Rigorous thought is a foundation for good decisions, successful strategies and effective policy but it is difficult in our busy, information saturated world. Our training options empower you, or your team, to think more critically and produce more robust analysis, briefing and reports. These all build a range of skills, techniques and frameworks so you can improve your own work and better critique what others do.
We combine a deep intellectual tradition with cutting edge adult learning principles for an active, practical experience that builds real skills. See our education principles for more details.
Our standard training courses include:
Cognitive Empathy
Robust policy and planning in today’s complex world requires us to be across and understand how others see the world and think. We also cannot persuade others if we don’t know how they see the world and what motivates them. This course provides participants with a structured process to help them map and understand how others, whether businesses, communities, politicians or other countries, think and see the world. The techniques combine insights into someone’s intellectual commitments, values and ethics, and psychological attitudes into an integrated understanding of their worldview. Please note this course can be personally challenging for participants as it often provokes self-examination and reflection.
Critical and Strategic Thinking
Effective policy, planning, implementation and persuasion all depend on robust logic and appropriately thought through evidence. This course teaches participants to identify the structure of their thinking; to find gaps in argument, logic or evidence; and it provides techniques to ensure the final products are as coherent and persuasive as possible. The thinking techniques in this course are drawn from the practice of philosophy and are designed to be intuitive to learn and apply. This is not a course based on maths or formal logic, as some critical thinking courses are. Participants will leave the course with templates and structured sets of questions to help improve their critical thinking every day.