Asking_the_Wrong_Questions

Managing to Think Critically: Are Leadership Development Programs Worth the Investment' Thinking critically is vitally important in today’s extremely competitive globalized economy with all of the complicated issues that share relationships across different time zones, continents, cultures, and classes. In an increasingly diverse workforce, listening to and understanding one another is the key to broader cooperation and improved relations. It would be a mistake for any of us to simply blindly accept a conclusion without fully understanding the reasoning and thinking behind it, especially if we felt unsure about some of the reasons used to support the argument. In this paper, I will be using the 11-step critical thinking method developed and presented by M. Neil Browne and Stuart M. Keeley in their book, Asking the Right Questions, (2007), to analyze the arguments made by Ms. Denise Khali, the Vice President of Human Resources for Triad Insurance Company of Indianapolis (TICI), in her confidential memorandum to Mr. Robert Shaw, the Chief Executive Officer of TICI (D. Khali, personal communication, April 6, 2010). What are the issue and conclusions' The issue being considered in the memorandum is a prescriptive one: Should TICI implement and support a new leadership development course for junior managers as proposed by Mr. Ralph Clarke, at the senior staff meeting of April 1, 2010' The conclusion that Ms. Khali reached is that TICI should not pay to send junior executives to off-site leadership training that was to be offered by the Aspen Leadership Institute of Colorado. She supports this conclusion with her statement that leadership development initiatives waste funding that could be better used elsewhere (Khali, p. 3) and (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p. 17). Major Reasons In order to understand why Ms. Khali has come to her conclusion to recommend against creating the new leadership program, we need to figure out what her reasons are (Browne & Keeley, p. 35). The reasons that Ms. Khali provided appear to be only partially rooted in her view of the issue as the Vice President of Human Resources for TICI. The first major reason that Ms. Khali presented was her statement that not one of TICI’s twelve senior executives has taken part in a leadership development program such as the one being considered. The company has been flourishing without a leadership development program, which suggests it may not be necessary. Ms. Khali included two supporting reasons for her first major reason, the first of which was that TICI has existed for more than 50 years, implying that TICI is successful in order to have been in operation for so long and still be in business, which could in turn be interpreted to mean that the management of the company are doing their jobs well. The second supporting reason that Ms. Khali used was that the organization has been growing at a yearly rate of 12%. Assuming that a yearly growth rate of 12% is considered average for the insurance industry, this could infer that the leadership or management of TICI is competent and competitive. Together, these two supporting reasons contribute to the strength of Ms. Khali’s first major reason. The second major reason that Ms. Khali gave was that the leadership at TICI in the past has proven to be effective and successful while never having a leadership program, and because of this, she claimed “it appears that leaders are born, not made” (Khali, p. 1). To support this reason, Ms. Khali said that she asked the senior staff if they agreed with this idea that leaders are born, and not made, with only one disagreeing (Khali, p. 1). A second supporting reason used by Ms. Khali was to cite an economist, Dr. Carleton Parker, whose quote seems to suggest that he also subscribes to the notion of leaders being born with their abilities (Khali, p. 1). A third supporting reason given in the memo is the reference made to a school of leadership theory that maintains that some of the world’s most well-known leaders share certain traits which she claimed cannot be learned, because these leadership traits “are innate” (Khali, p. 2). A fourth supporting reason that Ms. Khali utilized was her reference to two published research studies that support the idea that a person’s leadership ability can be predicted by their personality traits (Khali, p. 2). A third major reason for Ms. Khali’s conclusion is based on her own experience and observations that leaders are taller and that their physical height is genetically determined. One supporting reason that she used here was a table she presented that displayed the heights of various presidents or statesmen who were all more than six feet tall. The information for the table was taken from two websites that Ms. Khali cited beneath the table (Khali, p. 2). Another supporting reason supplied by Ms. Khali is that all of the senior staff members at TICI are more than six feet tall, with the exception of Mr. Clarke, the person that proposed creating and funding a new leadership development program at the most recent senior executive staff meeting. The fourth major reason that Ms. Khali referred to in her argument was that she does not trust Mr. Clarke’s intentions for proposing a new leadership program. To support this fourth reason, she suggested that he may actually be motivated to take over her job as the new vice president of human resources at the company for personal gain. In addition, Ms. Khali stated that Mr. Clarke might be inspired by the liberal notion that if given the chance, anyone in a free society should be able to pursue and realize their aspiration (Khali, p. 2). The fifth major reason used to support the conclusion to not initiate and finance a new leadership training program at TICI was Ms. Khali’s claim that if the program was started, it would result in even more new requests for training programs which would not be sustainable. In support of this reason, she argued that the recruiting actions of the company would suffer budget shortfall if funding was given to leadership development. A sixth major reason presented in the memo closely relates to the third supporting reason for the second major reason, arguing that it would be wiser to recruit gifted people from outside of the organization who display leadership traits than waste money and time wrongly developing those who are not already leaders, current staff who do not possess such traits. (Khali, p. 2, para. 4). Ambiguous Words and Phrases Following the steps developed by Browne and Keeley (2007), it is now necessary to identify which phrases are the most ambiguous in the memo. In doing so, I will also try to explain the effect that these ambiguous phrases