, aligning with the core elements of who we are.
• Intrinsic Interest: Work is inherently fun and energizing, offering enjoyable experiences that naturally appeal to our interests.
• External Rewards: Work leads to a desirable payoff, from a paycheck to a promotion.

As varied as the unique experiences that individuals bring to work are the ways they find meaning in it. Take, for instance, being asked to help start a new employee resource group at an organization. One person may jump at the opportunity because it helps display leadership potential (utility) and is accompanied by an additional stipend (external). Another might agree because they see themselves as someone who advocates for wellbeing (identity) and want to support work colleagues (prosocial). Both employees may be taking the same purpose-driven action, but they have different reasons for doing so. Without exploring their unique drivers, leaders simply cannot know why employees choose to engage at work.

Each Finding Their Own Meaning Is Critical

Why is it important to know what your employees value? Because telling them where to find meaning can backfire. In one study , researchers conducted a series of experiments teaching college students a new mental math technique. They found that telling students why the approach was valuable undermined how well they applied it and how interested they were in using it in the future. Importantly, this impacted the least confident students the most.

Consider a parallel at work. If a sales director tells his regional leads exactly why they should care about a new system for tracking leads, there’s a stronger chance that buy-in and performance will suffer if those reasons don’t personally matter to the employees. If employees have an opportunity to identify why the system is useful to them and make connections for themselves, by contrast, they’re likely to use the program more frequently and effectively. You want each person to be able to determine for themselves why and how their work connects to purpose, rather than dictating to them why it’ll be valuable. When your employees have autonomy to find their own meaning, a culture of purpose is easier to cultivate.

To be clear, this doesn’t imply that leaders should avoid sharing their own reasons why work is meaningful. Modeling conversations about purposeful leadership can help employees find their own meanings. The critical piece is to allow individuals the freedom and permission to consider and discuss their own purpose, so their reasons feel relevant and personal to them.

Implementing Purpose-Driven Leadership at Your Organization

2 keys for cultivating greater purpose in leadership.

It’s one thing to say that purpose is important, and another to create a culture of purpose-driven leadership at your organization. While few people disagree that purpose in leadership is important, it’s not ubiquitous. If leading with purpose was easy or intuitive, everyone would be doing it.

So, how can managers embrace and embody purpose in leadership and their everyday work? Here are 2 essential keys to cultivating an environment where managers and employees can connect and find purpose in leadership and in their daily work.

1. Weave Organizational Mission, Vision & Values Into Your Communications.

Remember that employees have to know the organization’s overarching purpose before they can make connections to it for themselves. Values may drive your organization’s decision-making at the most senior levels, but they’re easy for employees to overlook in the midst of projects, deadlines, and day-to-day activities. So, it’s important to speak often about your organization’s mission, vision, and values to give employees ample opportunities to connect and align their own values to their tasks and projects.

Make purpose more salient for them by effectively and intentionally communicating the vision , mission, and values of the organization — and by reinforcing these again and again over time.

To try more purpose-driven leadership: Model finding connections between organizational values and your team’s (or your own) projects whenever possible. Some specific practices to try :

• Seek out opportunities to build purpose alignment into existing structures at work, such as during annual reviews or all-staff meetings. Invite your senior leadership team to provide examples of leading with purpose (both personal and organizational) in public settings, company-wide communications, quarterly retreats, and team meetings. Personal, specific, and meaningful stories are most effective at signaling a commitment to purpose and catalyzing greater buy-in and alignment. Make a point of bringing powerful real-life experiences to the forefront; sharing examples of helping others or bettering a community at large through corporate social responsibility efforts can be particularly helpful.
• Consider asking colleagues directly what parts of the organizational mission resonate most for each of them. You can open the door for deeper exploration by modeling; simply take 5 minutes to think about or list your personal values, current work activities, and note the specific, meaningful connections you see between them. Share as much of this as you like and use it as a discussion-starter to learn more about what matters most to others. When new employees onboard or move into bigger roles, intentionally engage them in team meetings or one-on-one conversations about how their work might fit into the bigger organizational picture.
• At the beginning and/or end of projects, build in time for team members to reflect on how the project contributes to the organization’s overall business objectives and mission. This can be part of the conversations for  setting team norms up front, or used as an exercise during an after-action review or “lessons learned” session after the fact.

