Six
Thinking
Hats

Six Thinking Hats
'Six Thinking Hats' is an
important Thinking Tool.
It is used to look at decisions
from a number of important
perspectives.
This forces you to move
outside your habitual thinking
style, and helps you to get a
more rounded view of a
situation. – mindtools.com
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Example: Shortcomings
Many successful people think
from a very rational, positive
viewpoint.
This is part of the reason that
they are successful.
Often, though, they may fail to
look at a problem from an
emotional, intuitive, creative
or negative viewpoint.
- mindtools.com
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Example: Shortcomings
This can mean that they
underestimate resistance to
plans, fail to make creative
leaps and do not make
essential contingency plans.
Similarly, pessimists may be
excessively defensive.
Emotional people may fail to
look at decisions calmly and
rationally. – mindtools.com
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Six Thinking Hats Advantages
Your decisions and plans will
mix ambition, skill in
execution, public sensitivity,
creativity and good
contingency planning.
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White Hat
With this thinking hat you
focus on the data available.
What information do we have?
How valid is it?
How relevant is it?
What can we learn from it?
What information is missing?
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Green Hat
The Green Hat stands for
creativity.
It is a freewheeling way of
thinking, in which there is little
criticism of ideas.
What are the different ways to
solve the problem?
What could the other ways?
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Yellow Hat
It is the optimistic viewpoint that
helps you to see all the benefits of
the decision and the value in it.
What are the good points and
benefits?
How it will help us?
Yellow Hat thinking helps you to
keep going when everything looks
gloomy and difficult.
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Black Hat
Using black hat thinking, look at
all the bad points of the decision.
Is it true? Will it work?
What is wrong with?
What are the weaknesses?
This is important because it
highlights the weak points.
So, you can eliminate them, alter
them, or prepare contingency
plans to counter them.
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Why is the black hat important?
Black Hat thinking helps to make
your plans 'tougher' and more
resilient.
It can also help you to spot fatal
flaws and risks before you embark
on a course of action.
Black Hat thinking is one of the
real benefits of this technique, as
many successful people get so
used to thinking positively that
often they cannot see problems in
advance.
This leaves them under-prepared
for difficulties. – mindtools.com
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Red Hat
'Wearing' the red hat, you look
at problems using intuition,
gut reaction, and emotion.
How warm or cold I feel about
this?
Also try to think how other
people will react emotionally.
Especially responses of
people who do not fully know
your reasoning.
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Blue Hat
The Blue Hat stands for
process control.
This is the hat worn by people
chairing meetings.
What have we done so far?
What decisions have we
reached?
What next?
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The Unique Blue Hat
The blue hat is different from the
other hats because it is involved
with directing the thinking
process itself.
We are actually using the blue
hat whenever we suggest the
next hat to be used.
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Attributes & Analogy
1. White hat (Blank sheet):
Information & reports, facts
and figures (objective)
2. Green hat (Plant):
Alternatives, new approaches
& 'everything goes', idea
generation & provocations
(speculative/creative)
3. Yellow hat (Sun): Praise,
positive aspects, why it will
work (objective)
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Attributes & Analogy
4. Black hat (Judge's robe):
Criticism, judgment, negative
aspects, modus tollens
(objective)
5. Red hat (Fire): Intuition,
opinion & emotion, feelings
(subjective)
6. Blue hat (Sky): \"Big
Picture,\" \"Conductor hat,\"
\"Meta hat,\" \"thinking about
thinking\", overall process
(overview)
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Part II

Situations & Hats
When running into difficulties
because ideas are running dry, you
may use Green Hat thinking.
When contingency plans are
needed, go for Black Hat thinking,
etc.
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Hats sequence in meetings
Present the facts of the case
(White Hat).
Generate ideas on how the case
could be handled (Green Hat).
Evaluate the merits of the ideas -
List benefits (Yellow Hat).
List drawbacks (Black Hat).
Get everybody's gut feeling about
the alternatives (Red Hat).
Summarize (Blue Hat).
W -G-Y-B-R-B
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1. Facts .
2. New Ideas or 3. Benefits or
Only Possibilities Positives
with reason
4. Minuses or
6. Thinking
Negatives
5. Feelings about
with reason
Thinking
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Hat Sequences
Assess an idea - Yellow hat
followed by the Black Hat. (Y-B)
Improve a design - Black Hat
followed by the Green Hat. (B-G)
Alternatively you could use Blue,
Green and Red Hats. (B-G-R)
Caution Sequence – White, Black
and then Blue/Red.
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Hat Sequences
Comparing Facts and Opinion - Red
and White. (R-W)
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Edward de Bono
Six Thinking Hats or six thinking
strategies, were identified
identified by Edward de Bono.
He championed the cause which
drove the creative processes in
individuals.
These Thinking Hats have recently
been incorporated in school
business programs such as the IBT
(International Business and
Technology) program. - Wikipedia
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Meetings and 6 Hats
Experience has shown that Six Hat
thinking is much more powerful
and constructive than argument or
discussion. It is also very much
faster.
The Six Hats method gets rid of
egos, which are such a problem in
traditional thinking.
It is no longer a matter of
defending an idea or attacking an
idea.
If you want to show off you do so
performing very well under each
hat. – Edward De Bono
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END