By
Mendy Green
December 12, 2022
•
20 min read
Fundamental Skills
Professional Development
Critical Thinking in 5
Critical thinking is an essential skill for success in both personal and professional life. It involves the ability to think independently and objectively, to analyze and evaluate information and arguments, and to make sound and logical decisions.
Learning critical thinking is not always easy, but it is a skill that can be developed and improved with practice. Here are some tips for how to learn critical thinking:
- Practice asking questions: Critical thinking involves questioning assumptions and looking at situations from different perspectives. Practice asking questions about the information you encounter, such as “Why is this true?” or “What evidence supports this claim?”. Feel free to start with this one right here 😉
- Seek out diverse perspectives: To think critically, it’s important to consider multiple viewpoints and perspectives. Seek out diverse sources of information and listen to others with different backgrounds and experiences.
- Evaluate sources of information: In today’s information-rich world, it’s important to be able to evaluate the credibility and reliability of sources. Consider factors such as the author’s expertise and credentials, the date and source of the information, and any potential biases or conflicts of interest.
- Take your time: Critical thinking takes time and effort. Don’t be afraid to take a step back and reflect on a situation before making a decision. Consider the potential consequences of your actions and be open to changing your mind based on new information.
- Practice regularly: Like any skill, critical thinking improves with practice. Take opportunities to apply critical thinking in your everyday life, and in some cases, you’ll find that you’ve already been doing it subconsciously!
Assumptions are an important part of the critical thinking process, as they help us make sense of the world and make predictions about future events. However, assumptions can also be dangerous, as they can lead us to make false or misguided conclusions.
One of the dangers of assumptions is that they can be based on incomplete or incorrect information. For example, if we make an assumption about someone’s intentions based on limited information, we may be mistaken and draw the wrong conclusion. This can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts with otherwise could have been avoided, whereas when we properly assess a situation, it keeps us agile and allows us to adjust to meet the new circumstances (both in personal and professional lives).
Another danger of assumptions is that they can lead us to become overconfident in our beliefs and conclusions. When we make an assumption, we may be more likely to ignore or dismiss something that we see or that someone tells us that contradicts our assumption. This can lead to confirmation bias, where we only consider evidence that supports our assumption, and can prevent us from seeing the whole picture, or alternative perspectives.
Despite these dangers, assumptions are still necessary in the critical thinking process. Without assumptions, we wouldn’t have a way to continue moving forward through the process Instead, we would have to rely on raw data and facts, and we’d be stuck without being able to collect new raw data. Making an assumption is necessary for us to test the raw data and allow us to collect more (such as if the assumption is right or wrong). It’s kind of like shaking the wrapped present to see if we can guess what’s inside…we just need to be prepared for the possibility that we might break it.
With assumptions being so crucial to the Critical Thinking process, it’s important to be aware of the dangers of assumptions and to approach them cautiously. We should be open to revising or rejecting our assumptions based on new evidence, and we should strive to be as objective and unbiased as possible. By doing so, we have a greater change of avoiding the dangers of assumptions and successfully use them to our advantage.
It’s important to update and revise the things we know when presented with evidence that contradicts it, sometime even when they’re not assumptions. This is because our understanding of the world is always evolving, and new information and evidence can challenge and expand our current beliefs and knowledge.
Updating and revising our beliefs and knowledge based on new evidence is an essential part of the critical thinking process. It allows us to be more objective and unbiased, and to avoid making false or misguided conclusions. By being open to new information and evidence, we can gain a more accurate and complete understanding of the world around us.
In a rapidly changing world, it’s important to be able to adjust and update our understanding of the world in order to make informed and effective decisions. By updating and revising our beliefs and knowledge, we can remain open to new ideas and opportunities, and can continue to learn and grow.
I'm passionate about IT, driven by a dual love for solving complex problems and a commitment to transforming the stereotype of technical support into a positive and enjoyable user experience. For over 13 years, I've been deeply involved in the MSPGeek community, lending my expertise to various Managed Service Providers (MSPs), while also serving as the CTO at IntelliComp Technologies.
