To Be a Critical Thinker You Must Be Invested in Finding Out the Facts

Executives keep telling me they want their assistants to develop Critical Thinking Skills. Those are the skills that show:

- Your reasoning ability.

- Your ability to think independently.

- Your ability to go where the facts lead you, even if they contradict your existing biases and opinions.

On the World Economic Forum’s list of the Top 10 most required skills leading up to 2025, Critical Thinking & Analysis is number four. Executives are not waiting for 2025. They want their assistants to be equipped with this skill today.

 I keep defending assistants against the charge that most are not critical thinkers. I got a wake-up call recently with the unfolding of events on LinkedIn regarding a post that many assistants found tasteless. The aftermath was disappointing because it showed too many assistants lacking in an essential element for critical thinking – gathering the facts before coming to a conclusion. Turns out I owe these executives I’ve been arguing with, an apology.

Since every day brings new requests to share what took place, I thought it would be impactful to add a learning component to the story, and share it from the perspective of critical thinking.

The background is this: I received a meme from the UK. I showed it to male and female associates, including a couple of CEOs to make sure I wasn’t over-reacting. I discussed the meme on LinkedIn and included it in my comment for reference. Since the meme was posted on the internet, there was obviously no expectation of privacy, irrespective of the fact that it was subsequently removed because people found it offensive.

A senior-level assistant who teaches community college and who trains and mentors assistants, showed the meme to her EA students who are studying for associates degrees. With her permission, here’s some of what her students said:

- “This sounds like we are a different type of working women”

- “If my male boss posted this about me, I would have to bring it to the boss’ attention”

- “Sexual harassment”

- “If we did this, would probably be fired on the spot”.

Unbeknownst to me, and completely unrelated to me, assistants in the UK complained about the same meme and asked that the person who posted it not be permitted to appear at an upcoming event. Seems that request was too much for one of the self-described “world’s leading authorities on the administrative profession,” perhaps also the head of our profession’s thought police. She used her platform to lambast those who dared to speak out against the person who posted the meme. She likened them to “a pack of wolves,” accusing them and then me of “bullying – pure & simple.” She repeatedly denigrated my reputation, alluding to me as a “so-called leader” who is not worthy of being considered a leader (a title I’ve never wanted, asked for, claimed, or tried to buy).

She followed up her venomous outburst with “Grow up! Your bitterness & bile serve no-one (sic), least of all the industry you claim to love so much.” As if that wasn’t enough, she then posted a photo of a woman who committed suicide – apparently to insinuate that speech regarding a meme is equivalent to compelling someone to commit suicide. 

To be clear, there was no collusion between the UK EAs and me. We were unaware of each other’s actions until we saw the fallout on social media, yet, without the slightest evidence, we were shrilly accused of colluding to bully.

Here you see the opposite of critical thinking, folks. When you have no proof, you don’t accuse people based on hearsay and no facts. Critical thinkers don’t resort to personal insults to try and induce a tyranny over our minds, so we’ll keep our mouths shut. Critical thinkers use “intellectual honesty and sound judgment.” In his book How We Think, (published in 1910) John Dewey, who coined the term Critical Thinking, spoke of “data and evidence.” Before John Dewey, Socrates said that one cannot depend upon those in authority to have sound knowledge and insight. People may have power and high position and still be confused and irrational. He stressed the importance of asking questions that probe deeply into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief.

Assistants, if you are truly invested in being a critical thinker, here are the kinds of simple yet obvious questions you might ask in a situation like this. Don’t be afraid to ask anyone, including any self-anointed leader who over the years may have infiltrated people’s psyches so skillfully, that they don’t think twice about inquiring:

- What is the source of your information? Is it reliable?

- On what basis have we made these assumptions and presumed them to be true?

- Is this fact, or opinion?

- Have we fully checked out this story from all angles?

- Are we rushing to judge and condemn before we know the facts?

- Are we being hypocritical in protecting a person who posts offensive content because we are fans? Wouldn’t we condemn this language if we heard it from a man, or someone we didn’t know or like?

- Are we piling on to ruin someone’s reputation and credibility for no reason other than we want to take them down a peg or two for our own reasons?

My hunch is the reason for this outburst is because rank and file assistants dared to speak up for the honor of their profession, and raise objection against a faction of people who consider themselves our profession’s ruling class. Self-ordained culture carriers for the EA profession, who’ve surreptitiously established parameters for our behavior and don’t tolerate dissension. They tell us where we’ve been, where we’re going and they’ll lead the way there. Just slot yourself into our matrix and all will be well. Assistants, you and I, who’ve spent decades practicing our profession, working it, living it, perfecting it, loving it, nurturing it, defending it, are being lectured to by someone who has never spent one day in that EA chair the way we have. Don’t count on me ceding my profession’s moral high ground to such people who want to shut my voice down.  

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I’m honored to join with the assistants from the UK in supporting our profession against those who foster the image that they are bigger than the profession itself. I stand with the assistants in the UK who have been intimidated with legal threats and the assistants whose networks have been decimated because industry personalities have spoken negatively about them. Why should this happen? There’s plenty of room for everyone in the EA profession. Nobody has a monopoly on it. If people can’t compete fairly, or tolerate competition, perhaps they should get out of the game. People who are being bullied by questionable business tactics must start speaking up so as a community we can shun this behavior and expose these people for who they really are. To put this in perspective for you dear reader, I’ve personally spoken to some of the people who have been bullied and traumatized, to verify the truthfulness of this information. Nothing is speculation, or made up.

