Liven up your meetings and stimulate thinking by employing de Bono’s six thinking hats.

JUST THINK! (6 Thinking Hats of Dr. Edward de Bono)
Brief Summary
The predominant thinking method that is used around the world today has not changed for centuries.  It largely came about from three Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – collectively known as “The Gang of Three”.

From the Gang of Three, a thinking system was developed.  This was based on the search for the “truth.”

• This search was going to be carried out through the method of argument.
• Critical thinking should be sought to attack the “untruth.”
• To this day, argument is said to be still the basis of our normal thinking.

The purest form of this type of thinking is in the law courts where the prosecution takes one side of the argument and the defense takes the other side. Each strives to prove that the other side wrong. The “truth” is to be reached by argument.

Argument is a useful tool of thinking. But argument is inadequate as the main tool of thinking.  Argument lacks constructive energies, design energies, and creative energies.  Today there is a huge need to be constructive and creative. There is a need to solve problems and to open up opportunities. There is a need to design new possibilities, not just to argue between two existing possibilities.

Parallel Thinking
Luckily for us, we now have a more constructive alternative to the argumentative type of thinking – parallel thinking. In parallel thinking each thinker puts forward his or her thoughts in parallel with the thoughts of others – not attacking the thoughts of others.  Adversarial confrontation is replaced by a cooperative exploration of the subject.

Parallel thinking is best exemplified by the Six Thinking Hats Method, which was developed by Dr. Edward de Bono.

Dr. Edward de Bono
Dr. Edward de Bono is a world-known expert in creative thinking. He has published many books that introduced new techniques for facilitating creative and productive thinking in the workplace. Multi-national corporations and governments of countries have used his expertise to promote effective creative thinking and decision-making. The 6 Thinking Hats is one such technique. You may find it useful in group work, especially in the workplace.

6 Thinking Hats
The Six Thinking Hats method is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives.  It helps you make better decisions by forcing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking.  It helps you understand the full complexity of the decision, and spot issues and opportunities to which you might otherwise be blind.

Each of the six thinking hats represent a certain type of thinking that could be “worn” by a person or group.  The main idea is to have the person or group only “wear one hat at a time” when considering a problem. The wearing of the hat is metaphorical. At any one time, everyone will wear the same color; in other words, look at the problem at hand from only one perspective, the perspective indicated by the hat color.

The Benefits of the Six Hat Method
The following are some of the most important benefits of using the six hats method:
1. Improves cross-cultural interaction.
2. Reduces conflict.
3. Encourages cooperation.
4. Enhances quality of thinking.
5. Supports other change initiatives.
6. Saves Time.
7. Improves Creativity & Innovation.
8. Uses a thinking framework that encourages full exploration of the issues.
9. Works – see results immediately.
10. Simple to learn, use, and implement.
11. Not dependent on others (you can use it by yourself).
12. Modifies behavior without attacking it.
13. Empowers.
14. Can be used at all levels.
15. Makes time for creative thinking to develop alternative and innovative approaches.
16. Results to more effective and productive meetings.

The Hats
The white hat
Think of white paper, which is neutral and carries information.
The white hat covers facts, figures, data, and information. Too often facts and figures are embedded in an argument or belief. Wearing your white hat allows you to present information in a neutral and objective way. When you think of white, think of neutral. de Bono has categorized information as a neutral subject. The white hat has to do with data and information.
Questions you might ask while wearing your white hat include:

1. What information do we have here?
2. What information is missing?
3. What information would we like to have?
4. How are we going to get the information?

When all your group members put on their white hats, they focus directly on the information. For the moment everyone looks to see what information is available, what is needed, and how it might be obtained. Proposals, opinions, beliefs and arguments are put aside.

The red hat
Think of fire and passion.
The red hat covers intuition, feelings, hunches and emotions.
Usually, feelings and intuition can only be introduced into a discussion if they are supported by logic. Often, the feeling is genuine but the logic is spurious. Wearing the red hat allows you to put forward your feelings and intuitions without the need for justification, explanation or apology.
The red hat allows people to show their emotions on a subject, their gut feelings. People don’t need to justify their statements. It is often important to get feelings out in the open, rather than have people at a meeting have hidden agendas, feelings, or misgivings. The red hat allows these feelings to be expressed, to come out in the open.  The idea is that these statements are known to be “feelings” and nothing more. Once they are stated, the meeting can move on to a more constructive approach.
Putting on your red hat, you express your feelings such as the ones below:

1. My gut-feeling is that this will not work.
2. I don’t like the way this is being done.
3. This proposal is terrible.
4. My intuition tells me that prices will fall soon.