My journey in the tech world is fueled by a passion for teaching others. I find great satisfaction in imparting problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and offering practical guidance during the troubleshooting process. It's this enthusiasm for mentorship and improvement that led me to my current venture.
Today, as the founder of Rising Tide, I'm focusing on the MSP industry, dedicating my time to coaching and assisting both individuals and businesses. At Rising Tide, we're not just about providing solutions; we're about nurturing growth, fostering innovation, and building a community where everyone can rise together. Whether it's through hands-on problem solving or strategic planning, my goal is to make the IT experience not just efficient, but also empowering and enjoyable
See some more of our most recent posts...
Chapter-by-Chapter Discussion Questions for The Go-Giver by Bob Burg: Chapter Seven - Rachel
In this chapter guide to “Rachel” from The Go-Giver, we explore what great coffee, storytelling, and human needs have in common. From “survive, save, serve” to Maslow and “meat computers,” this piece invites MSP leaders and service pros to rethink how they scale excellence without burning people...or the beans!
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About this Series
This discussion guide is part of Rising Tide’s Fall 2025 book club, where we’re reading The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.
If you’re just joining us, here are a few pages you’ll likely benefit from:
- Chapter One – The Go-Getter for an introduction on how to use these Discussion Questions
- Book Clubs, Conversations, and Curiosity for why we started a book club for a technical team here
Chapter Summary
In Chapter 7, "Rachel," we learn more about Rachel and about the characteristics that Pindar finds valuable.
Discussion Questions
Use these open-ended prompts to guide reflection and conversation. Remember, there are no right answers!
- How do you feel about the commentary about Pindar’s age? Do you know people who are younger than they seem? What characteristics contribute to that perception?
- Can you relate to Rachel? Is her story believable? What do you think the authors seek to elucidate about her? What about Pindar’s view of her?
- We’re yet again hearing Pindar described as a storyteller. What does that make you think the authors are trying to say about Pindar’s skill set?
- Survive, save, and serve. Where do you find yourself landing? Where would you like to invest more?
- What do you think is Rachel’s “secret” to good coffee? The author describes many aspects of her craft, surely it’s not just because she’s one-eighth Colombian!
Rising Tide Input for your Consideration
- Making coffee well is an interesting metaphor! There is so much care, precision, and repetition in making coffee, it’s as much a science as it can be considered an art.
- Consider Starbucks beans: to produce a consistent product at a scale, they roast their beans very hard, eliminating the unique characteristics of a specific variety of coffee bean in lieu of a product that will hold up to their regularly heavy-flavored and sugared drinks. (See: Why Starbucks Coffee Has That Burnt Taste) Is it possible to truly scale excellence with care? Is there a limit?
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests humans must have their basic needs met before they have the space to pursue “more advanced” needs.
- If that’s too academic, El gave a talk at MSPGeekCon about how we’re all basically meat computers with Hardware, Software, and Networking built into us. Does that perspective change how you can handle other humans and even take care of yourself? (Watch part 1 of “The Care and Feeding of Meat Computers” here: https://youtu.be/yRcs5XYI8LQ?si=J3Q_VGenSHaKutOR)
About Rising Tide and our Book Club
Rising Tide helps MSPs and service-focused teams build better systems: the kind that align people with purpose.
Every Friday at 9:30 AM ET, we host Rising Tide Fridays as an open conversation for MSP owners, consultants, and service professionals who want to grow both professionally, technically, and emotionally. In Fall/Winter 2025, we’re walking through The Go-Giver, chapter by chapter.
If that sounds like your kind of crowd, reach out to partners@risingtidegroup.net for the Teams link.
Bring your coffee and curiosity…no prep required.
Chapter-by-Chapter Discussion Questions for The Go-Giver by Bob Burg: Chapter One - The Go-Getter
At Rising Tide, we use book clubs not to read—but to listen, question, and practice curiosity. Join us as we unpack Chapter One of The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, using open-ended prompts to reflect on ambition, connection, and growth. Perfect for service-minded teams who want to slow down and think differently.
