The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Spark Your Team's Creativity with 35 Problem Solving Activities - Softcover

Caroselli, Dr. Marlene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081441740X ISBN 13: 9780814417409

Verlag: Amacom, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Critical thinking--the ability to approach a problem both analytically and creatively--is the bedrock of success for companies and their people. Fortunately, it’s a skill that can be learned. The Critical Thinking Toolkit gets employees thinking better and faster with training exercises that offer an invigorating departure from the everyday and the potential for big payoffs in the form of enhanced “on-your-feet” thinking, innovative problem-solving, and profitable idea generation from everyone on the team. Using hands-on activities and ready-to-use assessments, team members will learn how to challenge assumptions, brainstorm divergent ideas, and then pinpoint the ones that best benefit your organization. And they’ll learn to do it in a way that not only increases their work quality, but also their productivity. Unimaginative. Risk-adverse. Prone to groupthink. These are not just empty complaints about today’s employees. American businesses are suffering from systemic burnout resulting in a widespread lack of creativity. But this unimaginative thinking doesn’t need to plague your workplace. With The Critical Thinking Toolkit, you and your team have everything you need to think quickly, analytically, and creatively.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marlene Caroselli (Rochester, NY) is the author of Leadership Skills for Managers, The Big Book of Meeting Games, Great Session Openers, Closers, and Energizers, and dozens of other books. She has trained employees and executives at organizations including Lockheed-Martin, Mobil, Eastman Kodak, Allied-Signal, and the Departments of Labor and Energy. She may be reached at mccpd@aol.com.

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Now everyone can learn to think creatively, analytically, and quickly with brain-boosting activities for the workplace.

Efficient and punctual employees are great at keeping the day-to-day processes humming along. But with tight budgets, lean staffs, and fierce competition, “day-to-day” is losing relevancy fast. What organizations need now are people who can quickly assess challenging situations and creatively problem-solve to find solutions. They need nimble thinkers who can both connect the dots and see the dots that aren’t there.

The ability to think quickly, innovatively, and logically—in other words, to think critically—is a prized commodity in the workplace today. Whether it’s improving a business process, forming new alliances, devising a marketing campaign, articulating a vision, analyzing data from an unexpected angle, or any other business function, critical thinkers bring clarity and originality to the task and are invaluable players on every team.

Thankfully, critical thinking is neither a fixed nor innate skill. Everyone is capable of building their critical thinking skills, and everyone will benefit from the 35 brain-boosting activities inThe Critical Thinking Tool Kit. Fun and original, these activities help trainers and managers draw people out of their boxes, freeing them from all their routine tasks and preset ideas.

Team members work on building their critical thinking skills in a variety of ways: crystallizing excess information, answering questions articulately, estimating numbers accurately, assessing situations from multiple perspectives, making associations more freely, scrutinizing issues and analyzing tasks with greater precision, and much more. And they’ll learn to do it in real-life speed—quickly!

Designed to be exceptionally easy to use, the exercises come with reproducible worksheets and step-by-step instructions, including tips on how to get the maximum benefit from each activity by linking it to the participants’ work. Two full-length self-assessments help users measure their current level of creative and analytical thinking skills.

The Critical Thinking Tool Kit offers an invigorating departure from the everyday—with the potential for big payoffs in the form of enhanced “on-your-feet” thinking, innovative problem-solving, and profitable idea generation from everyone on the team. In addition, the worksheets, transparencies, and handouts are available online, free for purchasers of the book to download.

Marlene Caroselli is the author of Leadership Skills for Managers,500 Creative Classroom Techniques for Teachers and Trainers, and dozens of other books. She has trained employees and executives at many organizations, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, the Department of Defense, and AlliedSignal.

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The Critical Thinking Tool Kit

Spark Your Team's Creativity with 35 Problem Solving ActivitiesBy Marlene Caroselli

AMACOM

Copyright © 2011 HRD Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8144-1740-9

