The Six Thinking Hats of Edward de Bono

Edward de Bono, picture by Open Media Ltd.

Edward de Bono developed the Six Thinking Hats, a tool for examining problems and situations from different perspectives or mindsets. This is helpful when solving a problem with people with other or even adversarial views on addressing the issue.

​Each hat has a different colour and represents a perspective. Here is an overview of the hats with some typical questions:
White Hat: Information, facts, and objectivity
- What information do we have?
- What information do we need? 
Red Hat: Emotions and intuition
- How do you feel about this topic, situation or idea?
- What are our intuitions, and how valid are they?

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Black Hat: Cautions and risks, being careful and critical
- What are the risks for this situation or idea?
- What future can we expect if we pursue this path?
Yellow Hat: Positive, benefits, constructive, and optimism
- What are the benefits of this situation or idea?
- What is the best possible scenario?
Green Hat: Ideas and creative thinking
- What new ideas or approaches can we try?
- If we would have a magic wand, what would we do?
Blue Hat: Managing the process and organizing the thinking
- What problem are we trying to solve?
- What questions do we need to ask?

Whereas the Western thinking model is based on confrontation, the six thinking hats are based on parallel thinking. This encourages everybody to take the same viewpoint at the same time while walking through different views. 

Using the six hats method is like role-playing. Everyone in the group wears the same hat at the same time in a pre-determined sequence. The facilitator’s essential role is to ensure that everyone stays in his or her role.

The tool can be applied independently to structure your thinking or with a group of people as a framework for brainstorming. This is how you can use the six thinking hats:
Step 1: Define the topic, problem, or issue you want to work on and determine a sequence of hats you want to use. During step 1, you are already wearing the Blue hat.
Step 2: Apply the sequence of hats you decided upon to the topic, problem, or issue.
Step 3: End the process with a Blue hat, listing the outcomes, actions and next steps.

Here are some extra tips on the sequence and use of hats:
- You use the hats in sequence, one after another. In a group, everyone wears the same hat at the same time.
- DON’T let people each wear a different hat simultaneously. Doing so would push you back into a confrontational mode, which is precisely what this technique wants to avoid.
- You are free to choose the sequence of hats however you like.
- A hat can be used as often as you like.
- You can also use a single hat to focus your thinking.
- Blue hats should be used at the beginning and end of each meeting.  
- It helps to use a facilitator in your session, who can then keep the selected sequence on track.
- Sometimes, it can be interesting to interrupt the session to re-examine the process. Maybe you want to change the sequence or spot a problem with it. The facilitator can call in a Blue hat at any moment to re-assess.
- It is recommended that you wear a Yellow hat before wearing a Black one. If there are no benefits, the cautions or risks are not worth considering.
- Red hats can be used early in the session to allow participants to express and acknowledge their emotions.  You can also use them towards the end to acknowledge feelings about specific ideas or solutions.
- A White hat can be used at the beginning of a session to gather the facts around a problem and establish which facts are missing. It can also be used at the end of a session to verify whether the proposed solution still matches the facts.
- The Green hat can also be used after the Black hat to generate ideas about overcoming the cautions and hurdles you found.

An example of a brainstorming sequence could be Blue, Red, White, Green, Yellow, Black, and Blue.

Reference
de Bono, E. (1985) Six Thinking Hats, Little, Brown and Company