Unleashing the Power of Critical Thinking to Model and Repeat Success

Last updated: August 19, 2026

John joined the coaching call eager to share his success. He recounted how he had applied his learning from our previous sessions and utilized critical thinking to analyze how to influence key stakeholders to buy into a solution.

I celebrated John's success and helped him unpack each step he took in developing the influence capital to achieve his objective. This prompted John to ask the only question that actually matters after a win:

"How do I repeat this?"

That question is what led me to formalize what I now call the 5 A's Model of Critical Thinking: Awareness, Analysis, Adapt, Apply, and Advocate. It's the model I still use with coaching clients today, and it's the one John was living through without yet having a name for it.

Making Critical Thinking a Habit

The Greek Philosopher Aristotle taught that we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, he espoused, is not an act but a habit. Critical thinking is no different. In this post, we'll walk through the 5 A's Model, and how to turn critical thinking from something you do occasionally under pressure into something you do by default.

Critical thinking is a cognitive process that involves careful analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information to make reasoned judgments and decisions. It's a Power Skill essential for the future of work. By leveraging it deliberately, we can model and repeat success by learning from past experiences and applying those insights to future situations.

The 5 A's Model of Critical Thinking

1. Awareness

Through coaching, John had become aware of the need to use critical thinking to deal with the sensitivity of stakeholders and to prepare the ground for his ideas and solution. In addition, John had become aware of his own mindset, behavior patterns, and history in approaching such situations.

If critical thinking is to become a habit, we must cultivate the practice of awareness, or forever be victims to our reactivity to situations. John and I explored how he might do this, and settled on a commitment to schedule time on a Sunday night to sit with an open notebook and pencil and become aware of the challenges and opportunities that would present themselves in the coming week. This is the same underlying skill I cover in more depth in Self-Awareness at Work, if you want the fuller set of practices for building it.

2. Analysis

Critical thinking helps you make well-informed decisions by considering all available information and analyzing potential outcomes. By evaluating problems and opportunities from multiple perspectives, critical thinkers can identify the root causes and develop effective solutions. This ability to solve problems efficiently and creatively is a key driver of success.

Analysis at this level draws directly on your cognitive capacity, the same executive function that governs working memory and decision quality under pressure. If analysis has been feeling harder than it used to, that's worth investigating on its own; see Executive Function: The Hidden Engine Behind Leadership Performance.

3. Adapt

Having analyzed the situation and its causes, we need to adapt ourselves to communicate our insights in the face of existing biases and paradigms. This is the Power Skill of self-leadership: the practice of intentionally influencing our thinking, feeling, and action toward our objectives (Bryant & Kazan, 2012).

As we unpacked John's successful presentation to the board, he shared that he had visualized the answer to this question:

"What will I feel like when I have successfully achieved my objective?"

By making the shift from the person with a problem to a future self with a solution, John had adapted, and this adaptation prepared him to present with confidence.

Critical thinkers are better equipped to adapt to new situations, as they continuously question assumptions and update their knowledge base. This adaptability is crucial in today's rapidly changing world.

4. Apply

To make critical thinking a habit, apply the insights gained from your past experiences to new challenges. Consider how the strategies that worked in previous situations can be adapted to address the current problem or goal. By doing so, you'll be better equipped to tackle new obstacles and achieve success consistently.

This is the same discipline behind the EVALUATE element of the IGNITE Framework: applying what a review of your own performance actually revealed, rather than letting the insight stop at the reflection stage.

5. Advocate

The world clearly needs more people to think critically about issues. Advocate for taking a pause and looking at challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives, posing "What if?" questions. As you share your insights and collaborate with others, you reinforce your own critical thinking.

Conclusion

Critical thinking is a powerful tool that can help you model and repeat success by learning from past experiences, adapting to new situations, and making well-informed decisions. By cultivating this skill through the 5 A's, Awareness, Analysis, Adapt, Apply, Advocate, you'll not only enhance your problem-solving abilities but also become a more adaptable, self-aware, and effective communicator.

If you'd like to develop this model in yourself through coaching, or build it into how your team operates through the ABSL Coach Certification, or hear it explored further in one of my leadership speaker keynotes, feel free to contact me.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the 5 A's Model of Critical Thinking?
A five-step model for turning critical thinking into a repeatable habit: Awareness (noticing your own patterns and reactivity before acting), Analysis (evaluating a situation from multiple perspectives), Adapt (adjusting your communication and approach to existing biases), Apply (transferring what worked in a past situation to a new one), and Advocate (sharing your thinking so it strengthens through collaboration).

How do you make critical thinking a habit rather than a one-off skill?
Build in a regular, scheduled moment for reflection, before it's needed, not just during a crisis. A weekly reflection practice, reviewing what's coming up and how you reacted to what already happened, builds the underlying awareness that critical thinking depends on.

What is the difference between critical thinking and problem solving?
Problem solving is often technical, applying a known method to reach an answer. Critical thinking is the broader discipline underneath it: questioning assumptions, considering multiple perspectives, and staying aware of your own reasoning before you commit to a solution. Problem solving without critical thinking can produce a technically correct answer that still fails politically or practically.