De Bono’s ‘SixThinking Hats’

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Edward de Bono's 'Six Thinking Hats' is a powerful technique for group discussion and individual thinking. It is a method for problem-solving and decision-making. Each “hat” represents a different perspective or thinking mode, helping participants explore a problem from various angles.

1. White Hat - facts and information

Think of a white sheet of paper that 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. Questions you might ask while wearing your white hat include:

• What information do we have here?
• What information is missing?
• What information would we like to have?
• 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.

2. Red Hat - legitimises emotions, feelings, hunches and intuition

Think of a red fire and warmth. 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 express your feelings and intuitions without the need for justification, explanation or apology.

Putting on your red hat, you express what you feel about the project. You can share your likes, dislikes, fears and other emotional responses without needing to justify them.

Some examples are:

• My gut feeling is that this will not work.
• I don’t like the way this is being done.
• This proposal is terrible.
• 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.

3. Black Hat - critical and cautionary

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. It allows you to reflect on why a suggestion does not fit the facts, the available experience, or the system in use.

Wearing your black hat, you might consider the following:

• Costs. (This proposal would be too expensive.)
• Regulations. (I don’t think that the regulations would allow it.)
• Design. (This design might look nice, but it is not practical.)
• Materials. (This material would mean high maintenance.)
• 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 useful hat. However, it is very easy to overuse the black hat. Caution, when used too early in the problem-solving process, can easily kill creative ideas with early negativity.

4. Yellow Hat - optimistic and positive

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.

Questions you might ask while wearing the yellow hat include:

• What are the benefits of this option?
• Why is this proposal preferable?
• What are the positive assets of this design?
• 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.

5. Green Hat - new ideas and creative thinking

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:

• Creative thinking
• Alternatives
• Putting forward possibilities and hypotheses
• Interesting proposals
• New approaches
• 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 creative effort. Often, green hat thinking is difficult because it goes against our habits of recognition, judgement and criticism.

Questions you might ask while wearing your green hat include:

• Are there any other ideas here?
• Are there any additional alternatives?
• Could we do this in a different way?
• Could there be another explanation?

6. Blue Hat - control of the thinking process

Think of the sky and an overview. The blue hat is the overview or process control. It controls 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-thinking.

Wearing your blue hat, you might:

• Not look at the subject itself but at the “thinking” about the subject.
• Thinks about the thinking being used during a group meeting.
• Set the agenda for thinking
• Suggest the next step in the thinking, “I suggest we try some green hat thinking to get some new ideas”
• Ask for a summary, conclusion, or decision, “Could we have a summary of your views?”

Changing the Corporate Mindset

Changing the corporate mindset can be as easy as changing a hat. With a simple tip of a hat, you can replace one-dimensional thinking, from emotion to facts, positive to negative, critical to creative. When your thinking becomes more deliberate by using the simple yet powerful framework of “Six Thinking Hats”, you generate new ideas, improve teamwork, lead better meetings, identify alternatives, stimulate innovation, and solve problems faster. This tool can dramatically change the way you think.

Unbundling Thinking

When we think in the normal way, we try to do too much at once. We may be looking at the information, forming ideas, and judging someone else’s ideas all at the same time.

The “Six Hats” method allows us to un-bundle thinking. Instead of trying to do everything at once, we separate out the different aspects of thinking. This way we can pay full attention to teaching aspects in turn. Think of full-colour printing, where the basic colour separations are made and then each basic colour is printed separately into the same sheet to give full-colour printing. In the same way, we separate the modes of thinking and then apply each mode to the same subject in order to end up with full-colour thinking on the subject.

There is a suggestion that the chemical setting in the brain (neurotransmitters, etc.) may be different when we are being positive, when we are being negative and when we are being creative.

If this proves to be so, then there is an absolute need to separate out the different components of thinking in order to do each properly. It would be impossible to have one brain setting that was ideal for all sorts of thinking.

“Instead of trying to do everything at once, we separate out the different aspects of thinking. This way, we can pay full attention to each aspect in turn.”

Separating Ego And Performance

If you do not like an idea, then you are not going to spend much time thinking of the benefits or good points of that idea. This is because if you uncovered sufficient good points for the idea to be accepted, then you would have “lost” the argument.

With the “Six Hats” method, however, the thinker can be specifically asked to give a yellow hat “performance”. This is a challenge to the thinker, who will not want to appear unable to perform this way. So, yellow-hat thinking gets done even by someone who does not like the idea. In the
course of this yellow-hat thinking, ideas may turn up which cause the thinker to change his or her mind. It also can happen the other way around. A euphoric supporter of an idea can be asked to do a black hat performance. This may turn up difficulties that reduce the previous
euphoria.

“Because the Six Hats system quickly becomes a neutral game, the method
provides a very convenient way to switch thinking or to ask for a certain
type of thinking.”

Switching Modes

If you ask someone not to be so negative, that person may be offended. But if you ask the person to do yellow hat thinking, there is no reason to be offended. You might also say, “That is good black hat thinking; let us have some more of it.” Later, you would say, “We have had a lot of good black hat thinking. Now, what about switching to the yellow hat?” Because the “Six Hats” system quickly becomes a neutral game, the method provides a very convenient way to switch thinking or to ask for a certain type of thinking. This is not easy to do in any other way without offending the people involved.

Increased Awareness

Because there is now a simple and practical way of referring to different
modes of thinking, people become aware that they are stuck in one mode or another.

“I think I have only been doing red hat thinking about this.”

“We should make a deliberate yellow hat effort here.”

People can now comment on their own thinking and can also comment on the thinking of others. The “Six Hats” method allows an increased awareness of what thinking is actually being used on any occasion.

Who is Using the ‘Six Thinking Hats’?

The method is widely used at Prudential Insurance (the largest insurance group in the world), and the former president of Prudential, Rob Barbaro, used the “Six Hats” framework every day with his staff. Siemens has over 35 certified “Six Hats” instructors working with employees throughout its European offices. The hats are also used at Honeywell and Motorola.

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