The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Spark Your Team‘s Creativity with 35 Problem Solving Activities

It‘s not just for geniuses. Everyone can learn to think creatively, analytically, and quickly with brain–boosting activities for the workplace.

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 in The 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.

MARLENE CAROSELLI is the author of Leadership Skills for Managers, The Big Book of Meeting Games, and Great Session Openers, Closers, and Energizers. She has trained employees and executives at many organizations, including Lockheed–Martin, Mobil, Eastman Kodak, and Allied–Signal.