NEXUS INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

CRITICAL THINKING AND DECISION MAKING

Lecture 2: The Process of Critical Thinking
4TH October, 2022

LEARNING AIMS

 To help students appreciate the relationship between critical thinking and

listening.

 To acquaint the students with both the understanding and application of

active listening and effective questioning in both their individual and
professional lives.

 To demonstrate the stages of critical thinking.

Key Points

 The listening process involves five stages: receiving, understanding,

evaluating, remembering, and responding.

 Active listening is a particular communication technique that requires

the listener to provide feedback on what he or she hears to the
speaker.

 Three main degrees of active listening are repeating, paraphrasing, and

reflecting.

 The two division of critical thinking stages, that is; problem

presentation (identification) which is further composed of three
stages/processes namely; interpretation, analysis, and inference. The
second division of critical thinking stages is the action stage which is
 further subdivided into three components, that is; evaluation,
explanation and self – regulation.

Key Terms

 Listening: The active process by which we make sense of, assess, and
respond to what we hear.
 Active listening: A particular communication technique that requires
the listener to provide feedback on what he or she hears to the
speaker.

 Problem Presentation (identification): the facts of the challenge

which is posed in a particular situation which needs interpretation,
analysis and inference.

 Action stage (decision making): the individual comes up with the

specific course of action to consider through evaluation, explanation
and self – regulation.

1. Introduction

Listening is an essential part of the process of critical thinking. A person

speaking wants to be listened to and the listener must listen effectively in
order to respond to what is being said.

Class Discussion Questions

- Why do think listening is an important aspect of critical thinking?

- Do you listen to respond, as soon as the speaker finishes speaking you

respond?

- What is the connection between listening and critical thinking?

- How do you draw the attention of the listener? /draw the attention of the
listener?

- How does the listener draw the attention of the speaker for a constructive
response?

2. Listening and the Importance of Listening

Listening is a skill of critical significance in all aspects of our lives–from

maintaining our personal relationships, to getting our jobs done, to taking
notes in class, to figuring out which bus to take to the airport. Regardless of
how we’re engaged with listening, it’s important to understand that listening
involves more than just hearing the words that are directed at us. Listening
is an active process by which we make sense of, assess, and respond to
what we hear.

The listening process involves five stages: receiving, understanding,

evaluating, remembering, and responding. These stages will be discussed in
more detail in later sections. Basically, an effective listener must hear and
identify the speech sounds directed toward them, understand the message
of those sounds, critically evaluate or assess that message, remember
what’s been said, and respond (either verbally or nonverbally) to information
they’ve received.

Effectively engaging with all five stages of the listening process lets us best
gather the information we need from the world around us.
Active Listening

Active listening is a particular communication technique that requires the

listener to provide feedback on what he or she hears to the speaker, by way
of restating or paraphrasing what they have heard in their own words. The
goal of this repetition is to confirm what the listener has heard and to
confirm the understanding of both parties.

The ability to actively listen demonstrates sincerity, and that nothing is being
assumed or taken for granted. Active listening is most often used to improve
personal relationships, reduce misunderstanding and conflicts, strengthen
cooperation, and foster understanding.

Listening actively means putting everything else out of your mind and
acknowledging the other person so they have feedback that you are listening
properly and valuing what they have to say.
Active listening can also involve paying attention to the speaker’s behavior
and body language. Having the ability to interpret a person’s body language
lets the listener develop a more accurate understanding of the speaker’s
message.

Relationship between Critical Thinking to Listening

Critical thinkers must engage in highly active listening to further their critical
thinking skills. People can use critical thinking skills to understand, interpret,
and assess what they hear in order to formulate appropriate reactions or
responses. These skills allow people to organize the information that they
hear, understand its context or relevance, recognize unstated assumptions,
make logical connections between ideas, determine the truth values, and
draw conclusions. Conversely, engaging in focused, effective listening also
lets people collect information in a way that best promotes critical thinking
and, ultimately, successful communication.

Some of the key skills required for active listening include:

 Listen with your whole body:

o Face the other person and use an open posture to
establish rapport
o Use eye contact and facial gestures to demonstrate your
attention
o Be still and resist fidgeting or unnecessary movement
 Let the other person do the talking:
o Be quiet and actively encourage the other person to talk;
promote their willingness to communicate;
o Avoid interrupting; o Avoid pre-judging what’s being said
(rather, make sure you focus on understanding precisely what
the speaker means);
o Avoid starting to think about your answer or response (wait until
the speaker has finished - active listening is hard work and
needs 100% of your concentration);
o Don’t finish their sentences or fill in the blanks – no matter how
tempting!

• Notice non-verbal communication i.e., body language, tone and pitch of

the voice – listen for feelings and emotions as much as facts and words.
• Be comfortable with silence. Staying silent gives time and opportunity for
the speaker to share extra information. It may feel odd initially, but you will
be amazed how often more information emerges after a moment’s silence.

