How can you benefit from AI without allowing it to do your critical thinking for you?
Critical thinking is an essential strategic leadership skill, helping you question information, understand problems properly and make well considered judgements rather than accepting polished answers at face value. We discuss why this matters even more as AI and large language models become part of everyday leadership work, particularly when plausible, professional looking outputs can tempt us to move too quickly towards an answer.
We look at the importance of framing the problem before trying to solve it, and why you need to understand what you are trying to achieve before you can critically evaluate an AI generated response. We also consider how AI can strengthen rather than replace human thinking by acting as a thinking partner, asking challenging questions and helping you organise your own ideas.
Along the way, we explore the AI sandwich approach and a couple of insightful concepts – “bot sitting” and “bot shitting” from a recent academic paper.
Key Points Discussed
- Why critical thinking starts with clearly framing the problem rather than rushing towards a solution.
- How polished and plausible AI outputs can make it harder to recognise weak thinking or irrelevant answers.
- How the “what, so what, now what” model can help you resist the temptation to jump straight to action.
- How to use AI as a thinking partner that challenges and organises your ideas rather than outsourcing your thinking.
- Why leaders need to verify, understand and confidently stand behind both their own AI assisted work and the work produced by their teams.
Key Takeaway
Use AI to support your critical thinking, not replace it. Start by understanding the problem and developing your own thinking, then use AI to challenge, organise and refine those ideas.
Whatever the finished output looks like, you should understand it well enough to explain it, question it and confidently stand behind it.
More Resources
For more practical tools, including the Six critical thinking skills leaders need to keep practising, explore our blog: Critical Thinking in Leadership: Don’t Let AI Do Your Thinking for You.
The episode also refers to the “AI sandwich” approach shared by Kerry Harrison, and more on the concepts of “bot sitting” and “bot shitting” can be found in the Work AI Institute report.
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