The 8 key Leadership Skills you need to know in 2025
8. Critical Thinking (understand the links between ideas)
Leading a business is unquestionably challenging. To be successful, a leader must make a lot of difficult decisions, often under pressure. Research by the Brandon Hall Group shows that critical thinking is the most important skill required of leaders to successfully lead an organization.
Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly, whilst building a logical connection between different ideas. Critical thinkers are often intelligent decision makers, highly analytical and generally always rational. Critical thinking is a learned skill, and generally involves three steps:
Step 1 – Frame
Complex problems are rarely what they appear to be on first look. To better understand what you are dealing with, frame the problem by asking yourself “What is my problem?” Hint: you can safely assume that whatever you think your problem is right now probably isn’t your actual problem.
Step 2 – Explore
Do not rely on intuition. No matter how much faith you have in your own judgment, if you rely strictly on your instincts you will miss the opportunity to see things from an alternative perspective. Instead, explore potential solutions. That is, ask yourself “How may I solve my problem?” It is equally important to explore what matters to you; that is, the various attributes of a solution that would make it more attractive to you.
Step 3 – Decide
In most cases, one solution isn’t consistently superior to all others on all attributes. To make your decision, answer your question, “How should I solve my problem?” Surface the trade-offs for each solution, identifying what you are ready to give away that you value so that you can get a little more of something else that you value even more.
Frame, explore, decide, or FrED, for short. For most complex problems, your understanding of the problem changes as you progress through the analysis. The three steps aren’t so much a linear sequence as they are elements of an iterative loop. Do not hesitate to revise previous conclusions as new evidence surfaces.
Typically, critical thinkers will rigorously question ideas and assumptions, they will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings represent the true picture and are commonly able to recognize inconsistencies and errors in reasoning to achieve the desired outcome.
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