Developing Critical Thinkers and Creative Leaders

As discussed in class, effective leadership can lend itself to cognitive development, such as creativity and critical thinking, in the workplace. It has been shown that the correct amount of conflict fosters creativity and innovation, whereas some leadership styles help develop critical thinking skills. Interestingly enough, this article questions whether or not business and industry properly trains and prepares employees to become creative, critical thinkers. As such, the military is suggested as a positive model for leaders to parallel in shaping employees who are concerned with more than just business operations and bottom line.

First, it has been shown that businesses and industry spend the vast majority of their time in business execution, whereas very little time is spent directing cognitive development. In fact, it seems that the majority of training consists of the command - control stereotype that surrounds business and industry, instead of focusing on how to improve both the individual and the organization. Conversely, the military devotes equal amounts of time to executing and developing competence through actual experiences. Many ambiguous events are created to force trainees into critical thinking and realization that there are many solutions to the problem. Furthermore, immersing members of the military into actual experiences (developed by the leader) not only provides them with practical experience, but it also facilitates creative thinking and creativity as they learn. This experiential training in the military is an excellent way of teaching "how to think," as opposed to business's training of "what to think." 

Next, it is important to discuss a limitation of actual, experiential training the military imposes. To begin, the physical nature of military is literally impossible for business and industry to imitate. Situations such as those require muscle memory and an innate sense of how to make the most out of the environment. Although businesses cannot recreate combat training in a corporate environment, it is possible for them to focus on the theme of military training: improving human capital. As stated by the article, training and missions are only considered a success if there are both proper execution and improving competence. 

Finally, the military focuses on providing an immense amount of feedback after all training exercises. Trainees sit down with the leaders and discuss the timeline of the actions, from planning to result, with their leader and the leader subsequently discusses strategy and beneficial changes to their behavior through feedback. In essence, leaders must become very good at coaching, supporting, directing, and delegating in order to be effective in fostering development amongst trainees. 

So, what do you think? Given the synopsis of this article, is this an effective approach for developing employees in business? Instead of focusing on the physicality of military training, pay attention to the theme of creating situations for trainees to develop creative and critical thinking.  Does removing constraint while allowing for risky decision making work in business training? If not, what is another effective way of encouraging employees "how to think," instead of "what to think?"

Matthew Fowles