How can BRMs improve their critical thinking skills?

In my experience, BRM requires diverse areas of knowledge and experience. 1. One-on-one or face-to-face meetings are best. This develops rapport and trust between teams, shareholders, and customers. 2. Maintain exposure to various points of view -Listening. 3. Add to your toolbox, analytical tools and methodologies. 4. Learn to assess risks and uncertainties associated with various decisions. 5. Combine critical thinking with creative thinking to generate innovative solutions to complex problems. Document all your sessions, and tests, have cloud archives, and learn to categorize. Data knowledge is fundamental. The idea is to understand all teams, analyze complex situations, and make decisions that impact your organization's business.

Having worked as a relationship manager early in my career and handling tough demanding relationships my learnings are as follows. 1. Be Visible to the leaders in the stakeholder's organisation and interact often. This ensures that no miscommunications derails your initiatives. 2. Build reputation for the relationship stakeholders in your organisation with decision makers. 3. Set expectations and avoid going overboard. 4. Have regular informal meetings may be over coffee or beer to elicit any discomforts of stakeholders. 5. Follow the rule - A stich in time savea nine. 6. Network with similar parties to extend your relationships. Best

Business relationship management requires critical thinking because business strategies are dynamic and ever evolving ,it behoves you to think on your feet and move at the same speed to remain relevant in your role as a relationship manager. You have to be innovative in your approach in managing relationships. Its important to be attuned with the evolving needs of the clients and be hands on with solving them. The client should be able to trust you completely to come through for them all the time. Physical engagement with clients in my years of being a BRM, is the most effective. You are to communicate 100% through oral and body language.

Business Relationship Managers (BRMs should proactively seek in-depth insights into their immediate business surroundings, including the dynamics of stakeholders and how evolving trends impact their operations. This necessitates a forward-thinking approach to anticipate forthcoming changes and events, enabling timely responses. In my professional experience, a valuable strategy involves the art of distilling even the most complex client or customer requirements into simplified, actionable solutions. This process of simplification is, in essence, an embodiment of critical thinking.

Business Relationship Managers (BRMs) play a Foundational role in bridging the gap between business needs and its IT functions and critical thinking skills are essential for BRMs to excel in their role. RMs can enhance their critical thinking skills and leverage them for their benefit by aligning IT solutions with the business objectives, ensuring customer satisfaction, and fostering collaboration between different departments.

To develop critical thinking skills as a BRM, you need to experience the full pressure of the relationship management process. These are experienced when you are in a difficult situation - your client has made a request that you cannot accommodate. These situations will test your knowledge and understanding of the tools at your disposal (i.e. what can your organization offer as an alternative solution?). At first, you may seek guidance to learn what others have done in similar situations. Once you have developed a base level of knowledge, you will then be able to customize future solutions building further upon past experience.

In addition to asking open ended questions,a critical aspect to achieving success is how well the BRM listens without Bias. The BRM needs to be aware of their own personal unconscious biases as it were and know when these are playing into their understanding of the prospective stakeholders needs. Also ask follow up questions or probing questions to the open ended questions this will help uncover the client's motivations and concerns and hence their decision making lens

To critically think one must also ask the Why? Why is it important to do a certain task? Why is it important to do it in a certain manner? Till one reaches to the root cause or to the bottom of things, we should continue simplifying things by asking Why.

Adding on to what Mary wrote, critical thinking also helps us reach to the core of the problem being solved, along with accepting the mistakes.

In the relationship management aspect,critical thinking will help in accepting mistakes that will sometimes happen and demonstrating the willingness to learn from them. Reflecting on situations that dont pan out as planned and identification of areas of improvement. This also builds credibility and trust with colleagues and clients.

BRMs can enhance critical thinking by analyzing complex scenarios and getting best possible solutions , considering various perspectives and seeking innovative solutions that suffice the need of the hour!

When there is a problem which involves various stakeholders (i.e. bank vs. client), critical thinking skills are required to manage the mutual relationship while providing a solution to all stakeholders. For example, if a company with poor financial performance requires financing, it is difficult for the bank to provide funding. In this scenario, the BRM must assess all potential scenarios to structure the financing such that the company has sufficient resource while giving the bank sufficient comfort to support. These solutions will require thinking "outside of the box" and will be the BRM's job to negotiate between both parties to come to a consensus. By using critical thinking skills, the BRM will be able to satisfy all stakeholders.

You could also reflect on your own thinking process,take time to evaluate how you make decisions and solve problems.This can help identify areas of improvement in your critical thinking abilities. Also seek out opportunities to interact with people that have different perspectives and experiences in life,this will broaden your horizons and consideration of new ideas.

Measurement of critical thinking skills as a BRM is truly based upon the accumulation of situational experiences. These are developed over time and in your journey through BRM, you will likely see repeated problems arise time and time again, making it easier to solve each time. This can also be measured against experienced peers. If you find yourself reaching out for questions and feedback frequently, this is an indication that you are at the beginning of your learning curve. To improve on critical thinking skills, you can stay curious and be aware of your peers problems. Learning through your peers allow you to accelerate your learning using their problems as examples.

Let us first identify main steps in critical thinking . 1. Identify the problem 2. Gather data, opinions and arguments 3. Analyze and evaluate the data 4. Identify assumptions 5. Establish their significance 6. Make a decision 7. Communicate via presentation The key critical thinking skills are : identification of bias(es), inference, research, identification, curiosity judging relevance BRMs can use critical thinking in the following ways 1.Achieving sales 2. Time management 3. Finding ways to gain attention of prospects 4. Conducting efficient discovery meetings 5. Linking prospect needs to your solutions 6. Invalidating objections 7. Negotiation to achieve sale closure Negotiation can help BRM improve her critical thinking

BRM is the most important link between an organisation and its client. Actually, relationship between a client and an organisation is not only restricted to business dealings that they have between them, but an experience during the entire life of its relationship or journey as we may call it. From on boarding to day to day dealings to incremental and unplanned requirement for funds to the closure of relationship, a proactive and knowledgeable BRM can enhance the overall experience of the customer. It may not be an exaggeration to state from a customer’s perspective- an organisation is as good or as bad as its BRM, who is its customer face.

You can also try to practice your critical thinking skills in every day life to sharpen them further. Identify opportunities where you can apply critical thinking skills,for example when receiving information being presented to you as factual, ask yourself whether the source is credible,the possible motives behind the information being shared,who does it benefit and whether indeed it is factual based on the evidence presented.