A Tool to Help You Explore Broader Perspectives

Enter: The Six Thinking Hats

The Six Thinking Hats is a book by Edward de Bono in which he describes six different colored “hats” we can wear to symbolize different modes of thinking we can use while thinking about any situation.

Many of us get stuck in our own particular way of thinking.  It’s easy to get tunnel vision and only see things from whatever perspective we are in at the moment.

This is natural.  Our brains developed to make quick judgments, and rigid thinking aided that. 

It’s much easier to make “when X happens I do Y” generalizations than to weigh every situation on a case-by-case basis.  Especially when doing so could waste valuable time that would get us eaten by predators or killed by rival tribes.

In today’s modern world, our problems tend to be far more complicated (though, thankfully, often less deadly).

This means we need to stretch our brains.  We need to be sure we aren’t falling victim to rigid, dogmatic thinking.

Using these different colored “hats” gives us a chance to consciously put ourselves into different thinking modes.

Let’s explore the different colored hats and what they represent to get a clearer idea.

The White Hat

First, you have the white hat.  It represents objective data.  When wearing this hat, you should be looking for hard facts, things that can be proved, and quantifiable information.

Some questions you can ask yourself here include:

• What do I know to be true?  How do I know that?
• What am I assuming to be true that may not be?
• What data do I have, and what does it say?
• If I don’t have data, how can I get it?
• What important facts are missing?

To remember the white hat and its meaning, I associate it with a blank, white spreadsheet page where I would gather, organize, and parse my quantified data.

The Red Hat

The red hat symbolizes emotions, intuition, and passion.  Use this hat to explore feelings – both yours and others’.

The red hat gets you thinking about your “gut”, too – what does your instinct tell you, regardless of logic or rationalizatoin?

Some questions to ask here are:

• How do I feel about the current situation?
• How might others feel about it?
• How might I or others feel about the proposed solution(s) or the process involved in getting there?
• What does my gut tell me?  Do I get any weird “hunches” or “feelings”?
• Which of these proposed solutions makes me the most excited?

Remember: there is no rationalization here.  No need to justify or explain. You’re just getting clarity here, so just let it flow.

I remember the red hat by associated the red color with passion or anger, both of which are powerful emotions that can alter our thinking if we aren’t mindful of them.

The Black Hat

This hat is all about the downside.

It is not meant to get you down or to “talk you out of” anything, only to be sure that the downsides or cons are being explored at all. 

It can be easy to get excited about a solution or idea and run with it, only to find that major problems could have been avoided had we been a bit more realistic about the risks upfront.

Pessimists rejoice (or whatever pessimists do to celebrate…brood?), your time has come!

Some black hat questions are:

• What risks are associated with this situation and the proposed solution(s)?
• What challenges, roadblocks, or obstacles can I foresee, and can I take steps to avoid or lessen them?
• What happens if this solution totally fails?  Can I recover and try again? 
• Is there a safer option, and would it make more sense to try that first?
• What are the “cons” here?

Another way to look at this is that you can apply it to a situation that you want to change.  For example, if you’re trying to figure out what to do about your health goals, it might make sense to put on the black hat to think about the downsides of not doing anything (which is still a possible solution…the decision to abstain from choosing is still, itself, a choice.)

The mnemonic here is pretty obvious, I feel: black is the color of death, so I might envision the Grim Reaper figure to remember the purpose of this hat.

The Yellow Hat

On the flip side, the yellow hat is all about seeing the glass as half-full.  What is awesome?  What is going great

Alternatively, you can use the yellow hat to look backwards or reflect on past decisions or events.

Yellow hat questions involve asking:

• What is going well? What did go well?
• What “silver lining” can I take from the situation?  Is there a lesson to be learned?
• What benefits or “pros” are there?
• Where might I be missing positive perspectives?
• Am I approaching this situation too negatively?

Yellow hats remind me of bright, yellow sunshine which makes me feel cheery, happy, and optimistic.

The Blue Hat

Now we go to the logical hat.  Here we consider structure, order, and systems.

The blue hat deals with the “how” part of the process, as well as creating high-level summaries.

• How can I summarize this data for ease of thinking and communication?
• What steps must be completed for this solution to work, and in what order?
• How can I improve the systems or processes in place to make them better or more efficient?
• Do I have the technical skills necessary?  If not, can I learn them or find someone else that can help me?
• Is this solution or idea even realistically possible?

The blue hat makes me think of Bluetooth technology, which requires very precise processes in a very specific order to function properly.

The Green Hat

Finally, we have the green hat, which deals with creativity and changes.

