How often do you as business owner wish that your staff used more initiative? As a business coach, I hear this complaint on numerous occasions.

We want our team to bring solutions to us, to solve problems without our involvement and to use their intellect and knowledge proactively. Rather than complaining about a lack of initiative, this blog’s objective is to help you understand how you can influence and improve your staff’s approach to using initiative.

My top tip in building a team that uses initiative is to build critical thinking skills within your business.

More often than not, poor critical thinking skills is caused by history – our education system and perhaps our family upbringing doesn’t lead to development of critical thinking skills, we are trained to produce results under pressure – there is no time to think! So when employees join the workforce, our employees lack the know how, and it is up to us as business owners and managers to educate and train them.

Critical thinking is a powerful tool that can help employees navigate complex problems (problem solving) and to make better decisions quicker. Whilst many employees may see this as a “soft” skill, if they realized how powerful critical thinking is, it should become one of their most valuable assets.

Critical thinking is the process of objectively analyzing information and using reason to form a conclusion. It is a “self awareness” skill and one where I am the

only person that can objectively do it (my way).  It is a crucial skill in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing business environment where employees are constantly faced with new challenges and decisions to make.

The foundations of critical thinking are:

Accuracy (of information) – how I assess (verbal, body language, written, experience)

Fairness (of information) – how I emotionally understand and interpret

Relevance (of information) – does it support or add value to my ideas

Depth (of information) – how much credibility does it have

Essential to the foundations is Reflection; you need time to think, to process, to organize your thoughts.

A key reason for critical thinking not being utilized is that employees are often too busy to take the time to think. They may be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of

information they need to process on a daily basis and simply don’t have the

time or energy to analyze it all.

Moreover, employees may lack the confidence or skills to think critically. This could be due to a lack of training or a lack of exposure to critical thinking in the workplace.

But as a business owner or manager, it is your role to create the culture where thinking (and planning) time is valued and to recognize some of the perceived roadblocks by your employees.

In order to develop critical thinking skills, employees need to be given opportunities to practice and receive feedback on their decision-making and problem-solving processes. As business owner or manager you need to give your employee permission and the time to think.

The first part is to understand and develop how an employee processes information using the above 4 foundations, (accuracy, fairness, relevance and depth), and how these impact and influence how they think.

The second part revolves around confidence – using ones intellect that constructs and molds behaviors and communications when they interact with others. Asking open and curious questions is a great way to start (as opposed to jumping in with the answer) – we want to develop conversations that explore concepts and ideas, and we will want to hear what a person has to say.

Too often in meetings people may think that their opinion doesn’t matter, or a stronger personality controls the meeting and pushes their own ideas as the only outcome.

Employers can play a crucial role in promoting critical thinking in the workplace by prioritizing it as a key skill and providing training and development

opportunities for their employees. They can also create a culture that

encourages employees to think critically by giving them the time and space to

do so, and by promoting an open, collaborative environment where employees can share their ideas and insights.

In conclusion, critical thinking is an incredibly valuable resource for employees,

but it is often underutilized. By promoting critical thinking in the workplace,

employers can help their employees become more effective problem-solvers,

decision-makers, and overall contributors to the success of the organization.

If you’re a business owner and you want to deal with your frustrations from a lack of initiative within your work force, I would recommend you promote critical thinking in the workplace. If you want some help along the way, reach out to us today to see how we can help.