Six Thinking Hats

T h e Six Thinking Hats brainstorming technique developed by Edward de Bono is used by thousands of organizations and millions of people around the world.

ix Thinking Hats is a profound and powerful technique. It is used to look at problems and decisions from different perspectives. The idea is that this forces you to think outside your usual constraints. This technique was introduced by Edward de Bono in his book, Six Thinking Hats, first published by Little, Brown and Company in 1985. Many people think from an analytical, rational point of view. This is one reason why many such people are very successful. However, these same people on many other issues may neglect to consider their problems from a creative, emotional or intuitive viewpoint. This means that they may underestimate resistance to plans, fail to make creative leaps and not make essential contingency plans. Similarly, there is a tendency for pessimists to be defensive. Emotional people may fail to look at decisions calmly and rationally. The approach of the Six Thinking Hats technique is to allow people to solve problems using all approaches. Decisions and plans then mix ambition, skill in execution, public sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

How to Use the Six Thinking Hats You can use Six Thinking Hats in group meetings or on your own. It makes an excellent approach to developing research proposals. In group meetings, Six Hats can block confrontations that happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem. The result is that the energy in these meetings is devoted to moving forward rather than stagnating by a lot of defensive debating. Each Thinking Hat represents a different style of thinking that is metaphorically put on your head while you think through your issues. Each of the Six Hats is explained below:

Blue Hat: The Blue Hat stands for organization and control. The Blue Hat is worn by people chairing meetings and may be shared with others while organizing how the meeting is to be run. de Bono suggests that the Blue Hat be used at the beginning of meetings and at the end of the meetings, sort of like bookends, to help organize the agenda and lay out the discussion plans.

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White Hat: The White Hat is the data and information hat. With White Hat thinking, you collect and examine information you have or can get, then look at what you can learn from that information. For example, the number of acres of citrus production is a White Hat topic. Look for gaps in your knowledge or where trends can be revealed, then try to fill them or take account of them. White Hat is where you analyze past trends and extrapolate into the future from available historical data. Red Hat: Red hat thinking allows you to consider problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. This is where everyone gets to see how other people will react emotionally to the ideas being developed during the session. You do not necessarily have to have logical explanations for your comments under the Red Hat - just try to get your feelings out. But this is an opportunity to understand the feelings of people about the merits or drawbacks of a project. Black Hat: Using black hat thinking, you consider the critical aspects of problem solving. Black Hat is an opportunity to examine the issues cautiously and defensively. Try to see why an idea might not work. Black Hat is very important (de Bono says one of the most important) since it highlights potential weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate, alter or prepare contingency plans to counter weaknesses in a plan. Yellow Hat: The yellow hat is the positive hat. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult. Green Hat: The Green Hat is the creativity hat. Green Hat is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here. Some people think of Green Hat as corresponding to traditional brainstorming techniques. A variant of this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals. For example, if you are a grower, try to solve the problem through the eyes of a researcher customer. Researchers can benefit from using Six Hats to better understand the issues that growers face going into the future.