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Critical Thinking and Goal Setting in Your Career

Using critical thinking to set and achieve goals helps you not only to succeed academically but also to launch and maintain a successful, satisfying career. In the workplace you’ll stand out if you use reliable information to make decisions, consider all points of view, set meaningful goals, and brainstorm innovative solutions to problems. You can do all of these things by applying the information you’ve learned in this chapter to your current or future job.

FOR DISCUSSION: The chapter on building a foundation for success discusses key skills and qualities employers seek in job candidates. Ask students why they believe critical thinking could help them as job applicants.

Learn on the Job

When you graduate from college, you don’t stop learning. In fact, to advance in your career, you’ll be expected to keep learning new skills and acquiring new knowledge. Some professions even require you to take continuing education credits each year to maintain your credentials or license. In other professions you’ll need to stay current on the latest technologies to remain productive in your work and competitive in the job market. For example, after only two weeks at his first job working for a transportation consulting firm, Sweeny was asked to review three transportation dispatch software platforms and recommend one for the company to adopt. Sweeny relied on critical thinking skills like synthesis and evaluation to weigh the options and make his recommendation.

Never Stop Learning. You’ll want — and need — to keep learning on the job so that you can excel at your work and advance in your career. For instance, teachers often need continuing education credits to maintain their teaching certification. No matter where you work, critical thinking can help you keep building your skills and knowledge.

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Set Goals on the Job

The goal-setting strategy you’re learning in this course can also help you set career goals. Let’s say you want to take on more responsibility at your job, communicate more effectively with colleagues, or complete tasks more efficiently. You can reframe these general statements as SMART goals and use the PSP to achieve them.

As you develop your own work-related goals, also consider how they support your organization’s goals. For example, as a licensed practical nurse, you might decide to increase the number of patient charts you review each hour by 10 percent in the next month. This goal demonstrates enthusiasm and a desire for self-improvement. However, consult with your supervisor about which goals would best support both the organization’s success and your own professional development. If your employer prefers that you focus on learning to use a new piece of equipment instead, you might have to modify your original goal to support your employer’s top priorities. Developing goals in consultation with your supervisor is a win-win situation and a great way to show your enthusiasm and your ability to take the initiative.

FOR DISCUSSION: Share with the class several examples of what you have learned since graduating from college. These may include generalities, such as using technology that wasn’t available during your college days, or specific experiences, such as learning to play golf as part of your networking strategy.

voices of experience: employee

SETTING GOALS FOR WORKPLACE
SUCCESS

Courtesy of Chris Funderburk

NAME:	Chris Funderburk
PROFESSION:	Branch Manager, Car Rental Office
SCHOOL:	Indiana University
DEGREE:	Bachelor of Science
MAJOR:	Biology

“Having a very clear, concrete goal helps me focus on what I need to do each day.”

Back in college, I had some difficulty — in fact, I was asked to leave my university due to low grades. It took me some time, but I went back to school and improved my GPA. Failing in college gave me a new perspective. It gave me purpose and made me stronger, and goal setting helped. I refocused on my ultimate goal of graduating and used a lot of short-term goals to stay motivated. Having specific, achievable goals was critical to this success.

Now that I’m working, I use the goal-setting skills I developed in college all the time. We have monthly sales and customer service targets to meet each month. Having a very clear, concrete goal helps me focus on what I need to do each day to achieve my goals for the month. Not every month is perfect, and it’s easy to get down when I don’t meet a personal goal or my team doesn’t meet its goal. However, that’s when I take a minute to reflect on what was happening during that month.

Sometimes I reach out to successful colleagues and ask them for input. Other times I return to strategies that worked in the past. I get back to the basics of making sure I put both customers and my employees first. When I combine reflection with perseverance and a strong work ethic, I can ramp up to make my goals the next month.

I’ve faced huge challenges in the past, but I’m able to build upon everything I learned to keep pushing forward.

YOUR TURN: Have you ever experienced difficulty achieving work-related goals? If so, what did you do about it? What results did you get?

WRITING PROMPT: Research suggests that setting goals is useful in the workplace and in the classroom. Ask students to write about how goal setting could help in their personal life as well. Would it be more or less difficult to continually stop and evaluate their progress? Would applying the SMART criteria be difficult? Why or why not?