Categories: Strategic Thinking

Student: Elizabeth Alexander

Strategic Thinking involves being able to assess a situation objectively, identify your biases that prevent you from seeing the full context, and using local and global perspectives to achieve a solution. Being part of a choir may not seem as an obvious example of strategic thinking, but it has greatly developed my competencies. In choir, we have to be able to communicate with one another as we sometimes have to adjust the length of our songs depending on what is happening at mass. I must consider the context of the goings on in the mass, where we are in the music, parse out the relative/important information, and consider how we have adjusted before in order to know whether to keep singing or cut the song. All of this must be done simultaneously and communicated silently. If I didn’t have these competencies, I might continue singing while everyone else has stopped causing a lot of confusion and ruining the job we were asked to do. The skills I have from this specific example are easily transferred to any job, so any boss would want me as I can make quick yet well thought out decisions.