Have you ever felt stuck in a meeting where everyone is arguing and no one is listening? If you are looking for a solution to this problem, try the Six Thinking Hats method.
With running different “hats” representing different types of thinking, you can easily explore the facts, the risks, and even the comprehensive picture of any issue. It is a great chance to avoid bias, conflict, and confusion in brainstorming.
In our blog today, we will explain what the Six Thinking Hats technique is, how they work, and how you can use them to achieve better results with your team. Right now, let’s discover with us!
Table of Contents
What Is Six Thinking Hats Method?
Six Thinking Hats, also called Edward de bono six thinking hats, is an impressive technique to support your decision-making process effectively. It covers 6 different types of thinking, including:
- Blue hat | Conductor’s hat
- Green hat | Creative hat
- Red hat | Feeling hat
- Yellow hat | Optimist’s hat
- Black hat | Judge’s hat
- White hat | Factual hat
Firstly, this method was used by Edward de Bono, one of the world’s most renowned physicians and psychologists. As he said, the Six Thinking Hats is a practical tool to improve your problem-solving skills significantly.
Why Should You Use Six Thinking Hats?
With De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, you will have a chance to look at any situation from different perspectives. For example, you can use the white hat to focus on facts and data, or the red hat to express your feelings. From that, you will surely have an all-rounded approach to your current problem to bring the most proper solutions.
From our experience, Six Thinking Hats can help you think more creatively and critically. This is especially great for communicating, collaborating, and resolving more. Whether you use it individually or in a group, we believe that Six Thinking Hats method can make your thinking more balanced and organized. Plus, you can easily level up your brain power, as well as gain useful skills.
How Six Thinking Hats Works
Six Thinking Hats Edward De Bono works like this: you and your team switch hats to look at your problem from different concerns. And more importantly, the Six Thinking Hats was proved for creative thinking and decision-making over a long time. Well, let’s get into the world of six hats: blue, green, red, black, yellow, and white.
#1. Blue hat
The blue hat is the leader’s hat in the Six Thinking Hats summary, helping you plan and monitor your thinking process. You should set a specific agenda, ask for the control mechanism, and make decisions.
#2. Green hat
The green hat challenges you to think outside the box and explore new possibilities and ideas. It also allows you to express your imagination and vision freely. In other words, the hat helps you to spark innovation and breakthroughs.
#3. Red hat
In the Six Thinking Hats, you should not miss a red hat. This type of thinking supports you to share your feelings and emotions effectively. You can express what you fear, love, dislike, like, or hate about your current problem. It is great to discover new concerns in your mind.
#4. Black hat
A black hat might be the most powerful hat, which is used to assess risks, challenges, and problems. This means that you need to discover everything like:
- Spot difficulties where things go wrong
- Why your tasks don’t work
- Point out potential causes and issues
#5. Yellow hat
With your yellow hat in the Six Thinking Hats, you need to assess your problem in the most positive light possible. Indeed, you will discover more benefits and add them to your model to improve the final results.
#6. White hat
The white hat is your key to unlocking the secrets of your product or market. It helps you gather the facts you need and identify the gaps you must fill. With the white hat, you can turn information into insight and insight into action.
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FAQs
What do the 6 thinking hats mean?
With Six Thinking Hats, 6 hats mean that:
White hat – all facts
Yellow hat – brightness and optimism
Black hat – risk, problems, and challenges
Red hat – emotions and feelings
Green hat – creativity and innovation
Blue hat – thinking-controlling process
How do you use the six thinking hats technique?
If you want to use the Six Thinking Hats method successfully, let’s analyze your problem according to the 6 types of thinking: white, yellow, black, red, blue, and green hats. This is especially effective in having a comprehensive picture.
What is a red hat in Six Thinking Hats?
When you work with a red hat in Six Thinking Hats, you need to group all your feelings without having any rational explanation. This is one of the most special concerns of this method that you can hardly find in others. Thus, keep proper information in the red hat to optimize your final performance.
Is there a sequence of using the six thinking hats?
Definitely yes. Normally, the Six Thinking Hats technique will begin and finish with a blue hat. This hat allows us to have strict thinking control, which is beneficial to making the final decisions for any problem.
Conclusion
Our blog has just reviewed Six Thinking Hats in details, along with instructions on using this method. By optimizing all information in each thinking hat, you can easily get the finest results for your plan. This is ideal to restrict being confused while releasing important decisions.