Future Skills: Critical Thinking for HR
No skill is more important in business today than the ability to understand, analyze and act on information effectively and responsibly. HR professionals who are savvy, sharp critical thinkers can cut through ambiguity and information overload to quickly zero in on what really matters. Yet years of leadership experience do not automatically provide critical thinking skills. Something more than pure experience must be necessary, since even highly experienced business leaders sometimes make badly considered decisions that damage themselves and their organizations. This workshop covers cognitive techniques and critical-thinking tools to enhance decision-making under pressure and strengthen your impact. We'll use real-life examples to examine why incompetence, bad character or low intelligence generally aren't to blame when leaders and organizations blunder.
Learning Objectives:
- Critical thinking theory and practice, with case studies focused on HR decision making.
- Group dynamics that apply to HR issues.
- Methods that work in group environments that you can apply to your organization.
Karl James Ahlrichs
Karl Ahlrichs specializes in helping professionals make order from chaos. He is a national speaker, author, and consultant, presenting on the people issues in all industries, and is often quoted in the local and national media.
Karl’s experience is ideally suited to times of organizational change as he pulls on risk management and organizational development theories to replace “best practices” with “next practices”. He owes much of his communications mastery to working as a writer and editor in daily media, to on-the-job writing experience and to the process of becoming a published author.
He joined Gregory & Appel in 2010 after serving as a founding partner of ExactHire, bringing his HR, operations, diversity & belonging, and learning & development skills with him. Karl’s affinity for design, composition and learning started at a very young age, by taking and examining thousands of boring pictures with the goal of improving his craft. He loves deploying that practice-to-improve approach with all manner of hobbies including writing haiku, mastering cutting-edge technology and learning Spanish.
In 2003, he was named the SHRM Human Resource Professional of the Year for the State of Indiana. He is on the Boards of several organizations, including the Maryland CPA Society. He has lived in Scotland and Spain and lives to explore new experiences with his wife and family.