#teachning

Want to improve collaboration? Then suspend your judgement.  Quickly forming our own opinions about an issue may on the surface seem decisive and efficient.  Indeed in a crisis situation, rapidly scanning the environment, examining a few critical cues and taking action based on this limited information is the hallmark of experts under pressure.  However the overwhelming majority of the situations we encounter do not require emergency actions.  Instead our daily lives are full of situations which require careful study and help from others if we hope to take the most appropriate course of action.  One powerful method to assist your thinking is to push yourself to suspend your judgements about a person or a situation.  This is best accomplished by catching yourself talking over someone else or otherwise in a great hurry to make a point.  By waiting for the right moment and allowing a conversation to take its natural course, you may be shocked by the number of times you find that most of the people in the room are really saying what you were thinking or are even offering an even better solution.  Suspending judgement will also help you in your relationships with students and employees by allowing them an honest opportunity to defend their thoughts and actions before taking corrective measures.  Suspending judgement is a major tool in critical thought because it requires the thinker to acknowledge that absolute reality does not rest in any one person, lest of all us.   http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766