Essay Sample: Critical Thinking Barriers in the Workplace

Critical thinking is a skill that is helpful in all areas of our lives, including in the workplace. It helps us deal with the stress of our job, improves production, and enables us to be better communicators with co-workers, management, and clients.

Elements of Critical Thinking

In our scenario, Sally, who works in customer service, encounters some barriers to critical thinking. She experiences stress and becomes drained and agitated when dealing with clients. Another barrier she demonstrates is ignorance of a topic when she was unable to participate in a discussion at dinner with colleagues because she did not know enough about what was being discussed. While I don't think Sally is "bad" at critical thinking, I do think that there are areas that could be improved to develop her critical thinking skills.

Reason, Emotion, and Communication

As mentioned previously, Sally experiences stress when dealing with clients. To deal with her stress, she attends dinner with co-workers. Since she is uninformed about the topic of discussion, she responds with passive communication, nodding her head in agreement to avoid confrontation. Instead of educating herself on the topic discussed so that she is better informed, she decides she will just avoid her co-workers outside of work.

Fallacies and Argument

After a conversation with a client, Sally felt empathy for the problems that they were having with their device only one month after the warranty expired. Empathy is sometimes a barrier to critical thinking and other times it can prove to be a motivator. In this case, while Sally presented a valid argument to her manager with supporting evidence that showed that the devices failed shortly after the warranty expired and the warranties should be extended, her manager, instead of countering with an argument as to why the warranty should not be extended, countered with an ad hominem fallacy. This personal attack had nothing to do with the topic at hand about the company's policy on warranties.

Conclusion

In summary, critical thinking is an important skill to have. Sally demonstrated some barriers that she struggles with like stress, avoidance, and ignorance of a topic being discussed. And these are barriers that we all can struggle with from time to time in the workplace. By recognizing where we are struggling in our ability to become good at critical thinking, we can then improve our critical thinking skills.