Edward de Bono's 6 Thinking Hats
Edward de Bono's 6 Thinking Hats
Edward de Bono's 6 Thinking Hats
Saul CONTRERAS
Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats
◼ The notion of six thinking hats comes from Edward De Bono (Read Six Thinking
Hats by Edward De Bono, 1985)
◼ It is a simple and effective system that increases productivity.
◼ There are six metaphorical hats, each defining a certain thinking type.
◼ You can put on or take off one of these hats to indicate the thinking you are using.
◼ This putting on and taking off is essential because it allows you to switch from
◼ one type of thinking to another.
◼ When done in a group, everybody should wear the same hat simultaneously.
◼ The principle behind the 'Six Thinking Hats' is parallel thinking which ensures that
all the
◼ people in a meeting are focused on and thinking about the same subject
simultaneously.
◼ In this system, thinking is divided into six categories, each identified with its
◼ own coloured metaphorical 'thinking hat'.
◼ Organisations that use the 'Six Thinking Hats' system report that their teams are
more
◼ productive and, in general, "happier and healthier".
THE WHITE HAT
Calls for information known or needed, gathering just the facts
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 neutrally
and objectively.
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 you put on your white hat, you focus directly on the
information – what is available, what is needed, and how it might be
obtained. Proposals, opinions, beliefs and arguments should be put
aside.
THE YELLOW HAT
Calls for optimism and positive aspects 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.
THE BLACK HAT
Judgment, caution and evaluation
Wearing the black hat allows you to consider your proposals critically and logically. The black hat
reflects 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 … )
• 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 used too early in
problem-solving can easily kill creative ideas with early negativity.
THE RED HAT
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 put forward your feelings and intuitions
without justification, explanation or apology.
Putting on the red hat, you express your feelings about the project. Examples:
• My gut feeling is that this will not work.
• I wouldn’t say I like how this is being done.
• This proposal is terrible.
• My intuition tells me that prices will fall soon.
The red hat allows feelings to come into the discussion without pretending to
be anything else. It is always valuable to get feelings out into the open.
THE GREEN HAT
The green hat is specifically concerned with creating new ideas and new ways of looking at things:
• creative thinking
• Additional alternatives
• putting forward possibilities and hypotheses
• interesting proposals
• new approaches
• provocations and changes
The green hat allows time and space 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 recognition, judgment and criticism habits.
Typical questions 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?
THE BLUE HAT
Controlling the sequence of thinking
The blue hat is the overview or process control. It is for organizing
and controlling 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-cognition.
Wearing your blue hat, you might:
• Look not at the subject itself but at the 'thinking' about the
subject.
• 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?"
WHITE HAT, The White Hat, calls for information known or
SIX THINKING HATS needed. “The facts, just the facts.”
YELLOW HAT The Yellow Hat symbolises brightness and
optimism. Under this hat, you explore the positives and probe for
value and benefit.
BLACK HAT Risks, difficulties, Problems – The risk management
Hat is probably the most powerful Hat; a problem, however, if
overused, spots difficulties where things might go wrong, why
something may not work, inherently an action hat with the intent
to point out issues of risk with intent to overcome them.
RED HAT The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition.
Using this hat, you can express emotions and feelings and share
fears, likes, dislikes, loves, and hates.
GREEN HAT, The Green Hat, focuses on creativity, possibilities,
alternatives, and new ideas. It’s an opportunity to express new
concepts and new perceptions.
BLUE HAT, The Blue Hat, manages the thinking process. The
control mechanism ensures that the Six Thinking Hats®
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHiwpz7r4wY guidelines are observed.
THANK YOU
Saul CONTRERAS