Six Thinking Hats
18 May 2007
5 Comments
Six Thinking Hats
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:
- By switching hats, you can switch points of view.
- It’s easier to ask somebody to wear another hat, than tell them to change their thinking
- You can reduce time in meetings spent arguing towards constructive dialogue
- You can better balance thinking, particuarly in a group (for example, creatitivity with negativity or emotional perspective with facts, particuarly)
Six Hats
The six hats are:
- White Hat – the facts and figures
- Red Hat – the emotional view
- Black Hat – the “devil’s advocate”
- Yellow Hat – the positive side
- Green Hat – the creative side
- Blue Hat – the organizing view
Switch Hats to Switch Your Thinking
By using a metaphor, the hat, it’s easy to switch modes of thinking by switching hats. The main idea is to turn destructive arguments into constructive thinking. The approach is to have people wear a certain hat depending on what type of thinking is needed for the moment
Key Themes
Key themes throughout the book are:
- Thinking your way forward over judging your way forward.
- Parallel thinking over argument, adversarial, and confrontational.
- Setting direction for thinking over describing what perspective your thinking was.
Did you know there is an official training course and certification in this thinking method? Learn more here: http://www.debonoconsulting.com/Six_Thinking_Hats.asp
You can also buy the book at this site: http://www.debonoconsulting.com/deBonoConsulting_Store.asp
I think it’s a great technique.
I’ve found a way to make it effective at work. When a meeting gets stuck, I list a question for each hat on the board:
* What are the facts and figures?
* What’s your gut reaction? How do you feel about this?
* Why can’t we do this? What prevents us? What’s the downside?
* How can we do this?
* What are additional opportunities?
* How should we think about this? (what are the metaphors or mental models)
We then walk the questions as a team, with each other vs. against each other.
[...] Involve them in the solution. Ask them to temporarily wear a collaborative hat. It makes it safe for them to play out your ideas, and temporarily step out of their No Person behavior. See Six Thinking Hats. [...]
[...] Wear a hat. The most effective technique I’ve found to help a group use cooperative controversy is to “wear a hat.” The team puts on their Devil’s advocate hat and beats the idea up toether. We then wear another hat to work together to figure out ways we can make the idea work. The hat makes it comfortable for people to switch perspectives. This is along the lines of Six Thinking Hats. [...]
[...] Six Thinking Hats [...]
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