Leadership
Leadership Definition (Oxford)
1. The action of leading a group of people or an organization.
2. (Webster) The time when a person holds the position of leader. The power or ability to lead other people.
A person who rules, guides, or inspires others.
You will find many definitions of leadership similar to these, but leaders are not just born. The leaders I will be referring to are those who lead for the greater good of humanity, not the ones that become leaders for the sake of having power and greed to rule over others in order to feel great about their selfish needs. You can become a great leader in a fortune 500 company and still be grounded without letting your success get the better of you. Once you are in a position of power within the company then you have a responsibility to do what you can for others, from hiring, to developing scholarship, and mentorship opportunities for the next generation. You are the only one who can determine the definition of your success pertaining to your life.
We will all need to lead as some point of our lives, even if it means that we only lead ourselves. Fo those that have families, we will need to set a great example for our children. In a household we take turns being leaders depending on the situation. The same may apply at our work environment and in our surroundings, even with our friends. They may be getting into a situation that may end up with a negative outcome, that’s when we have to try and lead them into a positive direction. Before we become leaders of others, we will need to become leaders of ourselves. We have to be great students with academics and well as a great student of life. The leadership training also depends on the information we choose to fill our minds with and most importantly use our critical thinking process to determine what we choose to do with that information. Just because someone gives you information or you see in come from the media doesn’t mean you should not question it or fact check to see if it is correct by doing your own research.
This type of training will limit the amount of times someone or entities will take advantage of us. Our best protection will come from knowledge and putting it into practice along with sharing it. We have to train ourselves to become leaders in all aspects of life so we can prosper further than our past generations have. It is our right, duty, and responsibility.
Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking (Oxford)
1. The objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.
The ability to think clearly and rationally. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following :
•understand the logical connections between ideas
•identify, construct and evaluate arguments
•detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning
•solve problems systematically
•identify the relevance and importance of ideas
•reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and values
Critical thinking is not a matter of accumulating information. A person with a good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. A critical thinker is able to deduce consequences from what they know, and they know how to make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information to inform themselves. Critical thinking should not be confused with being argumentative or being critical of other people. Although critical thinking skills can be used in exposing fallacies and bad reasoning, critical thinking can also play an important role in cooperative reasoning and constructive tasks. Critical thinking can help us acquire knowledge, improve our theories, and strengthen arguments. We can use critical thinking to enhance work processes and improve social institutions.
Some people believe that critical thinking hinders creativity because it requires following the rules of logic and rationality, but creativity might require breaking rules. This is a misconception. Critical thinking is quite compatible with thinking "out-of-the-box", challenging consensus and pursuing less popular approaches. If anything, critical thinking is an essential part of creativity because we need critical thinking to evaluate and improve our creative ideas. ((http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/critical/ct.php))