Six Thinking Hats
Six Thinking Hats, by Edward De Bono, presents a framework for organizing and improving thinking.
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
The Six Hats
The six hats in Six Thinking 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
3 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.
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways from Six Thinking Hats:
- 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)
Get the Book
Six Thinking Hats is available on Amazon:
- Six Thinking Hats, by Edward De Bono
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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.