How can you coach team members to make better decisions using critical thinking?

One of the attributes of Servant Leaders is called Conceptualisation. This is the ability to dream big , not constrained by todays' problems or todays successes. This is what sets aside the goal setting of Servant Leaders. Such ambiti0ous goal setting promotes critical thinking, because it moves the focus away from "what-is" to "what-if". And Servant Leaders balance that conceptualization skill with foresight. Foresight is where the analytical mind kicks in. Foresight takes the data from past experiences, analyses it along with the current situation and then arrive at potential consequences for the future. This intuitive balancing of conceptualisation (big dreams) with data and experiences (foresight) helps the team on critical thinking.

Asking the right question is one of the key skill a servant leader has. Example: If I ask- is this problem impacts end users? I will get answer Yes/No as answer. Instead I can ask: what do you think about this problem impacting the end users? Then I will get an elaborate answer. The target is to enable the Team to think and give their perspective. Asking open ended questions not only helps to get different perspective of a problem, it also enables each member thinking about it's solution. This also helps everyone in the team feeling empowered, valued and important. As a leader, our job is to accumulate all the problems and channel them in a quantative / defined way and set the end result as a mutual agreement.

Agree, asking questions to understand the problem always helps. Further, can encourage team members to follow thought leaders from diverse backgrounds and industries to gain fresh perspectives and ideas.

I am in total agreement: valuation of gathered information. We are living in an information era. Data and information is eveywhere and easily available. Here comes the challenge, how to validate the credibility of any information. In one my implementations I found that the AI model is resulting biased results.upon investing carefully, it is found that the data fed is biased one. Currently, the most critical job in an organization is to protect their data and collecting valid data for their implementations. As a leader our job becomes super critical to help team gathering credible data. In some scenarios, we need to seat with them to demonstrate how we can do that and what are the trustable sources we can use for the same.

Once the problem is defined. And we agreed on a target to achieve, next step is to weigh the options to adopt. There can be multiple options following which we can meet our goal. Here, we need to ask the correct questions which can give us more clarity on our solution planned. The first criteria may be feasibility of the implementations. Next comes cost associated. And factors: risks, legal complications, dependency on other systems etc. also need to be compared Asking questions like: 1. why we are going for this option? 2. Is the source behind this analysis is trust worthy? 3. Whats the data behind to support this option? etc. We can check the authenticity and compare all the alternatives and choose the best possible one.

Once we have available options and proofs to support them, time to decide the best solution to go ahead. Few options I follow : 1. Invite all team members to analyze each of the options on their own way, logically or using intuition. 2. Then asking questions to investigate if the decision is biased or manipulated? Example: If someone suggests we should go for framework A for Automation of functional testing, then why Framework A? What benefits I am getting from it, like: saving hours, less DB storage, Easy UI, less training required etc. Here, I can validate if the proposal is an authentic one or biased from someone's preference of tools or technologies. As collaborate decision is made everyone feel confident on implementing the same.

Critical thinking is different from innovative thinking and strategic thinking as well. This thinking enables Team to thing logically with supported logic and data. And this takes time. When we work in a fast paced environment with a central person / Team to take decision, critical thinking takes back stage. In order to nurture this thinking, we need to empower team members. They should feel free to ask question on anyone's suggestion logically without any personal attack. Why this? How to achieve this? Where the data used here came from ? How authentic is this source? These questions, if asked in a series, we can evaluate the decision to be taken is the best one without any hesitation. All it need is to practice critical thinking often.

The environment that we create for team members is crucial for growth. We can create a safe environment for failure where mistakes are treated as learning opportunities. A servant leader encourages innovation and risk-taking but also provides support and feedback for the decision. Celebrate the team member demonstrating critical thinking skills regardless of the outcome's success. A perfect opportunity to coach by encouraging reflection of what worked well and how future decisions can be improved.