Contents

Preface.............................................................................viiIntroduction........................................................................1Quick Thinking......................................................................11#1 Attending to Attention...........................................................13#2 Rhymed Reductions................................................................19#3 The Endless Question.............................................................25#4 The Questionable Question........................................................29#5 The K-W-I-C Technique............................................................33#6 Juxtaposed Pairs.................................................................37#7 Presidential Pursuits............................................................41#8 The Umbrage Not Taken............................................................45#9 Brainteasing/Brainsqueezing......................................................51#10 Perceptual Shifts...............................................................57#11 Organizational Oxymorons........................................................65#12 Stratification..................................................................71Creative Thinking...................................................................77#13 Particular Virtues..............................................................79#14 Perspicacious Perspectives......................................................85#15 Turnarounds.....................................................................89#16 Left Is Right So Is Right......................................................93#17 Ms. Matches and Mr. Matches.....................................................97#18 Cre8—Get N2It.............................................................103#19 Thinking Outside the Locks......................................................107#20 Thinking Is an Art..............................................................113#21 A Kin to Kinesthesia............................................................119#22 Low and High Logos..............................................................123#23 Blues on Parade.................................................................127#24 Scrambled Pegs..................................................................131Analytical Thinking.................................................................135#25 Crisis Critiques................................................................137#26 Trend Spotters..................................................................141#27 The Triple-A Approach...........................................................147#28 A Foolery of Fun................................................................151#29 Patterned Organization..........................................................157#30 Pro Con'D.......................................................................163#31 Direct Responses................................................................167#32 In Your Sights..................................................................171#33 Giving Problems a Why'd Berth...................................................175#34 Resource-Full...................................................................179#35 Living Problems, Lively Solutions...............................................183Appendixes..........................................................................185Appendix A Test of Creativity: A Self-Assessment Exercise...........................185Appendix B Analytical Thinking Test: A Self-Assessment Exercise.....................189Appendix C Test of Creativity: Answer Sheet and Feedback............................193Appendix D Analytical Thinking Test: Answer Sheet...................................199Bibliography........................................................................205Index...............................................................................207

Chapter One

Quick Thinking

#1 Attending to Attention 13 #2 Rhymed Reductions 19 #3 The Endless Question 25 #4 The Questionable Question 29 #5 The K-W-I-C Technique 33 #6 Juxtaposed Pairs 37 #7 Presidential Pursuits 41 #8 The Umbrage Not Taken 45 #9 Brainteasing/Brainsqueezing 51 #10 Perceptual Shifts 57 #11 Organizational Oxymorons 65 #12 Stratification 71

#1: Attending to Attention

Overview: This activity provides participants with a means of efficiently encoding information by using a framework with which to organize important information in a meaningful way.

Objective: To provide an opportunity for participants to process information more efficiently.

Supplies: Copies of Handout #1-1

Time: 15–20 minutes

Advance Make enough copies of Handout #1-1 for the entire group. Arrange the Preparation: seating so it is easy for groups of three or four to share their responses.

Participants/ This activity works with any number of participants and is especially useful Application: when one must take notes on significant material presented by a facilitator in a lecture format. It can be used each time a lecture (or mini-lecture) is presented.

Introduction to Concept:

"Tomorrow's illiterate," Herbert Gerjuoy asserts, "will not be the man who cannot read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn." An important part of the learning process is paying attention to material we are putting into our storage banks. If we are not concentrating, if we are bored, or if we are anxious or distracted, tired or ill, depressed or excited, we may not be giving the knowledge the attention it deserves. Later, when we go to retrieve it, we will probably have difficulty finding it. When there are gaps in our knowledge, there will be corresponding gaps in our ability to critically assess situations.

When we are missing information we need, we tend to blame a "poor memory." The real culprit is an inefficient coding system. Inefficiency in this system obviates efficiency in critical thinking, for we cannot give issues a 360-degree scrutiny if we only have a 180-degree perspective.

One of the best examples of an efficient coding system is found in what is called the "skeleton image."

Procedure:

1. Introduce the Knowledge Skeleton via this presentation:

As you prepare to listen to a lecture on "empowerment," imagine that the head and each of the limbs of a skeleton represent five large areas within this broad topic. While you listen to my lecture, make notes in one of these five areas and do not—I repeat—do not try to copy every word I say. Instead, record main points as concisely as you can. Look at these knowledge skeletons now. [Distribute copies of Handout #1-1, one per participant.] Note that the areas for this topic are Business Practices, Definition of empowerment, Structures, Ideas, and Partnerships. With other topics, other areas would be significant....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Amacom
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 081441740X
• ISBN 13: 9780814417409
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: HarperCollins; https://harpercollins.co.uk; ; "The News Building 1 London Bridge Street,"; London; SE1 9GF; Vereinigtes Königreich
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland