The art of clear thinking is a learnable technique that will help you to sharpen your mind and allow you to cut through rhetoric and evaluate the reasoning (if any) behind the words.

To initiate this process, I want to show you six common fallacies, which blur accurate analysis of ideas.

Learn them and apply them every day.

Democratic fallacy

Unreliable reasoning that stems from the idea that the “majority opinion” is a source of truth and a reliable guide for action.

This is a very dodgy way to discover “Truth”

For example;

Imagine a passenger aircraft is having engine trouble.

Would it be right for the pilot to hold a vote as to whether they should attempt an emergency landing?

If not, why not?

Is the majority opinion in the office a reliable guide to intelligent action?

Can a million people be wrong?

Be careful if you are tempted to reinforce your argument with the cry “everyone else thinks so, too.”

Correlation-cause confusion

Correlation-Cause confusion is a common trap that people fall into. Just because two things occur at the same time does not necessarily mean that one caused the other.

It is a mistake to treat a correlation as a causal connection

If I put on my lucky ring, and I go out and find a ten pound note, did the ring cause it to happen?

If a new boss comes to work and the sales next month go down, what does it mean?

Getting personal

Getting personal is the mistake of dismissing an idea because of the person suggesting it.

Imagine an overweight scientist has done research to prove that exercise reduces the risk of heart disease.

You could be tempted to say, “What does he know? Look at the state of him!”

Or you could say “He should practice what he preaches” and dismiss the valuable idea.

Halo effect

Halo effect is the reverse of the above. It means that you give extra credibly to an idea because of the person.

For example Elvis Presley was asked whether he thought the Americans were right to be at war in Vietnam.

He wisely answers ” I don’t want to get into that. I am an entertainer. Ask me about my music”

I remember a radio programme asking agony-aunt Claire Raynor what she thought about the state of the criminal justice system in England and Wales.

What specialised knowledge does her opinion carry?

Separate ideas from the person proposing them and evaluated an idea as a “thing” in its own right. Determine if the idea can act as a guide to intelligent action.

Arbitrary assertion

Is an unsubstantiated statement of belief with no principle, reasoning or sensory evidence to support it.

It is a mistake to grant plausibility to an assertion simply because it is forcefully delivered or repeated.

Frequency and volume should never take the place of logic in your decision to accept an idea as true.

Napoleon once quipped “Repetition is my strongest argument” (and then lost 250,000 in his disastrous Russian campaign)

Equally, it follows that you should avoid trying to convince someone else by simply becoming louder and more passionate. Instead strive to make your reasoning inescapable.

Gamblers fallacy

Is the mistaken belief that your chances of winning increases the longer you play.

This is a false idea.

If you are doing the wrong thing it makes no difference how long you do it. It still will not work.

If your current plan has not been yielding any meaningful results, it will not change fortunes tomorrow.

* Change your ideas.

* Change the plan.

* Change the actions.

* The results must and will change.

Critical reasoning to develop clarity of thought will cause you to do three things:

You will:

* Listen more intently

* Ask more questions

* Think more before you make your decision

All of these will help you get better results

Four step formula for constructing an argument

1. Make sure that the reasons/evidence you offer are relevant to the conclusion. (Ensure your reasoning has no fallacies).

2. Is your conclusion the best based on the reasons or evidence? Ask, Is this conclusion justified.

3. If your conclusion is for some new action or policy, can the policy be carried out practically?

4. Consider the counter arguments that could weaken your position. Make sure you have accessed all relevant information.

Chris Farmer is the leader of The Corporate Coach Group, and a publichsed author in Business Coaching. His training courses through the Corporate Coach Group have helped hundreds of managers become immediatly more effective.

When projects do not make it to deadlines, there are many things going on behind the scenes. As an accidental manager, you are tasked to keep the boat on an even keel with few resources and people. Project management training can help you man the ship effectively and take on more projects.

When Do You Need Project Management Training?

The boss has tossed you a small scale project, which turns out to be a titanic assignment for you because you do not have the skills to manage different capabilities and organize the whole show. Yet you take on the task hoping you pass muster and reap accolades for a job well done. You are one of the thousands of befuddled managers needing project management training.

Here is why you need project management training:

* You cannot produce a credible project plan

* Your project goes helter-skelter in different directions

* Your risk management techniques are outdated or implausible

* You cannot estimate work schedule confidently

* Your monitoring tools are inadequate or inapplicable

* You cannot run a motivated team

* You lack leadership skills

Can tell your boss no? Or do you take the project and hit the books because your boss expects you to effectively run a project with few people and resources, on a tight schedule, and get maximum results?

What Is Project Management Training?

The project management training educates project managers to foresee dangers that may derail project plans and activities. They should be able to minimize risks and solve problems head on to make sure that the project is completed successfully notwithstanding the risks. If you had the opportunity to have this training early on, no projects would be too big or difficult to handle.

The training also takes up management of IT skills when overseeing a project. This is a convenient and faster way to keep tabs of what is happening to all actors participating in the project. Instead of lugging journals, logbooks, and calendars, you log on to your PC and look at the worksheets of everybody to check how the work is going.

Knowing the IT part of project management training is just an aspect, but the bigger picture is effectively managing resources and meeting the project deadline because extended or delayed project activities incur more expenses, and the company loses revenues.

Why is the Project Management Training Important?

Projects, big or small, need a good manager to keep the project going on schedule. There is the competition to think about and the revenues to be earned from the project. During the course of the project, there will be slip ups or the project may go full steam ahead; a good manager will answer the following questions:

* What factors contributed to the success and failure of the project?

* What were the frequent problems that cropped up and why?

* How much resources were used and how were these used?

* Were resources available at the right time or not, and why?

* Were the skills required available and competent?

* What were the lessons learned?

* Were all aspects of project implementation documented accurately?

* Did management respond to issues quickly?

Project management training will help you see the big picture. The questions mentioned earlier are your guideposts to become an effective manager; hence, the training is important on two counts - career advancement and project success. Need you ask more?

Don’t pass up project management training. You can always get PMI exam prep to help you hurdle your PMI exam. Get more details from threeo.ca now.

I don’t want to be taken in by the latest fad in leadership development, but neither do I want to be behind the times when it comes to leadership thinking. Can you give me the inside track on where the experts are at with the research and what’s important for me to consider when it comes to leadership development today?

If you read many of the reviews of how the science of leadership development has evolved, you could be excused for thinking that what we’ve learned has followed an ordered path, with the development of a new approach coinciding with the abandonment of the existing one. For example, the early 20th century was a time when personality was the main focus of research on leadership, while the 50s and 60s saw a shift in focus to what leaders did in the workplace. This was when leader behaviours became the main focus of research efforts.

The challenge for experts at that time was the inconsistency of many of the research results. While certain behavioural styles and specific personality traits did predict leader effectiveness, they did not do so in all situations. But it wasn’t all bad news. There was unrealised value in the approach of the trait theorists, and the researchers of leader behaviours never really went away. Those in the field of leadership began to realise that under different situations, different personality traits and different leader behaviours were more effective at predicting leader performance. This led to the so-called ‘contingency’ theories of leadership. These theories identified the situations under which the different combinations of leader personality traits and behaviours predicted performance. Today, it is widely accepted that both leader personality and leader behaviour are important predictors of leader effectiveness. Far from being conceptual cul-de-sacs, both traits and behaviours are critical to our understanding of leader effectiveness, and both approaches ought to be included in your leadership development programmes.

For you to use personality and behaviour effectively, we would make a couple of recommendations based on the research literature and our experience:

• The first is with regard to personality. You need to interpret profiles of multiple personality traits, rather than looking at single dimensions of personality. The rational here is simple. Whether a leader is effective or not is likely to be judged on multiple dimensions. These dimensions are likely to be predicted by different aspects of a leader’s personality – so we need to look at the whole of leaders’ personalities.

