Six Thinking Hats

Sometimes you can be faced with an issue that you just can’t seem to resolve: within the practice team, it can take ages to reach a decision. At times like that you might have to put on a ‘thinking cap’ or ‘thinking hat’ in order to give it some dedicated thought.

An alternative to putting on a thinking hat in which your feelings and the known facts are all interwoven and can lead to confusion, is to put on a series of six fictional ‘thinking hats’ each determining a specific type of thinking.

The concept of ‘Six Thinking Hats’ was devised by Dr Edward de Bono, renowned for his ideas on lateral thinking and thinking as a skill.

The purpose of these six hats is to unscramble thinking so that a thinker is able to use one thinking mode at a time instead of trying to do everything at once. The best analogy is colour printing. Each colour is printed separately and in the end they all come together.

The Six Thinking Hats method is designed to switch thinking away from the normal argument style to a mapmaking style. This makes thinking a two stage process – first make the map. Second choose a route on the map. If the map is good enough the best route should become obvious.

This method helps you separate emotion from facts, the positive from the negative and critical thinking from creative thinking. The consequences are: shorter meetings, more thorough decisions, better communication, and easier problem resolution.

Here’s how it works:

• There are six different imaginary hats that you can put on or take off.

• Each hat is a different color and represents a different type or mode of thinking.

• We all wear the same hat (do the same type of thinking) at the same time.

• When we change hats - we change our thinking.

Each hat is either white, red, black, yellow, green or blue, and the colour denotes its function.

The White Thinking Hat

Wearing this hat you are concerned only with objective facts and figures. Do not be tempted to interpret or extrapolate on them; just lay them out as they are. Don’t make any judgements.

The Red Thinking Hat

This hat is concerned with how you feel about the issue. When wearing this hat never attempt to justify these feelings or provide a logical basis for them. As well as your emotions, this hat also is about hunches and intuition. It is a very useful hat in that it legitimises any emotions.

The Black Thinking Hat

Black hat thinking is specifically concerned with a negative assessment - but not argument. It is only an objective attempt to put the negative elements onto the map. Wearing this hat you are looking for logical reasons why something can not be done.

Care is needed to stick to the rules with this hat. It is not concerned with negative feelings – that’s red hat thinking.

The Yellow Thinking Hat

Conversely to the black hat, the yellow thinking hat is concerned with positive assessment, and reasons why something can be done. Where new ideas are being sought, this hat should be used before the black.

Yellow hat thinking covers a positive spectrum that ranges from the logical and practical at one end to dreams, visions and hopes at the other. It is constructive and generative. Wearing this hat you will want to be effective and make things happen.

Again, to play by the rules, yellow hat thinking is not concerned with mere positive euphoria (red hat) or directly with creating new ideas (green hat).

The Green Thinking Hat

Green symbolises fertility and growth, and the green thinking hat is concerned with creative thinking. Wearing this hat, you are looking at possibilities, alternatives, new ideas, and new concepts. This hat is needed to overcome the stumbling blocks raised by black hat thinking, and reinforce yellow hat thinking.

The Blue Thinking Hat

Finally there is the blue hat - this is the ‘control’. Blue hat thinking is concerned with ‘thinking about the thinking needed to explore the subject’.

The blue hat thinker is like the conductor of the orchestra – they define the subjects to which the thinking is to be directed and call upon the use of the other hats. The wearer of this hat defines the problems and shapes the questions. They are responsible for summaries and conclusions.

Like the conductor, they also monitor the thinking and ensure that the rules of the game are observed, stopping any ‘arguments’ which are not allowed in six hat thinking.

‘Thinking’ type for each coloured hat

Hat colour

White

Neutral and objective. Pure facts, figures and information.

Red

Anger (seeing red), emotions and feelings, also hunch and intuition.

Black

Gloomy and negative. Devil’s advocate, why it cannot be done.

Yellow

Sunshine, brightness and optimism, constructive, why it can be done.

Green

Fertile, creative, innovative.

Blue

Cool and in control. Thinks about the thinking.

Try it!

The Six Thinking Hats is a very useful tool for managing discussions at practice meetings. Having identified an issue or unresolved problem in your practice, appoint a facilitator (blue hat thinker) whose role is to define the focus of the thinking, and control the ‘game’.

Everyone else then collectively takes a turn at wearing each thinking hat and putting forward their thoughts. All that is necessary is that everyone sticks to the hat (type of thinking) that is in current use, and contribute honestly and fully under each of the hats.

Having collected the ‘thinking’ from all the different angles (colours) and put them on the map, it should be possible to find a path through to a satisfactory resolution.

One of the key benefits of this technique, especially on emotive subjects is that instead of using logic to support a half-disguised emotion, the thinker can bring the emotion to the surface with the red thinking hat without any need to justify it.

Another benefit is that it allows a ‘switch’ in thinking. For instance, if a person at a meeting is persistently negative, they can be asked to ‘take off the black thinking hat’. They could then be asked to ‘put on the yellow thinking hat’. This is a direct request to be positive, but using this idiom, does not threaten their ego or personality.

Thinking hats can also be used singly and ad hoc. If you want to get a quick snapshot on how colleagues feel about a particular issue, explore their feelings by simply asking for a ‘red hat view’, which gives them full and legitimate scope to vent their feelings.

The more the hats are used, the more they will become part of the thinking culture within the practice. Thinking then becomes more focused and powerful and less time is wasted in arguments, or discussions that drift on and never reach an end point.

Commercial companies who have adopted the Six Thinking Hat concept into their culture have saved time and improved their exploration into resolving problems and issues. The technique fosters creativity and innovation and also encourages collaborative thinking.

Have a think about it, and then give it a try.