The red hat allows feelings, as such, to come into the discussion without pretending to be anything else. It is always valuable to get feelings out into the open.

The black hat
Think of a stern judge wearing black robes.
The black hat is the hat of “caution” and “judgment”.
Wearing the black hat allows you to consider your proposals critically and logically. The black hat is used to reflect on why a suggestion does not fit the facts, the available experience, or the system in use.  The black hat is for critical judgment. It points out what cannot be done. It is hoped that the black hat role will prevent us from making mistakes.

Wearing your black hat, you might consider the following:

1. Costs. (This proposal would be too expensive.)
2. Regulations. (I don’t think that the regulations would allow …)
3. Design. (This design might look nice, but it is not practical.)
4. Materials. (This material would mean high maintenance.)
5. Safety issues. (What about handrails?)

Mistakes can be disastrous. So the black hat is very valuable. It is the most used hat and possibly the most important hat. However, it is very easy to overuse the black hat. For example, if caution is used too early in the problem solving process, it can easily kill creative ideas.

The yellow hat
Think of sunshine.
The yellow hat is for optimism and the logical positive view of things. Wearing the yellow hat allows you to look for benefits, feasibility and how something can be done.  The yellow hat role is for discussing ONLY the positive view of problems and solution possibilities. The yellow hat looks for benefits (and feasibility), but must be logically based, not intuitive like the red hat.

We are often better with the black hat. We are good at seeing what won’t work, as opposed to what will. Forcing ourselves to look only at the positive aspects can also be very valuable.

Questions you might ask while wearing the yellow hat include:

1. What are the benefits of this option?
2. Why is this proposal preferable?
3. What are the positive assets of this design?
4. How can we make this work?

Yellow hat thinking is a deliberate search for the positive. Benefits are not always immediately obvious and you might have to search for them. Every creative idea deserves some yellow hat attention.

The green hat
Think of vegetation and rich growth.
The green hat is specifically concerned with new ideas and new ways of looking at things. This is the hat for:

1. creative thinking
2. additional alternatives
3. putting forward possibilities and hypotheses
4. interesting proposals
5. new approaches
6. provocations and changes

The green hat makes time and space available to focus on creative thinking. Even if no creative ideas are forthcoming, the green hat asks for the creative effort. Often green hat thinking is difficult because it goes against our habits of recognition, judgment and criticism.

Questions you might ask while wearing your green hat include:

1. Are there any other ideas here?
2. Are there any additional alternatives?
3. Could we do this in a different way?
4. Could there be another explanation?

The blue hat
Think of the sky and an overview.
The blue hat is the overview or process control. It is for organizing and controlling the thinking process so that it becomes more productive. The blue hat is for thinking about thinking. In technical terms, the blue hat is concerned with meta-cognition.

The blue hat is the hardest one to understand. It deals with controlling the thinking process. The blue hat is often “given” to one person, who controls what hat will be “worn”, hence controlling the type of thinking being used. The different colors don’t always follow in the same order. Depending on the situation, and the mix of people, it might be better to let people get their negative thoughts out first, or their intuitive sense, and then use yellow or green to move ahead. The blue hat comments on the thinking being used, asks for conclusions, decisions, etc. The blue hat can move from person to person, or can be a chairperson.

Wearing your blue hat, you might:

1. look not at the subject itself but at the ‘thinking’ about the subject
2. thinks about the thinking being used during a group meeting
3. sets the agenda for thinking
4. suggests the next step in the thinking, ” I suggest we try some green hat thinking to get some new ideas”
5. asks for a summary, conclusion, or decision, “Could we have a summary of your views?”

Reminders For Using The Hats

When using the hats, it is important that someone should act as a facilitator during the session/s.  Ideally, this facilitator should be well versed in using the method.  As facilitator, the person should clarify the focus of the team’s thinking, as well as plan the sequence and timing of the thinking.  He/she should ask for changes in thinking if needed and manage the requests from the group for any change in thinking.  Lastly, he should know how to facilitate periodic or final summaries of the session.

As a member of a team that will use the six hats method, you should follow the lead of your facilitator.   You should work within the time limits set and learn to contribute forthrightly and fully under each hat.  More importantly, you should learn to use and understand the nature of each hat.

Read more on Edward de Bono’s site:

www.edwdebono.com