• The second recommendation is with regard to the way leader behaviour is assessed. Up until now, there has been a tendency to focus on broad dimensions of leader behaviour, for example, whether a leader is task focused or relationship focused. This has served leadership development researchers well for a long time. But there is a need now to move to a more finely grained model of leadership behaviour that focuses on specific aspects of being relationship or task focused. For example, being relationship focused may mean that you are good at developing people, or it may mean that you have high empathy. These different aspects of being relationship focused will predict different leader outcomes.

If you are able to consider the above when using models of personality and behaviour in your leadership development programs, you have a great chance of improving your effectiveness at identifying and developing organisational leadership capability – and not being taken in by the latest fad!

Tim Kennedy is writing for CHPD. Founded in 1996, CHPD teams up business and academic partners, including the London Business School and scholars from Harvard, to develop their leadership and developmentprogrammes. The management training company has offices in the UK, Australia and the States, and is now intending to open an office in India. Having grown from four initial members, there are now 60 full time staff and 150 external consultants working in 25 countries across the globe to provide exceptional leadership and team training, helping to find the leaders of tomorrow.

I don’t want to be taken in by the latest fad in leadership development, but neither do I want to be behind the times when it comes to leadership thinking. Can you give me the inside track on where the experts are at with the research and what’s important for me to consider when it comes to leadership development today?

If you read many of the reviews of how the science of leadership development has evolved, you could be excused for thinking that what we’ve learned has followed an ordered path, with the development of a new approach coinciding with the abandonment of the existing one. For example, the early 20th century was a time when personality was the main focus of research on leadership, while the 50s and 60s saw a shift in focus to what leaders did in the workplace. This was when leader behaviours became the main focus of research efforts.

The challenge for experts at that time was the inconsistency of many of the research results. While certain behavioural styles and specific personality traits did predict leader effectiveness, they did not do so in all situations. But it wasn’t all bad news. There was unrealised value in the approach of the trait theorists, and the researchers of leader behaviours never really went away. Those in the field of leadership began to realise that under different situations, different personality traits and different leader behaviours were more effective at predicting leader performance. This led to the so-called ‘contingency’ theories of leadership. These theories identified the situations under which the different combinations of leader personality traits and behaviours predicted performance. Today, it is widely accepted that both leader personality and leader behaviour are important predictors of leader effectiveness. Far from being conceptual cul-de-sacs, both traits and behaviours are critical to our understanding of leader effectiveness, and both approaches ought to be included in your leadership development programmes.

For you to use personality and behaviour effectively, we would make a couple of recommendations based on the research literature and our experience:

• The first is with regard to personality. You need to interpret profiles of multiple personality traits, rather than looking at single dimensions of personality. The rational here is simple. Whether a leader is effective or not is likely to be judged on multiple dimensions. These dimensions are likely to be predicted by different aspects of a leader’s personality – so we need to look at the whole of leaders’ personalities.

• The second recommendation is with regard to the way leader behaviour is assessed. Up until now, there has been a tendency to focus on broad dimensions of leader behaviour, for example, whether a leader is task focused or relationship focused. This has served leadership development researchers well for a long time. But there is a need now to move to a more finely grained model of leadership behaviour that focuses on specific aspects of being relationship or task focused. For example, being relationship focused may mean that you are good at developing people, or it may mean that you have high empathy. These different aspects of being relationship focused will predict different leader outcomes.

If you are able to consider the above when using models of personality and behaviour in your leadership development programs, you have a great chance of improving your effectiveness at identifying and developing organisational leadership capability – and not being taken in by the latest fad!

