Critical Thinking with Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence has been identified as a fundamental leadership skill in the 2020's.

Using emotional information appropriately builds relations and supports critical thinking and problem solving.  Decisions are confidently made that are ethical, authentic and empathetic.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to analyse information objectively and make a reasoned judgement. Good critical thinking involves the evaluation of sources, such as data, facts, observable phenomena, and research findings.  Good critical thinking also considers unconscious bias and how this impacts upon logical thinking and systems thinking.

Critical thinking and problem solving abilities are among the most sought-after skills in almost every industry and workplace.

Often thinking is considered separate from emotions, but good critical thinkers use emotional intelligence to draw reasonable conclusions from a range of information sources determining what is useful and what isn’t.

Using emotional intelligence as a part of critical thinking means that the impact of this thinking is considered with empathy.

Critical thinking is often confined to systems thinking, but to be an effective critical thinker involves understanding how emotions can help and hinder thinking processes.  This course explores the connection between critical thinking skills and emotional intelligence skills considering how they can be applied to strategic thinking skills in pragmatic and applicable ways. Combining critical thinking with emotional intelligence makes for a powerful combination.

Although the course is based on scientific research, it does not go into detail around the research.  We explore the concepts in a straightforward, pragmatic manner to understand what they mean and how they be applied in the workplace.

Underpinning critical thinking skills is your cognitive bias - your unconscious bias.  Self-paced online programmes are widely regarded as one of the most accessible, and effective forms of building awareness about unconscious bias in the workplace.  The course investigates unconscious bias to develop your awareness.  Training in unconscious bias will not mean that you will not have biases.  They will remain, by definition, unconscious.  The course seeks to build your awareness of their existence and highlights when to look out for them.

This is not an introductory course on emotional intelligence. There are many courses by a range of good instructors that explain the some of the fundamental basics of emotional intelligence. This course explores emotional intelligence at a deeper level exploring its application to critical thinking.

There are four practical activities within the course.  These require you to apply both your critical thinking and emotional intelligence skills in different ways.

• Reflecting about this Course

• Exploring your Unconscious Bias

• An Exercise in Critical Thinking (with the answers)

• Three Good Things to Improve your Emotional Intelligence as a Critical Thinker

Completing the course (including the practical activities) will give you the understanding and capabilities to meet future requirements of leadership as markets and industries evolve over the next few years.

Explore and recognise thinking styles in problem solving and decision making, the information in emotions, the role of emotions in learning, unconscious bias, thinking distortions and much, much more.

This course is a Udemy highly rated course.  Despite this, it has recently received a few low ratings without comments.  I am not sure the reasons behind this.  Criticism and giving feedback with emotional intelligence is covered in the course (Critical Thinking and Criticism - free preview lecture 8).  Low raters who don't leave comments are not exercising their critical thinking skills nor their emotional intelligence!   

All PDFs can be completed online and are Section 508 / ADA Accessibility compliant.

All videos are High Definition recorded in 1080p.

All videos have grammatically correct English captions.

Interactive AI Role Play Exercise.

Latest update - February 2026