The Whole Thing reserves the right to alter dates, content, venue and the trainer for each course with reasonable notice.

CERTIFICATION

This course is CPD Certified with each day equivalent to 6.5 hours of CPD

Critical and Creative Thinking Practice for Great Creativity and Innovation

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Staff at all levels in the organization that wants to improve their critical and creative thinking competency for better creativity and innovation so that they can get the very best results from their leadership, teams and colleagues in pursuit of the organization’s goals.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Critical thinking includes a complex combination of skills and can be thought of as: better, more rigorous thinking; a higher-order thinking that questions assumptions and a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false. It is what we are taught at school and is increasingly significant we progress through life at higher education and at work. Creative thinking focuses on exploring ideas, generating possibilities, looking for many right answers rather than just one and complements our critical thinking capability. Great innovation requires great thinking and “left and right” brain skill development and practice. The left (critical) and the right (creative) used together means improved idea generation and better creativity and innovation. Mastery of critical and creative thinking is considered vital for effective leader and leadership and driving business growth.

Critical and Creative Thinking is a proven and very straightforward approach to the critical and creative thinking that covers all aspects of the critical and creative thinking process with particular attention given to ideation (creativity) and implementation (innovation) at it is in these areas where we often see effective thinking fail. The program takes a holistic view of critical and creative thinking and introduces the delegate to the knowledge, skills and attitude required to develop improved critical thinking behavior for better innovation in any situation.

The program is well researched, knowledge-based and designed with the individual learner at the centre of the learning process which means that the course is extremely interactive and practical.

COUSRE OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course delegates will be able to:

✓ Determine critical and creative thinking

✓ Determine innovation and how to become innovative

✓ Determine the critical and creative thinking process

✓ Determine the tools and techniques used for critical and creative thinking

✓ Determine the impact of critical thinking on your decision making

✓ Develop effective critical and creative thinking skills

✓ Identify blind spots that affect your thinking and decision making

✓ Practice using thinking tools and techniques before returning to work

✓ Produce drive to self-develop creative thinking

✓ Produce positive impact on the overall performance of each delegate and the organization

COURSE CONTENT

DAY 1 • CREATIVITY, INNOVATION, CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING

Creativity & Innovation

• What is Creativity?
• What is Innovation?
• Innovation versus Creativity versus Invention
• The Benefits of Creativity & Innovation

Critical Thinking

• What is Critical Thinking?
• The Benefits of Critical Thinking?
• Characteristics of a Strong Critical Thinker
• Active versus Passive versus Non- Critical Thinker

Creative Thinking

• What is Creative Thinking
• Characteristics of a Strong Creative Thinker
• Critical Thinking versus Creative Thinking

Individual Style

• Style versus Situation
  • Identity Iceberg
• Effective Thinking Style
• Attributes
• Barriers

Activity: “Self- Assessment”

Complete a self-assessment questionnaire.  Result establishes the individual’s major strengths and weaknesses in thinking that will be used later as a basis to set a personal improvement goal.

Critical & Creative Thinking Process

• The “Left and Right” Brain
  • What is the Cerebrum
  • Left and Right Brain Skills
  • Maximizing the Potential of the Brain
• The Critical & Creative Thinking Process

Critical & Creative Thinking Skills

• Core Thinking Skills
• Logic versus Intellectual Skills in Critical Thinking
• Thinking Models
• Thinking Techniques

Problem Solving & Decision Making

• Thinking in Problem Solving
• Mental Blocks to Thinking and Problem Solving
• Thinking in Decision Making
• Barriers to Critical & Creative Thinking
  • Blind Spots and Decision Making

DAY 2 • IDEATION (CREATIVITY) INTO ACTION (INNOVATION)

Day’s Agenda

The day will be spent concurrently learning about and exploring critical and creative problem solving tools and processes and learning how to practice and apply these creative imagination, ideation tools and problem solving tools to real life challenges and problems (personal or workplace)! This must start with a clear understanding of where you want to go, your purpose and your situation and then into action- a basic planning journey.

Planning

• Direction and Purpose
• Situation Analysis
• Action Plan
  • Milestones and Measures
• Implementation and Control

Idea Generation

• Critical & Creative Thinking in Idea Generation
• Activity “The Creative Genius”

“The Creative Genius” is a series of exercises that the delegates complete in teams; each exercise will take about 15 minutes to introduce, work through and review and include the following titles:

• “Shapes”
• “Objectivity”
• “You Can Use This For What!!”
• “Difficult Questions Made Easy”

Objectives

• To reinforce creative thinking techniques
• To practice using key creative thinking techniques
• To exercise the delegates brain in a creative thinking way
• To discuss and debate key insights and learning gained through this activity
• Tools
  • Brainstorming
  • Mind Maps (Buzan)
  • Spider Diagrams

Evaluating Ideas (Options)

• Tools and Techniques to Evaluate Your Ideas
  • Force Field Analysis
  • Stakeholder Acceptability
  • The Uncertainty-Importance Grid
  • Option Grid

Self-Regulation Process (Control)

• Measuring Creativity
  • Creativity profile
• Evaluation and Review

Key Learning Review

• Group discussion and professional feedback to consolidate key learning. Delegates will leave the day with a list of development activities to improve their critical and creative thinking competency back at work.

PRE- PROGRAM WORK

The delegates attending this course will be asked to prepare thought and a list of 10 creative thinking ideas that they have used with success. Each will then deliver this list as part of the introduction and as an icebreaker to this course.

IN ADVANCE

Each delegate will be asked to complete a pre-course questionnaire to determine their individual learning objectives. These will be used by the trainer to give on track training that is focused on the individual learner attending.

ON-TRACK FOR GROWTH

The individual leaves this program with a Personal Action Plan to encourage immediate transfer of training to the job.

REGISTER FOR THIS COURSE

To register for this course please review the grey box above. If no public course is listed or the location and dates shown don’t suit you then please request a proposal for this course either as a public training course or if you have 6 delegates or more as an in-company training course by clicking on Request a Proposal.