Nigel Guenole is writing for CHPD. Founded in 1996, CHPD teams up business and academic partners, including the London Business School and scholars from Harvard, to develop their leadership and developmentprogrammes. The management training company has offices in the UK, Australia and the States, and is now intending to open an office in India. Having grown from four initial members, there are now 60 full time staff and 150 external consultants working in 25 countries across the globe to provide exceptional leadership and team training, helping to find the leaders of tomorrow.

All leader managers share six common characteristics:

1. Purpose

2. Communication

3. Plan Ahead

4. Conflict

5. Inspire Self towards the positive

6. Inspire Others towards the positive

These six can be summarised as;

“Be clear, treat people and problems according to the laws of reason and then, within reason, maintain a positive mental attitude.

Clarity is the most important characteristic of the leader manager.

Clarity relates to developing two specific forms;

1. purpose

2. communication

It means knowing what goals you want to achieve and the ability to focus your mind without distraction for months and years.

Any person, who takes the necessary time to achieve a state of definite purpose, has the potential to lead others to that purpose.

Communication

You may have clear ideas, but you may not be able to express those ideas to others such that they understand the full meaning.

Anyone wanting to develop their skills as a leader should develop their ability to use language:

* With accuracy

* With persuasion

The leader needs to be able to simultaneously be able to clearly explain complex ideas, and do so in language that will inspire other people to act.

Reason is the ability to think clearly

It means developing the ability to build plans of action that are likely to achieve the goal.

There are two main aspects where you may want to use your powers of reason;

1. Planning

2. Conflict resolution.

Planning

Planning is the ability to;

1. Prioritise tasks according to value and deadline

2. Delegate relatively lower value tasks

3. Handle interruptions

4. Make accurate decisions

5. Get the maximum value from every hour spent

Planning is a prerequisite of continued achievement.

Conflict

Conflict is inevitable and even beneficial, provided conflict is resolved rationally with no anger or enmity.

If conflict remains rational, better solutions emerge. When two people’s ideas contradict each other, through synthesis, a new idea emerges.

The team leader must be able to resolve conflict;

1. Quickly

2. Objectively

3. In a factual way

4. According to rational principles

This takes careful thought and careful language.

Emotions

The Positive emotions such as;

1. Enthusiasm,

2. Confidence

3. Energy

Are the spark that transforms logical plans into action.

Most people live in the hope that something outside of them will inspire positive emotions inside of them.

But the environment has a tendency to de-motivate, because bad news sells more copy than good news.

We are fed “fear messages”

To keep going through the disappointments the leader must create enthusiasm

The ability to manage the emotions has two aspects;

1. Your own emotions

2. The emotions of others

Manage your own emotions

If it is the leaders job to inspire others, then who inspires the leaders?

Nobody.

The leaders inspire themselves.

That means;

1. Constantly being positive

2. Setting up challenges that they can meet

3. Expecting things to be better in the future

4. Refusing to accept the words “I can’t” and replacing them with “We can, if…”

5. Taking defeat as temporary and always coming back stronger with a better plan.

This is each person’s individual choice: to be as confident in the future as his or her present circumstances reasonably permit.

This takes mental discipline, the ability to control your own mind, and the constant practice of the art of positive affirmation.

The ability to inspire others.

In this regard there are three types

The person who does inspire you. You may know at least one person that you can rely on to raise your spirits,

These people represent the ideal.

The second type is the person who is up one day and down the next,

On a good day this person is optimistic.

On a bad day this person is equally negative.

This does not represent the ideal because the moodiness creates uncertainty.

The third type is consistent but they are consistently down and pessimistic.

You can present this person with any situation and they will see the reasons why it is bad news.

This type represents the antithesis of the ideal.

In summary these virtues are;

1. Clear Goal

2. Clear communicator

3. Planner

4. Rational conflict manager

5. Ability to inspire self

6. Ability to inspire others

Our suggestion to you is;

Memorise the above six, and consciously develop yourself in each area.

Chris Farmer is an expert in Leadership Management Training. His training courses through the Corporate Coach Group have helped hundreds of managers become immediatly more effective.