Six Thinking Hats

Edward DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats is a reliable decision-making tool that encourages teams to think in parallel, overcoming entrenched thinking.

Having run a session on ‘Six Thinking Hats’ this week, I thought it best to write about it here. A ‘thinking hat’ is a metaphor for a way of thinking. By mentally wearing different hats, teams are forced to look at a problem from multiple perspectives. It helps foster creativity, innovation and collaboration.

You can mix your hats (and order) depending on your goals include initial ideas, choosing between alternatives, identifying solutions, quick feedback, strategic planning, process improvement, solving problems and performance reviews. One-sided thinking is avoided and new insights are created with your team. Here’s a video describing how the hats can be used to run a more effective team meeting.

Blue: An overview for managing thinking (process control). Summarise findings so far – what needs to happen next?

Green: To generate and brainstorm ideas (creativity and solution). What’s of interest? What’s possible?

Black: For caution and judgment (problems and risks).

Red: For feelings and intuition (emotions). What do you feel about a goal or an issue?

White: As an objective assessment (facts and information). What do we know? What’d don’t we know?

Yellow: Benefits and advantages (logically positive). What’s happened? Look forward to upcoming results.

If you’d like to bring six thinking hats into your next team session, get in touch!