This article is inspired by the insights from Edward De Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”.

Thinking, in general, is considered to be an activity to solve issues. However, often the core objective takes a back seat & the team involved in the thinking process ends up spending a lot of time in discussions & debates, while losing sight of the original objective. The outcome of such discussions often tends to be a new date for a follow-up discussion or at best a marginal (say, 10-20%) solution to the issues.

Edward De Bono gives us excellent insights on how issues/ cases should be handled. He emphasizes the “think in one direction” mantra. In a discussion, there will be people with different viewpoints: highly creative, highly critical, cautious & apprehensive and even particularly intuitive. The thrust of De Bon’s theory is: get all types of thinkers to think in a single direction at a particular instant. Doing thus gets everybody focused in the same direction, reducing discussions in tangential directions even while multiple viewpoints are expressed.

The six hats & their significance
De Bono explains this through his tried & tested methodology of Six Thinking Hats- each denoted by a different color- where each of these hats represents a different way of thinking. An understanding of these six hats will help individuals & teams to take decisions and solve issues with due consideration to different perspectives.

There is no strict sequence that needs to be followed while practicing the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ process- the sequence depends on the type of the problem & expected solution.

The White Hat
White Hat is a neutral hat & deals with facts. With this hat on you are supposed to present facts and figures. It is all about presenting all the information you have & how best you can use that information. Deal with the Whats, Whos, Whys & Wheres of the facts and figures presented.

Facts may be broadly classified into “Proven Facts” & “Perceived Facts”. Generally, there is no room for anecdotal figures unless they contribute significantly. You are not allowed to discuss opinions during White Hat Thinking- it really deals with the presence & absence of information.

The Red Hat
Red Hat is all about emotions and it provides thinkers with the luxury of being intuitive, emotional, foreseeing problems & indicating the probability of a particular thought being successful or otherwise.

This hat doesn’t demand any justification for your thought; you just have to put a thought that occurs to you at that instant. I specify at that instant because emotion changes with situations. Often red hat thinking is used at the start of a discussion and at the end of a discussion to judge the variance of thoughts after the meeting.

Your work while wearing this hat is to react, not to propose an alternative – just react. Generally the discussion revolves around statements like – I believe …. , I like it, I don’t like it, I feel … etc…

Red Hat thinking doesn’t allow you to defend your feelings it just allows you to speak what you feel.

Black Hat
Black Hat makes you cautious. While wearing a black hat you think of a problem with caution & being careful. This hat deals with logical problems with an idea and not belief, emotions or intuitions.

You are authorized to point out errors based on logic & information. The thought is not about being argumentative, not being negative but being careful. It allows you to point out logical problems with an idea, solving / fixing the problem happens under a different thinking hat. It’s about making a critical judgement, generally this is done after some suggestions are made. You identify barriers, hurdles, risks, hazards and other negative connotations involved in the overall process.

Take care that you don’t practice providing solutions to the problems, as mentioned above that should happen when you wear a different hat.

Yellow Hat
Yellow is bright & this hat deals with optimism. You think about logical positives which involves positive approach & positive thinking.

This hat helps you in coming up with options that you identified as important problems during your Black Hat thinking or an emotion that you felt to be strong while Red Hat thinking. It helps you in exploring the value of a thought / idea and the benefits associated with it.

Yellow Hat thinking is constructive thinking, where no negatives are allowed nor are emotions allowed. Some statements you could generally find while wearing this hat are – We can take advantage ….. , This is good because…., Using this we can multiply our sales, This will help us in making this happen etc…

Green Hat
Get out of the box, that’s what this hat demands – Get creative. Green Hat is loved by dreamers; it gives you the opportunity to think as creatively as you can in solving a particular problem. It deals with change & possibilities, sometimes done at the start of the discussion to get ideas that could complement the role of other hats.

Green Hat emphasize on the fact of listing creative thoughts not judging them. This could be challenging a current accepted pattern or a set protocol. In practice this judging is mainly done on Black & Yellow Hat thoughts.

Green Hat provokes you to identify new possibilities. Criticizing ideas are treated as violation while wearing this hat. Some statements that come up while using green hat are:
What if…., Could we… Suppose…. We could… etc…

Blue Hat
It’s time to bring everything under one roof; Blue Hat organizes & controls the thinking process.

In practice, Blue Hat is used at the start and end of discussions. In the beginning Blue Hat helps in understanding the objective, what are the expected outputs, what is the overall thinking about etc… and in the end this is used to understand what have we achieved, what are next steps, what changes are required etc…

Generally the group leader wears this hat throughout the process so that the discussion is focused. Blue hat helps you to plan & conclude discussions well.

- Article contributed by Sujit S. Nair