When weaving organizational purpose and mission into conversations, remember that employees need dedicated time to reflect on the connections for themselves. By building in intentional opportunities to find meaning, purpose-driven leaders signal to employees that finding purpose at work is a valued part of the organizational culture.

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Watch our webinar, Why Organizations Should Encourage Leadership Purpose , to learn how managers who help their teams find personal meaning and connection foster purpose-driven leadership, leading to increased productivity, employee engagement, and retention.

2. Understand What Drives Your Team Members.

The more you know your employees — and create opportunities for them to connect with one another and the larger organization — the easier it is to help reinforce their sense of purpose. Seek to understand the perspectives of your direct reports through a lens of showing compassion and respect for their diverse identities, as each individual brings a different set of experiences and aspirations to work.

Compassionate leadership means being aware of the feelings, thoughts, and needs of others. Compassion enables leaders to understand and respond to the unique needs, perspectives, and emotions of their teams, fostering a more supportive and inclusive environment. Beyond the obvious feel-good value of showing compassion, our researchers have found that managers who practice empathy toward those they are responsible for are viewed as better performers by their bosses. It’s a “win” for all involved.

Purpose-driven leaders also understand and leverage the power of identity. This involves both creating an environment where team members feel psychologically safe at work to share their personal experiences and understanding the way that employees view themselves with respect to work. For instance, our research suggests that simply identifying as a leader is associated with greater confidence and engagement in the workplace and can be cultivated by support from others.

To try more purpose-driven leadership: Help employees recognize and embrace the many different reasons they might find meaning at work. Some specific practices to try:

• Share your own reasons that you find your work meaningful, providing examples of several different sources of purpose. Speak in the first person (using I , we , my , our , etc.), and encourage them to do the same. Include details and examples to help build more specific and meaningful connections and invite them to share their personal  “why” with one another (and you).
• Make space for whatever they share about their perspectives and experiences, remembering that purpose is universal — but not uniform. Normalize that there is no “right” way to find meaning at work. As conversations unfold, actively listen for what matters most to your employees. You may want to keep notes for yourself on what you learn about each person’s purpose so you can refer back later, especially if you manage a large team.
• Use this information to help make work more personally relevant for each individual. Importantly, after gaining a better understanding of what drives each of your employees, keep that top-of-mind going forward when interacting with them, assigning tasks, and planning growth and development opportunities for them. That way, you’re motivating employees in a tailored and personalized way.

By working from an understanding of what is individually meaningful to each of your team members, showing compassion for their experiences and identities, and using this information to tailor your interactions, work assignments, and development plans for them going forward, you signal support for employee wellbeing and create an environment where employees feel valued, respected, engaged, and eager to contribute — ultimately driving your team and organization forward.

A Closing Word on Purpose in Leadership

Organizations with a focus on purpose in leadership — with managers who help direct reports find meaning in their work and connect their personal values to the organization’s — have a better chance of attracting, engaging, and retaining talent and enabling the enterprise to meet business objectives more effectively.

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Equip your people managers with the mindsets and skillsets required for purpose-driven leadership. Partner with us to create a customized learning journey for your leaders using our research-backed modules. Available leadership topics include Authentic Leadership , Collaboration & Teamwork, Emotional Intelligence, Listening to Understand, Psychological Safety, Self-Awareness, Wellbeing, and more. 

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Stephanie is a researcher with a background in developmental and educational psychology. Her research at CCL focused primarily on promoting equitable and inclusive organizational cultures, exploring collective leadership through networks, and enhancing motivation and empowerment for leaders across their professional journeys.

Paige designs and facilitates custom leadership development solutions, specializing in wellbeing , senior team performance, organizational change, innovation, talent, and culture. Before joining us, she developed a course on leadership adaptability for the US Army War College, worked as a senior consultant and vice president of an international consulting and assessments company, and served 4 years as a university professor and department chair.

