What Does It Take to Make Better Decisions?

You have a decision to make. Maybe a project has gone off track or a new opportunity has landed on your desk. Perhaps a familiar problem keeps resurfacing. You gather the information you have, draw on your experience and start working toward an answer.

That sounds like critical thinking. But there’s one resource you may be overlooking: other people.

That’s a central idea in the University of Minnesota webinar “Critical Thinking: Better Together,” presented by Nan Gesche, an educator, consultant and instructor of professional development courses at the College of Continuing and Professional Studies. Gesche encourages people to think of critical thinking not simply as something that happens inside our own heads, but as something we can strengthen by intentionally bringing other perspectives into the process.

One way she does that is through the idea of a “personal board of directors.”

The concept is simple: When you’re wrestling with a problem, who gets a seat at the table? Whose perspective might reveal something you haven't considered, and who is willing to challenge you rather than simply confirm what you already think?

Those questions point to a larger truth about critical thinking: Sometimes the way to think better is to stop thinking alone.

Build a Board That Challenges Your Thinking

Most of us already have people we turn to when we need another perspective. They may be colleagues who understand our work or former supervisors whose judgment we trust. They may even be friends who know us well enough to tell us what we don’t necessarily want to hear.

Gesche distinguishes between a support network and what she calls a “challenge network.” Both have value, but when the goal is better thinking, the people who question our assumptions may be especially important.

That doesn’t mean assembling a group of people who routinely disagree with you. It means seeking out people whose experiences or expertise differ from your own, as well as people who simply approach a problem differently.

Research suggests there’s real value in doing so. Writing in “Harvard Business Review,” David Rock and Heidi Grant point to research showing that exposure to different perspectives can prompt people to examine facts more carefully and become more aware of their own thinking. In other words, the benefit isn't simply that someone else may have the answer. The presence of another point of view can change how carefully we arrive at our own.

That makes the composition of your personal board worth considering. If everyone you consult has a similar background, works in the same field or tends to approach problems the way you do, you may have plenty of smart people around you and still have a limited view.

The question becomes less “Who can help me solve this?” and more “Who might see this differently?”

More Perspectives Aren’t Automatically Better

There is, however, an important catch. Bringing more people into a problem doesn’t guarantee better thinking.

Groups have biases, too. People can defer to the most senior voice or avoid raising an unpopular opinion. Sometimes a group simply moves toward consensus without fully examining the alternatives. A room full of different perspectives doesn’t accomplish much if only some of those perspectives are heard.

Research by Henrik Bresman and Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson helps explain why. In a study of 62 drug-development teams, they found that diversity could improve performance, but only when teams also had psychological safety. Without an environment where people felt able to speak candidly, the potential benefits of those differences could be lost.

This is where critical thinking and collaboration become closely connected. If you want someone to challenge your thinking, you have to make it possible for them to do so.

That can be harder than it sounds. Asking “What do you think?” may invite an opinion, but it doesn’t necessarily signal that disagreement is welcome. A more useful question might be: “What am I missing?” Or, when a group appears to be settling quickly on an answer, “What would make this a bad idea?”

Questions like these change the job we’re giving other people. Instead of asking them to evaluate a conclusion we’ve already reached, we’re inviting them to help us examine it.

Make Room to Be Wrong

There’s another side to seeking out different perspectives: We have to be willing to do something with what we hear.

That requires what psychologists call intellectual humility. A review published in “Nature Reviews Psychology” describes intellectual humility as the ability to recognize the limitations of our own knowledge and beliefs. The researchers examined evidence connecting it to areas including decision-making and interpersonal relationships.

Intellectual humility doesn’t mean doubting everything you know or withholding an opinion until you’re certain. It means holding enough space for the possibility that your understanding is incomplete.

That distinction matters because experience can work both ways. Expertise gives us patterns to draw on and helps us make decisions efficiently. But experience can also make an answer feel familiar before we’ve fully examined the situation in front of us.

Other people can interrupt that process.

A colleague may notice an assumption embedded in the way you’ve framed the problem. Someone outside your field may ask the question that seems obvious only because they don’t know the “usual” way of doing things. And sometimes another person simply sees consequences you hadn’t considered.

None of them has to be right for the conversation to improve your thinking. Sometimes having to explain why you believe something is enough to reveal where your reasoning is strong and where it needs another look.

Ask Better Questions Before Looking for Better Answers

Critical thinking is often associated with analysis, but the questions we ask can be just as important as the answers we come to. Are we solving the right problem? What are we assuming? Who are we not hearing from?

You don’t need to turn every decision into a committee meeting. But when the stakes are high or your usual approach isn’t getting you anywhere, consider who isn’t yet at the table.

Better thinking may begin by offering them a seat.