• Listen inquisitively and strategically:

 Inquisitive listening - actively looking for interesting ‘bits’ of

information in what is being said that will help formulate a solution or
answer;
 Strategic listening - going beyond the words to understand the
speakers real motivations and driving forces and/or needs. This
involves listening ‘between the lines’ and hearing the things that were
‘not said’ as well as those that were.

• Use questions effectively.

• Reflect back the information you receive to illustrate your understanding

and provide opportunities for clarification. Use paraphrasing,
acknowledgment and reflective statements.

Some common mistakes made by people who think they are actively
listening, but aren’t really, include:

 Cursory (superficial or hasty) listening; just going through the motions

but the listener is either multi-tasking or not really interested in what’s
being said.
 Shallow listening; the listener believes they already know what the
speaker is leading to and already knows the answer or what they are
going to say next. This type of listening is often underpinned by
arrogance and the listener fails to hear what is actually being said.
 Active listening takes time and focus to achieve; used effectively it opens
up a whole new level on which to communicate and build relationships.

Effective Questioning

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask

questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before
jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones, like what do I
currently know and how do I know this? These can help to give you a
better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more
complex issues.  Above all critical thinking requires effective questioning.

Effective questioning goes hand in hand with effective listening. You listen
and always ask questions to what you are hearing. You need to have
powerful questions to enhance effective listening.

A powerful question:

 generates curiosity in the listener

 stimulates reflective conversation
 is thought-provoking
 surfaces underlying assumptions
 invites creativity and new possibilities
 generates energy and forward movement
 channels attention and focuses inquiry
 stays with participants
 touches a deep meaning
 evokes more questions

Class activity:
- Can each class member formulate one or two powerful questions for
strategic listening.

A powerful question has the capacity to spread beyond the place where it
began into larger networks of conversation throughout an organization or
a community.

Powerful questions that travel well are often the key to large-scale
change. But this is not straightforward; whilst asking and answering
questions is part of everyday conversation for all of us and we might
think that questioning is a natural skill that we all possess; it is not as
easy as we assume.

Questions need to be designed to help the other person reach a

conclusions, or to provide information and insights helpful to the
discussion.

There are a range of question types that can be used for different
purposes. Some questions provide structure, others direct flow, and some
help us to reach closure. Question types include:

• Open questions, to gather information and facts, for example

"What are your concerns and worries about this situation?"
• Probing questions, to gain additional detail, e.g. "Can you
explain why that matters?"
• Hypothetical questions, to suggest an approach or introduce new
ideas. An example might be "If you could get additional funding
or resources, how might that help?"
• Reflective questions, to check understanding, such as "So would
you prioritize the most critical areas for attention first and make
sure that everyone knew what was most important?"
• Leading questions , to help a person reach a conclusion or have
an ‘idea’ that you feel will be beneficial; a few well planned
questions can very often lead the person towards the idea and
instead of responding to your request, they have their idea of
how to help you be more successful.
• Deflective questions to defuse an aggressive or defiant situation
by redirecting the force of the other person’s attack instead of
facing it head-on. ‘Attacks’ are synonymous with dissatisfaction,
insubordination or resistance and prevent you from moving
forward. Dealing with a strong objection by responding with
similar force creates conflict. Deflective questions help to
transform the negative situation into a collaborative problem-
solving6 occasion. Some examples include:
 Dissatisfaction: I’m not happy with this project!
 Response: What can WE do to make it right?
 Insubordination: I have major concerns. I won’t do it!
 Response: How can WE address your concerns?
 Resistance: I disagree with the approach!
 Response: If you were to do it, what would be your
approach?
• Closing questions, to bring agreement, commitment and
conclusion, e.g. "When will you talk to your team and the client
about this?" Questions are not neutral:
• Asking ‘leading questions’ when you are seeking information
closes off options;
• Whereas asking ‘open questions’ when you are intending to
move a person towards the conclusion you want them to reach
can be counterproductive.
 Hypothetical, reflective and leading questions help generate ideas,
motivate people and develop insights, they are particularly useful
when leading knowledge workers.

Other question sets are designed to gather information. To be

effective, you need to know the objectives of the questions you are
asking and then design the questions to support the objective.

When engaging with a particular speaker, a listener can use several degrees
of active listening, each resulting in a different quality of communication with
the speaker. This active listening chart shows three main degrees of
listening: repeating, paraphrasing, and reflecting.

The Processes (Stages) of critical thinking

We have seen the significance of listening and effectively questioning which

is crucial to our critical thinking processes. According to Merriam – Webster’s
online dictionary a process refers to the act of putting a subject to
examination or analysis. And we can do this systematically, in a way that it
examines and follows through a series of stages so as we can arrive at a well
bias less, and factual conclusion.

Most often, critical thinking processes deals with problems that defeat proper
definition that is; problems that are too complex (ambiguous) and do not
have clear outcomes or an unexpected solution. The figure below shows how
a team leader ensures proper resolutions to a problem at hand and consider
the team’s engagement in suggesting solutions to the identified problem.
Source: https://leadership.hr.ufl.edu. University of Florida
This process can be repeated for over and over again.