Check the Claim Before You Act On It
The groundwork under every other module: separating what is known from what is assumed, asking what a confident statement rests on, and telling a cause from something that merely happened at the same time.
The Confident Answer Nobody Checks
The defect comes back quarter after quarter and the answer in the room is the same each time: the supplier’s material. Nobody has compared the batches. It was said early, said firmly, and became the fact everyone plans around. This is not a stupidity problem — it is what happens when nobody in the business has ever been shown how to ask what a claim rests on. The session builds that habit on your own recurring arguments, not on logic puzzles.
What the Session Works On
Fact, Inference, Assumption
Three things that sound identical in a meeting. Participants take a written account of one of your own problem discussions and label every statement in it. The result is usually uncomfortable and immediately useful.
What Does This Claim Rest On
A way to question a confident statement without accusing anyone: what did you see, when, how often, and what would change your mind. Practised until it sounds like curiosity rather than a challenge to authority.
Cause or Coincidence
Complaints rose in the same month the new supervisor started. That is not yet a cause. Testing an explanation before acting on it, and asking what else changed at the same time.
The Biases That Show Up on Your Floor
Anchoring on the first figure quoted, agreeing with what the boss already thinks, judging the whole year by the most recent incident. Named in ordinary language, then caught live in the group’s own reasoning.
Building an Argument Someone Can Follow
Position, reason, evidence, and the objection you already know is coming. The structure that lets a recommendation survive contact with a sceptical promoter.
Where Structure Helps and Where It Wastes Time
Root cause analysis, five whys, an issue tree, a simple comparison matrix. Which one suits which kind of problem, and when the sensible answer is to stop analysing and go and look at the machine.
Thinking Under Real Conditions
A short deadline, incomplete information, and somebody senior who has already stated a firm view. The pressure that actually stops people thinking, put back into the practice.
What Participants Are Equipped to Do
Test the Habitual Explanation
The standing answer to a recurring problem gets checked once against evidence, which is often all it takes for the real cause to become visible.
Make a Recommendation That Survives Questioning
A manager can state a position, the reasoning under it, and what would change their mind — which is what makes a promoter comfortable enough to approve it.
Ask the Second Question
Junior employees get a respectful way to query an instruction that does not make sense, before it turns into a day of rework.
Keep a Problem Discussion Off Blame
A shared vocabulary for talking about evidence lets a meeting stay on the fault instead of drifting into whose fault it is.
How GullyHR Runs It
Workplace Material, Not Riddles
No lateral-thinking puzzles and no debating-society exercises. The reasoning drills are built from arguments your teams have already had.
Argue, Get Challenged, Rebuild
Participants make a case, take structured challenge against a stated observation sheet, and then make it again. The second version is where the change is visible.
One Room, Mixed Levels
Designed for a cohort holding a supervisor and a functional head together, because a habit of questioning only survives if the seniors in the room have it too.
A Real Analysis, Not a Handout
A written analysis of a real problem from your business, a questioning checklist, and an observation sheet their manager can reuse in one-to-ones.
Start With the Argument You Keep Having
Give us two or three recurring problems from your business and we will build the reasoning practice around them.
Questions We Get Asked
Scoped at the needs discussion. Structured analysis takes as long as the problem takes to do properly, so we agree the pattern once we have seen the problems you want worked on.
None. It is written for a room that ranges from shop-floor supervisors to functional heads, in plain language, with no formal logic notation anywhere in it.
No. Training changes what somebody is equipped to do, not what they will do under pressure on a bad day. What it can do is give a team a shared method and a shared vocabulary, and even that only holds if managers keep using it after the session.
Both, ideally together. If a supervisor comes back asking what the evidence is and their own manager reads that as insubordination, the training is undone within the week.