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About this Series
If you’ve already read Book Clubs, Conversations, and Curiosity, you know that at Rising Tide, we don’t host book clubs for the sake of reading. We use them as an excuse to talk, to listen, and to practice curiosity together.
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann is the first book that we've chosen to explore together in this way. Each week, we’re reading one short chapter together and using a few open-ended questions to spark real conversation: no lectures, no wrong answers, just reflection.
Below are our discussion prompts for Chapter One: “The Go-Getter.”
They’re written for teams like ours: busy, service-minded, sometimes too practical for their own good...who want to slow down long enough to notice what these stories have to teach.
How this guide is different from others you'll find online: We keep it chapter-focused. Every set of questions focuses only on the current chapter so there is no foreshadowing, no jumping ahead, no “we’ll get to that in Chapter 7.” The goal is to slow down and savor the smaller ideas that get lost when you rush to the big themes, and we're going to make sure that team members that are "behind" have enough data points to connect the dots and contribute even if they're not caught up to the current reading.
Use them however you like. Whether you’re reading along with us or just looking for a fresh team conversation starter, we hope these questions help you stretch a little, think differently, and see something new in yourself or your work.
Some Tips on how to use this Guide
- Keep it simple. No slides. No structured lessons. Read a question aloud, give a solid 10-second pause, sometimes you have to let the awkwardness of silence drive the conversation.
- Honor the one-chapter rule. No spoilers, no summaries! Stay inside the chapter or assigned reading. If someone raises a later theme, park it in a “Next Chapters” list and keep today focused. Similarly, don’t try to solve the book. Ask what this chapter made people notice or feel—nothing more.
- Actively include people who didn’t read and make space for quieter voices. Use prompts like, “From this idea alone, what stands out?” Curiosity doesn’t require homework. Explicitly ask: “Anyone who hasn’t shared want to weigh in?” Intentionally invite two voices before anyone speaks twice
- Time-box it. 15–30 minutes. One good discussion beats five rushed questions.
- Close with a single takeaway. Each person names one sentence, idea, or action they’re taking into the week. Log it. Revisit next time.
If you tweak or add questions, tell us at partners@risingtidegroup.net. We’ll keep improving this tool for other MSP teams.
Chapter One Discussion Questions and Observations
Chapter One Summary
In this chapter, we meet Joe, a go-getter who doesn't seem to be getting what he's going for. We are also introduced to his coworkers: Melanie and Gus, who help connect him with Pindar, or the Chairman, who agrees to tell Joe the huge trade secret that will surely be his key to success.
Chapter One Questions
- How would you describe or define a go-getter?
- Is it a good or bad thing? Why?
- Do you consider yourself a go-getter?
- Do you know people like Joe, Gus, or Melanie? What do you think of them as people or colleagues?
- Why do you think the authors chose the name Pindar for the Chairman?
- What do you think Pindar's conditions are going to be?
Chapter One Observations from the Rising Tide Team
- Being a Go-Getter isn’t a bad thing!
- It’s important to remember that the authors of this book are likely flattening the depth of characters into caricatures to more cleanly get the point of their story across. This is important to remember because rarely in life will the humans you interact with be the fulfillment of the assumptions you make about them.
- Pindar is the name of a Greek poet who wrote odes of Victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pindar. Does this mean we can expect victory for Joe?
Creatures of a day! What is anyone?
What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blessed are their days. (Pindar, Pythian 8)
Join the Conversation
Want to hang out in these conversations with the Rising Tide team? We meet Fridays at 9:30 AM ET to talk through important business, technological, and communal developments, and for the next 14ish weeks, The Go-Giver! If you’re an MSP owner, consultant, or service professional who wants to grow your team’s emotional intelligence alongside your technical skill, you’re welcome here.
Reach out to partners@risingtidegroup.net for the Rising Tide Fridays Teams link. Bring your coffee and curiosity: no prep required.
