Critical thinking is not about finding faults in other people's arguments. It starts with examining your own assumptions, testing the explanations you prefer, looking deliberately for evidence that could prove you wrong, and knowing what would change your mind. This article explores the research behind confirmation bias, myside bias, actively open-minded thinking and metacognition, then turns it into five practical exercises for leaders: separating facts from assumptions, building rival explanations, searching against yourself, setting a mind-change test, and calibrating confidence. The aim is not to doubt everything or think for longer. It is to make your thinking easier to test, your judgements easier to update, and your decisions stronger under uncertainty.

Your first interpretation of a stalled project, an unanswered email or a difficult meeting rarely feels like a guess. It feels like fact, and that is exactly what makes it hard to catch before it starts shaping what you notice, how you feel and what you do next. This piece separates what actually happened from what you have added through interpretation, names the thinking patterns, catastrophising, mind reading, all-or-nothing thinking and selective attention among them, that recur most often under pressure, and shows how an interpretation you act on can quietly become the evidence you later use to confirm it. Five practical exercises follow, from replaying a recent decision to building your own thinking-pattern log, each designed to give you somewhere to pause and check a judgement before it drives your next move.