Critical Thinking

Getting a better understanding of how our brains work helps us to challenge our assumptions and evaluate information and data more accurately.  It also helps us to understand other people’s actions and decisions and develop strategies to influence them.

This online course can be delivered as three separate modules or as a one day course.

Module 1 – The impact hour

1 hour

This module explains and reviews some of the key psychological ideas that help us improve our workplace behaviours.

• The basic construct of the mind’s thinking processes (thinking ‘fast and slow’)
• Anchoring
• Prominence
• Social proof
• Reciprocity
• Control and choice

Module 2 – Ourselves, our work, our outcomes

2 hours

• Thinking traps, cognitive weaknesses and mental shortcuts
  • Fact checking
  • Hunting the ‘outside view’
  • Changing anchors and reframing
  • Criteria weighting
• Critical thinking about planning work
  • Use of base rates

• Focusing on outcomes
  • Purpose and outcome statements

Module 3 – Information, data and narratives

2 hours

• What I see (and what I don’t see)
  • 
    The ‘argument and evidence’ technique
  • Pre-Mortems

• Statistics, chance, and the illusion of expertise
  We have a number of important weaknesses when dealing with data and narratives.

  We are poor statisticians, finding it hard to assess the importance of the sample size (for example). We are poor at accepting that some things are just the products of pure chance

• Understanding narratives
  We understand the world better when we understand ‘cognitive dissonance’ and how people are driven to behave by reference to their values and how those values links to their actions.

Outcomes

As a result of completing this course you will:

• Better understand the basic construct of the mind’s thinking processes
• Understand common thinking traps
• Always consider whether you need more information before making a decision
• Be aware of the risks when dealing with data and statistics
• Better understand the psychology behind influencing others

Format

Workshops with practical exercises tutor
feedback.

Delegates

All lawyers who want to make better decisions, avoid thinking traps and better understand how to influence others.

Max 15 delegates.