Asking the Wrong Questions
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- Date Submitted: 05/11/2011 02:02 PM
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Managing to Think Critically:
Are Leadership Development Programs Worth the Investment?
Thinking critically is vitally important in today’s extremely competitive globalized economy with all of the complicated issues that share relationships across different time zones, continents, cultures, and classes. In an increasingly diverse workforce, listening to and understanding one another is the key to broader cooperation and improved relations. It would be a mistake for any of us to simply blindly accept a conclusion without fully understanding the reasoning and thinking behind it, especially if we felt unsure about some of the reasons used to support the argument. In this paper, I will be using the 11-step critical thinking method developed and presented by M. Neil Browne and Stuart M. Keeley in their book, Asking the Right Questions, (2007), to analyze the arguments made by Ms. Denise Khali, the Vice President of Human Resources for Triad Insurance Company of Indianapolis (TICI), in her confidential memorandum to Mr. Robert Shaw, the Chief Executive Officer of TICI (D. Khali, personal communication, April 6, 2010).
What are the issue and conclusions?
The issue being considered in the memorandum is a prescriptive one: Should TICI implement and support a new leadership development course for junior managers as proposed by Mr. Ralph Clarke, at the senior staff meeting of April 1, 2010? The conclusion that Ms. Khali reached is that TICI should not pay to send junior executives to off-site leadership training that was to be offered by the Aspen Leadership Institute of Colorado. She supports this conclusion with her statement that leadership development initiatives waste funding that could be better used elsewhere (Khali, p. 3) and (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p. 17).
Major Reasons
In order to understand why Ms. Khali has come to her conclusion to recommend against creating the new leadership program, we need to figure out what her...
Are Leadership Development Programs Worth the Investment?
Thinking critically is vitally important in today’s extremely competitive globalized economy with all of the complicated issues that share relationships across different time zones, continents, cultures, and classes. In an increasingly diverse workforce, listening to and understanding one another is the key to broader cooperation and improved relations. It would be a mistake for any of us to simply blindly accept a conclusion without fully understanding the reasoning and thinking behind it, especially if we felt unsure about some of the reasons used to support the argument. In this paper, I will be using the 11-step critical thinking method developed and presented by M. Neil Browne and Stuart M. Keeley in their book, Asking the Right Questions, (2007), to analyze the arguments made by Ms. Denise Khali, the Vice President of Human Resources for Triad Insurance Company of Indianapolis (TICI), in her confidential memorandum to Mr. Robert Shaw, the Chief Executive Officer of TICI (D. Khali, personal communication, April 6, 2010).
What are the issue and conclusions?
The issue being considered in the memorandum is a prescriptive one: Should TICI implement and support a new leadership development course for junior managers as proposed by Mr. Ralph Clarke, at the senior staff meeting of April 1, 2010? The conclusion that Ms. Khali reached is that TICI should not pay to send junior executives to off-site leadership training that was to be offered by the Aspen Leadership Institute of Colorado. She supports this conclusion with her statement that leadership development initiatives waste funding that could be better used elsewhere (Khali, p. 3) and (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p. 17).
Major Reasons
In order to understand why Ms. Khali has come to her conclusion to recommend against creating the new leadership program, we need to figure out what her...