The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Spark Your Team's Creativity With 35 Problem Solving Activities

by Marlene Caroselli
HRD Press 2011, 212 pp., $34.95.

This Toolkit, which comes with amost three dozen different problem solving activities designed to get participants to think more creatively, analytically and quickly, can be a great team-building vehicle as well.

The author has published dozens of books on various aspects of training and employee education, including Leadership Skills for Managers and 500 Creative Classroom Techniques for Teachers and Trainers, and it shows.

The exercises are extremely easy to use with reproduceable worksheets and step-by-step instructions, including tips on how to get the maximum benefit from each activity.

There are three sections dedicated to Quick Thinking, Creative Thinking and Analytical Thinking, with about a dozen different activities under each.

Each exercise comes with a quick synopsis of the objective, the supplies needed, the time it should take, the number of participants it can include and any advance prep that needs to be done. The Appendix includes self-assessment exercises.

As a kind of routine breaker activity that can also yield beneficial results for managers, this book seems well worth the price.