Book Clubs, Conversations, and Curiosity
Curiosity isn’t taught; it’s practiced. At Rising Tide, we build a culture where curiosity fuels both technical and personal growth. Through team discussions, shared learning, and a book club centered on The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, we explore how better questions lead to better people, better work, and better service.
Read post
Like many MSPs, Rising Tide invests in our people through access to books, trainings, conferences, and certifications. At its core, this is not education for education’s sake: rather, we believe the best technical work starts with curiosity, and we consistently seek ways to foster curiosity as a skill. You see, we think the best solutions come not just from curiosity about technology, but curiosity about each other, about our clients, and about our community. We want to be known as people who ask better questions, understand others' perspectives with clarity, and are always hungry for more. We believe that personal growth will always drive technical and professional success for our team, and as a result, our clients.
Curiosity is not something you learn from an SOP, a certification, or a conference.
So how does a business foster curiosity? Curiosity is not something you learn from an SOP, a certification, or a conference. It’s something you develop by creating the time and space for yourself and your people to feel safe to speak up, to ideate, to build, and to iterate.
We are doing our best to build a culture of curiosity and progress in as many ways as possible, not just through structured education, but in choosing tools, conversations, and activities where we can intentionally seek to learn from and about each other and the world around us. The last part is very important at a core level: we believe every person brings a different background, toolkit, and perspective that strengthens and deepens our own, even — or especially! — when we disagree.
every person brings a different background, toolkit, and perspective that strengthens and deepens our own, even — or especially! — when we disagree.
As a fully remote team of 6, this can be pretty difficult to do since we can’t go out for lunch or have regular physical touchpoints other brick-and-mortar businesses may enjoy. So, one of the standard ways we cultivate this is through scheduled daily and weekly team conversations where we review customer issues, books or videos, conferences attended, or other interesting things we’ve seen that we want to share.
Most recently, we chose to essentially start a book club where we would read The Go-Giver by Bob Burg, together, and to invite clients and friends to review it with us on a weekly call. It was important to us that as a team expectation, we should make sure no one felt the demand too great on top of weekly work expectations. Thus, we decided on reading one chapter (7-10 pages) a week, to make sure that it felt accessible to everyone. (Reading ahead is absolutely allowed and encouraged, but we will only discuss one chapter a week!)
how do you allow for people to join in the conversation even if they didn’t get a chance to read?
The next question for a book club is: how do you facilitate conversation in a way that allows for people to share what was meaningful to them, or to join in the conversation even if they didn’t get a chance to read? In preparing for our book meetings, I sought out online resources with simple chapter-by-chapter discussion questions. However, as a very easy read, it seemed that most questions online covered concepts that spanned multiple chapters, which encouraged reading ahead and missing perhaps some smaller ideas worth savoring in each chapter.
Honestly, we figure we’re not alone in this desire to have simple questions and to walk carefully through conversations, so we've decided to share our own discussion questions, chapter-by-chapter! These questions are written without consideration for future chapters of the book and are meant to help bring in conversation about the topics and themes specifically covered in the given chapter. These questions are open-ended and if you’re facilitating, we encourage you to take the stance of no-wrong-answers, just as an impartial listener. You never know what perspectives or fresh ideas may come out of conversation.
Check out The Go-Getter Chapter One Discussion Questions here.
We’ll continue to add discussion questions and commentary on the book club as we move forward. Next things I’d like to try is to offer facilitation to a team member who has read ahead, to help them stretch their muscles of asking questions and building conversations. What other ideas should we tie in?
Join the Conversation
Want to hang out in these conversations with the Rising Tide team? We meet Fridays at 9:30 AM ET to talk through important business, technological, and communal developments, and for the next 14ish weeks, The Go-Giver! If you’re an MSP owner, consultant, or service professional who wants to grow your team’s emotional intelligence alongside your technical skill, you’re welcome here.
Reach out to partners@risingtidegroup.net for the Rising Tide Fridays Teams link. Bring your coffee and curiosity: no prep required.