The Six Thinking Hats method is a systematic way of thinking about individual roles and group communication. Published by Dr. Edward de Bono in 1985, the Six Thinking Hats method teaches members of a group to think about issues in specific ways. This tool explains each hat and how to use it effectively.
What it is:
- Neutral and objective
What it is not:
- Does not offer interpretations or opinions
Use:
- In practice there is a three-tier system of information:
- First class facts: Checked and proven facts
- Second class facts: Facts that are believed to be true but have not yet been fully checked
- Assumptions held in common
- Use the appropriate “frame” to indicate the likelihood
- Employ focusing questions to obtain information or information gaps.
What it is:
- Creative thinking
- The search for alternatives
- Going beyond the known, the obvious and the satisfactory
What it is not:
- Criticizing another person’s ideas
Use:
- All in the discussion should wear the green hat simultaneously, to consider the output as a creative output
- There need be no need to pause to judge the merits of an idea while wearing the green hat
What it is:
- Thinking that is positive and constructive
- Covers a positive spectrum ranging from logical and practical at one end to dreams, visions and hopes at the other end
- Probes and explores for value and benefit
- Constructive and generative
- From yellow hat thinking come concrete proposals and suggestions
- Effective at “making things happen”
- Can be speculative, opportunity seeking; permitting visions and dreams
What it is not:
- Not concerned with mere positive euphoria (red hat) nor directly with creating new ideas (green hat)
Use:
- When generating a concrete proposal
- Identifying the positive attributes of an idea
What it is:
- Negative assessment
- Pointing out what is wrong, incorrect and in error
- Pointing out why something will not work
- Pointing out risks and dangers
- Pointing out faults in a design
- Pointing out how something does not fit experience or accepted knowledge
- May point out the errors in the thinking procedure and method itself
What it is not:
- Should not be used to cover negative indulgence or negative feelings which should make use of the red hat
Use:
- In the case of new ideas the yellow hat should always be used before the black hat
What it is:
- Wearing allows the thinker to say: “This is how I feel about the matter.”
- Legitimizes feelings as an important part of thinking
- Makes feelings visible so they can become part of the thinking “map”
What it is not:
- When a thinker is using the red hat, there should never be any attempt to justify the feelings or to provide a logical basis for them.
Use:
- If you want to explore the feelings of others, you can ask for a red hat view.
- The final stage is red hat thinking: do we like the idea enough to proceed further with it? This emotional judgment should be based on the available results of yellow and black hat scrutiny.
- The red hat covers two broad types of feelings:
- Ordinary emotions, ranging from the strong emotions such as fear and dislike to the more subtle ones such as suspicion.
- Complex judgments that go into such types of feeling as hunch, intuition, sense, taste, aesthetic feeling and other not visibly justified types of feeling. Where an opinion has a large measure of this type of feeling, it can also fit under the red hat.
What it is:
- Thinking about the thinking needed to explore the subject
- The conductor of the orchestra
- The blue hat thinker calls for the use of the other hats
- The blue hat thinker defines the subjects toward which the thinking is to be directed
- Sets the focus, defines the problems and shapes the questions
- Determines the thinking tasks that are to be carried through
- Responsible for summaries, overviews and conclusions
- Monitors the thinking and ensures that the rules of the game are observed
- Enforces the discipline
Use:
- May be used for occasional interjections which request one or other hat
- May also be used to set up a sequence of thinking operations which are followed just as a dance follows the choreography
- Even when the specific blue hat thinking role is assigned to one person, it is still open to anyone to offer blue hat comments and suggestions