This is a good chance to go absolutely crazy with your ideas and totally deviate from the other ideas being thrown around.

Break the mold.  Come up with something totally different.  Feasibility is not a criterion here, so be crazy.

Some of the best ideas we’ve ever come up with as a species probably sounded totally wacky when they were first proposed – let your freak flag fly, baby!

Green hat questions are questions that get you thinking along different lines, such as:

• What’s something that’s never been tried before?
• What if we completely ignored what we’ve been doing so far and started back from square one?
• Can I take what I already have and upcycle it or reformat it into something else?
• Do I have any resources that I have not yet tapped into?
• Do I have two resources or skills that I could combine together in new ways to enact this idea?
  

To remember the meaning of this hat, I use the color green to remind me of nature – which is always changing, adapting, and finding new and unique ways to adapt to challenges and overcome obstacles, some of which are pretty far out there (platypus, anyone?)

So now that we have the six hats…what do we do with them, and how do they help us get organized?

At the simplest level, we could simply keep them in mind be sure to use each one when considering our next big idea.

Take a few seconds, close your eyes if you want to, and take a second to visualize yourself putting on the hat.

I know, it might sound weird, but try it.

Or actually purchase colored hats if that suits you, too.  Just make sure you find some good ones.

Then, try to keep yourself in that frame of mind for a set time (5-10 minutes, minimum) and ponder your idea.

You could write your thoughts down or type them out, too.  In fact, I would strongly suggest doing so – our working memory isn’t as big as you might think, so don’t overload it trying to keep all of this data in your head.

Simply grab a notebook, piece of paper, fresh Google doc, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Or, if you click on this link, you can grab a Mind Map template I’ve made for you to use in Coggle – feel free to copy it and use it as many times as you’d like.

Just click “Create a Copy” in the upper-right corner – though it does require you to create an account, you can do with your Google, Microsoft, or Apple accounts to make it easy.

The Six Hats could also apply to one-on-one or group communication – maybe you could use them at your next meeting to discuss ideas or troubleshoot problems?

A Few Suggested Sequences to Use

Wikipedia suggests a few strategies to use in different scenarios.

For example:

ACTIVITY	HAT SEQUENCE
Initial Ideas	Blue, White, Green, Blue
Choosing between alternatives	Blue, White, (Green), Yellow, Black, Red, Blue
Identifying Solutions	Blue, White, Black, Green, Blue
Quick Feedback	Blue, Black, Green, Blue
Strategic Planning	Blue, Yellow, Black, White, Blue, Green, Blue
Process Improvement	Blue, White, White (Other People’s Views), Yellow, Black, Green, Red, Blue
Solving Problems	Blue, White, Green, Red, Yellow, Black, Green, Blue
Performance Review	Blue, Red, White, Yellow, Black, Green, Blue

A few things to note: 

1. All of these sequences begin AND end with the blue hat – at the start to keep things orderly, and at the end to decide on the “who does what by when” questions and evaluate the “hows”
   
2. The red hat is often used for a shorter time to avoid getting too deep down emotional rabbit holes – get a quick gut reaction and move on
   
3. A longer white hat session at the beginning may be a good idea to make sure everyone is on the same page as far as the objective data goes first – you don’t want to be wasting time making decisions on incomplete data, whether alone or in a group setting.

Yet another possibility would be to decide on a hat to start with (probably blue or white), then allow a facilitator to steer the session by suggesting different hats as they seem appropriate.

I’m sure there are many effective sequences to use – can you think of any good ones? Let me know in the comments!

TL;DR

• The SIx Thinking Hats is a book by Eduard de Bono depicting six different colored hats, representing different modes of thinking.
  
• The Six Hats are each a different color, representing six different ways of thinking:
  

White	Objectivity.  Cold, hard facts
Red	Instinct, Emotions, and “Gut Feelings”
Black	Challenges and Obstacles
Yellow	Benefits and the “bright side”
Blue	Management and the “hows”
Green	Creativity and Lateral Thinking

• We can use these hats to help us explore ideas, solve problems, evaluate decisions, set goals, facilitate group discussions, and in any other situation where we want to avoid getting stuck in repetitive, possibly narrow modes of thinking.

How can You Take Action?

• Try using the SIx Thinking Hats the next time you find yourself stuck on a problem
  
• Use the Six Thinking Hats to facilitate a group discussion – use one of the suggestions above, or come up with your own.
  
• Grab yourself this mind map template I made for you and use it to help you brainstorm your next big idea.
  

How can you use this concept to improve your life today?

Can you think of anyone else who might think this is an awesome idea?  If so, feel absolutely free to share this article with them!