Speaking for myself and myself alone, I say that anyone who has never done the EA job a day in their lives, doesn’t get to decide if I deserve the title of leader, or tell me how to conduct myself in a profession I served with distinction for over 20 years, and about which I wrote a book that is respected and admired by executives and assistants worldwide.

This attack on my character has resulted in vitriolic, inflammatory commentary against me online, in private chitchat, and a string of personal hateful messages, accusing me of things that did not happen. I’ve heard the same from assistants in the UK. We all did nothing more than say “Don’t represent my profession in this way” to a thoughtless meme, and for that we have been harassed and smeared. The excuse for this behavior is that the person who created the meme took it down, so why did I share it? I did not know it had been taken down, but that is hardly the point. Any assistant who is a true critical thinker would have asked, “Why was something so inappropriate posted in the first place?”

EAs, to develop your critical thinking skills, you cannot be afraid to ask pertinent questions and go where the evidence takes you, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel. That’s the kind of courage critical thinkers exhibit. As a result, you can trust their conclusions, because they are willing to be proved wrong if that’s what the evidence shows. And they will not be afraid to admit they were wrong.

Today we stress the value of data and data-driven evidence. Yet, we saw a group of assistants lacking desire for evidence. This is called bias, and despite assistants proclaiming empathy for diversity & inclusion and pushing training for unconscious bias, they displayed an overwhelming unwillingness to get the facts before reacting from bias.

The behavior was not based on evidence, it was emotional – and not even emotional intelligence, another concept EAs are embracing today. As leadership development expert Ted Bililies says, “What do you do with your emotions? How do you manage yourself when you want to be sarcastic?”

I think this situation is easier for EAs to understand than that. We know that many assistants speak of feeling powerless, overlooked, ignored and unheard. Their feeling of frustration is exacerbated by the lockdown and my post looked like the perfect opportunity for them to assuage their feelings of powerlessness. But mob-think is the worst kind of thinking you can indulge in. It’s irrational, emotional, biased, devoid of fact or logic. This will not help your efforts to develop your critical thinking skills, or your emotional intelligence. 

Someone asked me “Why did you take your post down if you believed in what you were doing?”

Ms Meme had been messaging me throughout the day asking me to take the post down, saying she was experiencing anxiety over it and it was negatively affecting her health. I had been away at work all day so when I finally got her messages and messages from her associates who were concerned about her, I told her that I would take it down, but first I would post another message saying we had come to an agreement and that she must go on that post and say so. She said she would, but once my message came down, she didn’t honor her commitment. I posit that had she done so, much of this continued venom being hurled at me and other EAs would have come to an immediate end, and the curiosity surrounding it would have died. As it turned out, we continued to be harassed, abused, bullied and accused.

Before deleting the entire post, I went through each comment and read it to see if I needed to keep a record of anything. (Old EA habits never die). One of the first comments deleted from the thread was from PA Way. Someone on LinkedIn, who was following the situation closer than her own breath, screamed out online that I was deleting comments from PA Way. Her anguished cries were answered by her gang who rallied around and directly accused me of deleting posts that disagreed with my point of view. No such thing happened. I sent the message thread to a handful of assistants who had posted opinionated remarks, to show them they were mistaken in their assessment of the situation. Only one responded to me, and none went on LinkedIn to say perhaps they had spoken out of turn and should apologize to those of us they had unjustly vilified.

My hope is that this incident has been a blessing in disguise for assistants to examine their conscience and use this as a learning opportunity. There are plenty of lessons to be learned about whom we trust unconditionally, why we trust those people and how we feel knowing that trust has been betrayed.

I’ve just finished an interview with don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. of “The Four Agreements” fame. The interview was focused on how executive assistants can apply the Agreements in the context of their EA role and working in partnership with their executive. I will be posting the interview in the coming weeks. As a reminder to all of us, and particularly in light of recent events, I post The Four Agreements here as a worthy reminder to us to be mindful of our thoughts, words, deeds and intentions.

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD (Speak with Integrity. Say only what you mean and avoid using the word to gossip about others).

DON’T TAKE THINGS PERSONALLY (What others say and do is a projection of their own reality).

DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS (Find the courage to ask questions).

ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST (Under any circumstances, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret).

©Jan Jones 2021. Jan Jones retains all rights to her intellectual property expressed in her written works. No unauthorized extracting, duplication or dissemination by any means without crediting the author, or without the express permission of the author.

Jan Jones is a passionate champion of the executive assistant profession, mentoring assistants and guiding executives through her writing, speaking and consulting. She is the author of “The CEO’s Secret Weapon How Great Leaders and Their Assistants Maximize Productivity and Effectiveness.” The book has received widespread acclaim from executives and assistants worldwide. Jan enjoyed 20+ exhilarating years as a distinguished international executive assistant. Today, she is a successful businesswoman. www.theceossecretweapon.com