Based on Research by

Jean develops, oversees, and helps implement programs, projects, and processes that support the vision and the short- and long-term plans of the global Leadership Research and Analytics group. She’s published more than 100 pieces on leadership, assessment, and feedback — in the form of peer-reviewed articles, popular-press articles, book chapters, and books — and has presented over 70 papers at professional conferences such as the Academy of Management and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists.

Bill’s research at CCL focused on examining what leaders, particularly first-time managers, can do to be successful in their work and life, and to avoid derailment. He’s the author of Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For: A Guide for New Leaders and co-author of the guidebook Developing Political Savvy .

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Target Operating Models (TOM) Design: Why TOM is Critical for Legal Departments

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” - Steve Jobs.

Over the last 25 years in the legal industry, I have worked for great companies in private practice, in-house and for alternative legal service providers (“ALSP”) in the US, UK and China. Within that time, much has changed, particularly regarding technological advancements, but much has remained the same. Some persistent aspects of legal services are valuable and enduring – such as a relentless focus on quality and client service. Others are not – such as inefficient processes and lack of formal operating models. These challenges lead to higher costs, reduced work quality and delays. Technology alone cannot resolve these issues and never will. [1]

A holistic view of the entire legal operating model is necessary, including maturing critical capabilities such as training, process, staffing and technology. This multi-dimensional approach is far superior to a tech-first strategy and helps avoid the rampant technology implementation failures of recent years. This article will provide an overview of a 360-degree view considering seven critical attributes of a target operating model (the “7 Attributes”). We will follow this article with subsequent articles for each of the 7 Attributes.

Background of Operations Management

Operations management (“OM”) is a professional discipline focused on enhancing the provision of products and services. [2] It involves the systematic direction of processes in sourcing, production and delivery. OM takes a holistic view, emphasizing cost management and assuming that technical aspects are handled by specialists. [3] OM applies to the complete chain of activities in producing and delivering products and services. Though it originated in manufacturing, it now applies to non-manufacturing industries like marketing, finance, IT, healthcare, utilities, distribution, retail and hospitality. Operations disciplines first entered the legal industry as “legal operations” between the 1990s and mid-2000s. [4]

Delivering legal services involves interconnected processes transforming tacit knowledge into customer value. OM principles coordinate these processes, including operating model design. [5] An operating model is the integration and standardization necessary for delivering goods and services to customers. [6] In Operating Model Canvas , Andrew Campbell defines a target operating model (“TOM”) as the integration and standardization of "business processes, organizational structure and information systems…to realize [a] strategic vision and [associated] operational capabilities." [7] TOM represents the ideal state of operations, leveraging best practices and process automation to enhance efficiency, quality and consistency. Integration and interoperability between attributes determine success.

The 7 Attributes

Based on decades of combined legal operations experience, my colleagues and I identified seven critical attributes for legal services TOM that drive value and performance. These 7 Attributes represent best practices in legal service operations and apply to any legal operations area, including contract management, litigation and compliance.

The 7 Attributes are:

• Scope and Remit : Clear scope, roles, and responsibilities for legal departments and business stakeholders requesting legal support.
• Staffing Model : A well-designed staffing model to ensure legal department resources spend most of their time at their highest and best utility.
• Artifacts : Effective and well-maintained documentation for organizational memory and accountability.
• Training Program : Robust training to empower and enhance an organization’s most valuable assets – its people.
• Process Life-cycle : Refined process life-cycles to encourage operational excellence.
• KPIs and Reporting : Transparent and effective KPIs and status reporting to support strategic decision-making.
• Technology : Effective use of technology to enable human capital.

Each Attribute has multiple sub-components and capabilities that must be matured to improve operations.

