Critical Thinking with Emotional Intelligence
What you'll learn
- Describe how emotional intelligence and critical thinking work together
- Differentiate between the two thinking systems and their impact on your emotional intelligence
- Identify with unconscious bias and thinking distortions and recognise how they influence thinking
- Determine ways that you can improve your critical thinking
- Develop ways that you can work to improve your critical thinking
Requirements
- A basic understanding of emotional intelligence
- Anyone with a desire to understand more about emotional intelligence beyond the basics
- Anyone keen to understand how to become a critical thinker in an emotionally intelligent way
- Anyone interested in learning more about critical thinking as a skill within business
- Anyone with a willingness to complete the practical activities to grow and develop their emotional intelligence skills
Description
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
Who this course is for:
- Anyone keen to develop their thinking skills.
- Anyone who is interested in a deeper understanding of why emotional intelligence is a key component of critical thinking.
- Anyone who wants to build upon their understanding of themselves and how to work better with other people.
- Anyone with an interest in more information about the use and application of emotional intelligence with a business focus.
Instructor
Hi. I'm Robin Hills. I am an emotional intelligence coach, trainer and facilitator with over 40 years' business and commercial experience. I provide knowledge and skills that help people understand themselves and others better.
I have the most comprehensive range of on-line courses based on emotional intelligence in business - not only on Udemy but anywhere on the internet. I am not teaching any other types of course as I am a specialist in emotional intelligence and it is the focus of my business.
In early 2024, I was presented an Honorary Doctorate in Advanced Studies in Psychology in recognition of my contribution to online Emotional Intelligence training, which started with Udemy back in 2014.
My courses go beyond the fundamental basics of emotional intelligence covering many aspects of how it can be applied in day to day work to lead, grow and develop people in ways that build authentic relationships.
My work takes me into small start-ups through to large corporate multi-nationals and into the Public Sector with financial institutions, government departments and health departments, as well as charities. This provides me a practical understanding of how emotional intelligence works and applied in the real world, enabling me to keep up to date with relevant issues.
I'm a registered practitioner with the British Psychological Society and an active member of the NW committee of the Association for Business Psychology.
My company is Ei4Change (Emotional Intelligence 4 Change) - recognised nationally and internationally as specialists with expertise in training, personal development and coaching focusing on emotional intelligence, positive psychology and neuroscience in the workplace. Our emotional intelligence programmes are accredited by the Institute of Leadership.
Over the last few years, I have delivered workshops at global emotional intelligence and neuroscience conferences. These have been held at Harvard University, at University of Manchester, in Cape Town, the Middle East and India.
I am the author of
- The Authority Guide to Emotional Resilience: Strategies to weather storms and manage stress in the workplace (published May 2016)
- The Authority Guide to Behaviour in Business: How to build successful and powerful relationships - 2nd edition (published January 2025)
Both are available on Amazon.
Teaching emotional intelligence skills is a challenge at the best of times so these courses require you to take some ACTION and put into practice what you have learnt. I am here to support and guide you.
The learning process I use on Udemy is designed to work with you and the challenges you are facing today and tomorrow. It is practice-driven, evidence-based and directly helps you to improve your capacity to change.
Many of my Udemy courses offer you the chance to win a valuable prize as you work through the course.
All learners gain access to additional resources to develop emotional intelligence outside of Udemy, including a free book, podcasts and subscription to a digital magazine - ei-matters.
I look forward to empowering your emotional management.