have on the author’s reasoning. The term “leadership” is an important ambiguity that is present throughout the argument. Ms. Khali presented a definition of leadership taken from Wikipedia, in her memo, as “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others” (Khali, p. 2, para. 1). What if leadership meant planning for the future by trying to invest in younger executives and helping them develop management skills by creating a learning organization' Would this mean that Mr. Clarke is showing leadership by trying to start a new leadership development program' Ms. Khali also states that leadership traits, such as self-confidence, ambition, and intelligence cannot be learned. These are important ambiguities since one could agree or disagree with Ms. Khali’s conclusion depending on the meaning of leadership, as well as what she meant when she stated that a leadership trait, like intelligence, cannot be learned. By citing the examples of well-known leaders, such as Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King, Jr., Ms. Khali does not support her belief that leaders are not made, but born. Two more ambiguous phrases that could use some clarity in the memo are found together when Ms. Khali claims that the TICI leadership “has been successful and effective” (Khali, p. 1, para. 3). The definitions of successful and effective for the author may differ somewhat for the reader, and this could result in the reader again agreeing or disagreeing with her. Another ambiguous phrase would be the claim that TICI has been growing at a yearly rate of 12%. If this growth rate is meant to support the reason that the company is successful due to its’ senior staff, then one should ask: How long has TICI been enjoying this growth rate, and is this growth rate considered competitive in the insurance industry' One final example that the reader should be aware of, is the use of ambiguous political language, as explained by Browne and Keeley (2007, p. 47), that Ms. Khali may have used to provoke an emotional impact is found when she wrote that “the whole program will be a waste of money” (p. 2, para. 4). Reasoning Fallacies The concept of a reasoning fallacy is simply a clever trick that a speaker or write uses in an effort to gain your acceptance of their conclusion (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p. 85). Fallacies damage the strength of an argument, so being able to identify them is a key part of analyzing an argument and reasoning. In the memo, Ms. Khali used the reasoning fallacy of Ad Hominem when she suggested that Mr. Clarke was after her job, not a leader based on his physical height in her comparison to the heights of great leaders, and a “bleeding-heart liberal” (Khali, p. 2). These attacks on Mr. Clarke’s character and physical circumstances are fallacies since they do not appear relevant to the quality of Ms. Khali’s argument. A second fallacy present in the memo is the slippery slope fallacy (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p. 87) that Ms. Khali engaged in using by making the assumption that establishing the leadership program for certain staff would result in numerous requests for costly training programs that could not be paid for, even though some kind of process most likely exists to control how requests get submitted, and by whom. A third fallacy found in paragraph four of the second page of Ms. Khali’s memo is the searching for perfect solutions fallacy, because the problem of not having enough money to carry out recruiting would still be present, regardless of the creation and funding of a leadership development program (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p. 88). This does not mean that making a leadership program is a waste of resources, because it might actually result in fixing some of the other problems, such as finding and holding onto valuable employees. To prove that leaders all share a physical trait of tallness, Ms. Khali appeals to questionable authorities, committing another fallacy, and cites information the two websites referenced underneath the table showing different heights of well known leaders from the United States’ past and present. She made this same mistake in reasoning earlier when she cited a quote from Dr. Carleton Parker. Since we do not know that Dr. Parker or the two website cited have special knowledge about the issues being discussed, this is a fallacy. The last example of a fallacy used by Ms. Khali is appealing to our emotions (Browne & Keeley, 2007, p. 91). On the last page of the memo, with the first sentence, she attempts to use the emotional reaction of agreeing with and supporting someone who claims that they are speaking for truth and common sense. Rival Causes and Deceptive Statistics In this memo, there is a rival cause, being that implementing a leadership development program will cause money to get wasted, since it would be an unwise investment. This does not actually prove that money would be wasted, though, but it does help show a relationship as explained by Browne & Keeley (2007, p. 201). Funding, for example, could still get wasted, regardless of any new programs, if it was poorly managed. As for the statistics provided, some do appear to deceive, such as the statistic provided with the table proving that some of America’s great leaders have been tall, it concludes that all great leaders are tall. There may have been only a few leaders in history that were so tall, and a great majority more that were shorter than the statistic cited, so this does not prove that all great leaders have a tall stature and weakens the reasoning behind it. What Other Reasonable Conclusions are Possible' One possible alternative to not beginning the leadership program would be to offer it with the possible outcome, over time, being that the management or leadership could become even better. The idea might take hold within the organization of becoming a learning organization and trying to teach the younger up-and-coming executives about systems thinking in order to try to realize greater improvements than previously experienced. Another reasonable conclusion that is possible would be to agree to not offer the program if Ms. Khali could support her conclusion without attacking Mr. Clarke and instead focus on why it might not be possible with the organization’s current or projected budget. If all of the other inconsistent information in the memo was taken out, the case for or against initiating a new leadership program would be easier to understand and either support and accept or deny and reject. References M Browne, & Keslesy, S.M. (2020). Asking the right questions: A bad guide to critical thinking, 18th edition. Lowr Saddle Stream, NM: Parerson/Apprentice Hall.