Applying the 7 Attributes. Applying the 7 Attributes is intuitive. Here are key activities for applying the 7 Attributes:

• Express Each Attribute : The 7 Attributes describe “what good looks like” across each dimension. Each Attribute can be expressed as a present state, goal or desired end state. For example, applying Attribute No. 1 would read, “scope and remit are clearly understood by service delivery personnel and requestors, with a documented process for any changes in scope and remit.” Immaturity in this area leads to misalignment, delays, low-quality outputs and personnel attrition.
• Conduct Maturity Assessment : Start TOM design with a current state assessment against the 7 Attributes to determine gaps. This process measures current operational capabilities, identifies areas for improvement and establishes KPIs. Practitioners should assess each individual Attribute for maturity and then aggregate those scores to determine overall maturity, typically categorized into three stages:
• Early : Capabilities are underdeveloped or missing, leading to inefficient, manual service delivery. Resources are under or over-utilized, untrained and not contributing their highest use.
• Intermediate : Operations are moderately mature across some Attributes, with many opportunities for enhancement.
• Advanced : All necessary Attribute sub-components are fully implemented. The resource model is optimized, ensuring resources are well-utilized, with senior members focused on strategic initiatives.
• Through maturity assessment, we gain insight into operational strengths and weaknesses, guiding TOM design decisions and the roadmap to achieve them.
• Conduct Impact Analysis : Maturity assessments identify constraints or failures that must be resolved to achieve TOM. For example, one of our clients suffered from resource attrition due to issues with scope and remit (Attribute No. 1), lack of artifacts (Attribute No. 3) and lack of training (Attribute No. 4). Low maturity in those areas allowed contract managers to be overwhelmed by support requests, leading to high-volume escalations, extended cycle-times and internal client dissatisfaction.
• Develop Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”) : KPIs measure progress towards overcoming constraints discovered during maturity assessment and impact analysis. For instance, low maturity in Attributes 1, 3 and 4 lead to extended cycle-times. Accordingly, a target cycle-time or cycle-time improvement would be an appropriate KPI. Other KPIs include customer satisfaction, employee retention, engagement, cost, quality, risk exposure, and resource utilization.

TOM Case Study: A Holistic Approach Led to Holistic Improvements

A publicly traded global biotechnology company with nearly 4,000 employees and a greater than $40 billion market cap was experiencing growth in product pipeline and clinical trials but lacked a scalable study start-up legal operating model.

After an assessment, we found low maturity across all 7 Attributes. There were scope and remit breakdowns between the legal and clinical development departments. Resources were responsible for multiple tasks critical to clinical trial set-up but were not properly staffed or trained to manage each task. Lack of real-time reporting led to conflict regarding matter status.

We helped the client develop and deploy a scalable TOM to increase site-start-up velocity including region-specific artifacts, augmented staffing to allow each team member to focus on their highest utility, formal training to enhance contract negotiation capabilities, better technology integration for automated workflows and real-time reporting.

Outcomes : By maturing all 7 Attributes, we aligned the legal and clinical development departments and reduced contracting cycle-times by 70 percent.

Case Study Insights :

• Staffing model, training and artifacts can either inhibit or enable resources. Operational challenges typically arise from integrations and interdependencies between operating model elements. It is critical to understand and coordinate the dynamics between operating model elements. For example, clinical development teams responsible for negotiating clinical contracts had little contracting experience, an ineffective staffing model and no training or artifacts to guide their efforts. This not only impacted operational performance but also reduced employee engagement.
• Low maturity in scope and remit can cause strife between departments. There was consistent friction between the legal and clinical operations departments regarding scope of responsibilities. This caused excess escalations to the legal department which eroded trust between the groups and reduced operational effectiveness.
• Mature KPIs and reporting can align interdependent departments. Clinical contracting cycle-times were critical. Once the legal and clinical development departments had reliable reporting and KPIs, they could see each other’s impact on cycle-times which reduced questions on accountability for any delays. That clarity helped reduce tension between the groups and increased productivity.

The Bottom Line : As Andrew Campbell wrote, “things work better when everything works together, on purpose.” [8] Operational effectiveness hinges not only on individual operational capabilities but how those capabilities work together. This is especially true for legal operating models where, unlike manufacturing environments, quality is subjective, variability is persistent and human skills, knowledge and interactions drive customer value.

The 7 Attributes model helps identify and improve critical operational capabilities in an integrated way that enhances operating model performance. We will next publish on Attribute No. 1: Scope and Remit, with practice tips to improve this Attribute in your environment.

