Thinking and Decision Making Team Paper

Thinking and Decision Making Team Paper

Today's business world needs employees who can think clearly, intensely, and precisely. These people must be able to resolve problems, make decisions, and answer questions. Critical thinking is a system that is used by many leading corporations worldwide. Critical thinking is a method of thinking relating to any topic, matter, or predicament. Critical thinkers use many different thinking styles in their quest for a final decision. In this paper, this learning team will address a few of the many critical thinking styles.

This learning team is going to start off with emotional thinking. The term emotion is defined as the affective aspect of consciousness; a state of feeling; a conscious mental reaction subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body, (Merrian-Websters’s online Dictionary) When one is discussing critical thinking emotions can play a big part in the outcome. People’s emotions are closely related to their beliefs and are instilled in us as children. Most everyone uses emotions when dealing with situations.

This learning team is going to use a workplace example for all the thinking styles. In this style of emotional thinking this learning team will show how emotional thinking creates a conflict. A company has just installed a new computer system called Oracle. The employees were told that they were going to be getting a new computer system that would make their jobs better. At first everyone was truly excited about this new system until they had to start using it. They quickly found out that the new system did not make their jobs better, in fact, now the company has hired more people to compensate for this new system. Emotional thinking came into play in this situation because the employees felt like management did not ask their opinion before installing this new system. To the average employee it does not look like management listened to any of his or her ideas or thoughts when it came to getting a new system. All parties did agree on the fact that a new system was needed, however, they did not agree as to whom should help design the system.

When the decision was made to get a new system, instead of asking experienced employees from each department to work with the Oracle team, management hired people from outside the company. Management brought the new employees in at a higher rate of pay and asked the current employees to train them. The current employees were to train the new hires on what they did in less then a month. Now that the new system is installed and more employees are being hired to work the new system older employees are very unhappy. They are refusing to learn the new system. The employees do not see this as an opportunity or as a learning experience. They are letting their emotions get in the way of their critical thinking.

Even though emotional thinking can be seen in many places of work, another team member is going to write on creative thinking. Creative thinking is considered to work with the creation or generation of ideals, experiences, and objects. When a person can apply creative thoughts, free spirit, imagination, and unpredictable thoughts they will be on their way to becoming a creative critical thinker. For creative thinking to be effective one should apply creative thoughts and ignore the content to maximize the size of his or her ideal (Bishop, 2001).

Creative thinking is creating something new or original using a few skills of originality, elaboration, and brainstorming (Johnson, 2000). If this learning team takes the same situation from the previous thinking style of emotional thinking and applies this thinking style of creative thinking what may the outcome be? In the above situation the employees felt, with their emotional thinking, that the company did not use their feedback to the company’s advantage. The employees felt like they had some creative ideas on how to solve the software problem. The management team could have had a brainstorming session with several of the key players and listened to their ideas. If this did go on then the company should explain in detail why they chose the software that they decided to go with so that the employees could have a better understanding of the company’s direction. Sometimes all parties involved do not see eye to eye and that is why communication is key. But not only do individual need to communicate they also need to think critically in all situations.

In order for a person to think critically, one must be open-minded and