[1] See Casey Flaherty, "Tech-First Failures – Value Storytelling (#6)," LexBlog , December 13, 2021. Available at: https://www.lexblog.com/2021/12/13/tech-first-failures-value-storytelling-6/ .

[2] Karmarkar, Uday S. Operations Management in the Information Economy: Information Products, Processes, and Chains . Springer, 2004.

[3] APICS. APICS Operations Management Body of Knowledge Framework . 3rd ed., APICS, 2011. https://www.apics.org/docs/default-source/industry-content/apics-ombok-framework.pdf?sfvrsn=c5fce1ba_2 .

[4] Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). (2019, October). What is Legal Operations? Retrieved from https://cloc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/What-is-Legal-Ops_Oct2019-FINAL.pdf

[5] See OMBOK Section 1.1.3.

[6] Ross, J. W., Weill, P., & Robertson, D. C. (2006). Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution. Harvard Business Review Press.

[7] Campbell, A., Gutierrez, M., & Lancelott, M. (2017). Operating Model Canvas. Van Haren Publishing.

[8] Campbell, Andrew. "Operating Model Work is Simple." Ashridge on Operating Models , 27 November 2021, https://ashridgeonoperatingmodels.com/2021/11/27/operating-model-work-is-simple/ .

Michael Callier

Global Head of Consulting Factor Law

Michael  is a corporate lawyer and legal operations expert with over 20 years of experience. He is the Global Head of Consulting for  Factor Law  where his multi-disciplinary team designs and enables target operating models for clients in multiple industries including life science/healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, consumer staples and technology. Michael has held general counsel and other legal leadership roles with top tier international law firms, legal departments and alternative legal service providers. He has supported hundreds of engagements and transactions across more than sixty countries.

Michael belongs to the State Bar Associations of both Washington and Oregon. With a J.D. from the University of Oregon School of Law and a Master of Science in Information Management from the University of Washington, Michael also has certifications in Lean Six Sigma, Information Privacy and Adaptive Leadership, alongside proficiency in Mandarin Chinese.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, stanford application tips.

Hi all, Stanford has always been my dream school, but as we all know, it's super competitive. Can anyone who has been accepted or knows about the process share some tips on what made your application stand out? Are there any specific extracurriculars or essay topics they appreciate more than others?

Hi there! While it's difficult to pinpoint specific extracurriculars or essay topics that Stanford admissions officers appreciate more than others, I can definitely offer some tips to help you stand out in the application process.

1. Develop a strong "spike": To stand out at top-tier schools like Stanford, it's essential to have a highly developed specialty – not necessarily a "well-rounded" profile. By devoting more time, effort, and passion to a particular field or activity, you can show that you have the potential to excel and leave a mark in that area. This could be an academic subject, a sport, an art, or social activism, for example.

2. Showcase your intellectual vitality: Stanford looks for students who are intellectually curious and always looking to learn more. In your application, highlight your passion for learning and critical thinking skills. You can demonstrate this through your academic achievements, the rigor of your coursework, or even the books you've read outside of school.

3. Display authentic leadership: Explore leadership positions in the activities you're most passionate about and make a meaningful impact on your organization. Remember that leadership isn't only about being the president of a club; you can show leadership by initiating change, motivating others, and developing innovative solutions.

4. Essays: When writing your essays, make sure to provide specific details and personal anecdotes that will set you apart. Stanford's essay prompts encourage you to delve into your values and experiences, so try to avoid cliché topics. Instead, focus on unique aspects of your life to genuinely showcase your personality and what you can contribute to the Stanford community.

5. Letters of recommendation: Choose teachers and mentors who know you well and can speak in-depth about your academic strengths, personal growth, and character traits. Ensure they can highlight the qualities that align with Stanford's values – such as intellectual curiosity, resilience, and creativity.

6. Always proofread your application: A polished application demonstrates your attention to detail, dedication, and professionalism. Make sure the information you provide is coherent, concise, and free of any grammatical errors.

Ultimately, there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to the Stanford application, so focus on presenting your authentic self. Good luck!

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