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The Six Thinking Hats


“Creative thinking is not a talent; it is a skill that can be learned. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity, and where appropriate, profits.”

—Edward de Bono


It is often said that one of the main pillars of business success is creativity. A creative mind can devise ideas able to revive a dying brand or reinforce the influence of a thriving one. Creativity can bring instantaneous amazement to the customer or ground-breaking innovation for the worldwide community. A creative mind can, most of all, overcome any challenge by exploring capabilities others would not think to. When thinking about creativity in business one, instinctively thinks about marketing tricks or never-before-seen campaign themes. Creativity from a managerial perspective not often thought about. Dr Edward de Bono breaks down creativity in management in his 1985 book about the Six Thinking Hats. In his book, the Maltese psychologist and author introduces his creative approach to decision making and problem-solving.

The Six Thinking Hats is a technique for looking at the effects of a decision from different points of view. It tackles the human inability to separate different emotions easily and allows participants to step outside a habitual thinking pattern helping them achieve a more rounded view of a situation. For example, successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint. Often, though, they may fail to look at a problem from a negative viewpoint. Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, ignoring possible opportunities.

Linking every different coloured hat to a different emotion or state of mind, the main idea is to have the group only “wear one hat at a time” when considering a problem. Of course, the wearing of the hat is metaphorical. At any time, everyone will wear the same colour; in other words, look at the problem at hand from only one perspective, the perspective indicated by the hat colour. Returning to the aforementioned example, pessimists would be assisted by this system as when wearing the appropriate hat for negative thinking, they can let off steam. Afterwards, while wearing a positive thinking hat, they can focus on this approach, having guided and categorized their emotions.


1.White Hat

White is a colour connected to neutrality. Thus, the white hat has to do with available data which is a neutral subject. When the team’s members “wear” the white hat, they have to focus on the records and the information available to lay the foundations for exchanging ideas. When wearing the white hat at a meeting, members are asked to forget about or proposals or arguments and to concentrate solely on the data at hand. What information is needed, what is available, and how it can be obtained.


2.Red Hat

Red is the colour of fire and passion. The red hat allows participants to express their emotions and their gut feelings. Sometimes, feelings might have a specific cause or explanation while other times they can be the fruit of pure hunch. Either way, they do not need to be justified. This is because the existence of such feelings will affect current or future decisions. So, it is often important to get feelings out in the open, rather than have people at a meeting with hidden agendas or misgivings. The red hat allows these feelings to be expressed and not disrupt the rest of the conversation.


3.Black Hat

Black is a colour connected to negativity, risk, or caution. The black hat is for critical judgment and for questioning whether something will function or not. It points out what can not be done and focuses on why this may be the case. The black hat is crucial as it highlights the weak points in a plan, allowing their elimination or the preparation of contingency plans to counter them. Black hat thinking helps to make plans ‘tougher’ and more resilient. What is more, it can also help spot disastrous flaws and risks before one embarks on a course of action. Black hat thinking is one of the strong elements of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they can not see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.


4.Yellow Hat

Yellow is a colour connected to the sun and so to sunny, positive thoughts. The yellow hat role is for discussing only the positive view of problems and solution possibilities. The yellow hat looks for benefits (and feasibility), but must be logically based, not intuitive like the red hat. Yellow hat thinking helps to remain optimistic and to keep going even when everything looks gloomy and difficult. It is the constructive viewpoint that helps one see all the benefits of a decision and its value.


5.Green Hat

Green is a colour connected to plantation and growth. The green hat is for new ideas, for creativity, and new alternative solutions. Adopting the green hat, the team focuses on unbound brainstorming. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. Provocation is an essential part of the green thinking while a whole range of creativity tools can help.


6.Blue Hat

Blue is a colour connected to the sky and thus an overview. It is the only hat given to one person who has the role of coordinating and controlling the thinking process. This means this person starts the meeting deciding which hat will be adopted and leads the conversation accordingly.


The six thinking hats technique should always be customized for the needs of the team adopting them. While the coordinator with the blue hat decides how to handle the discussion of an idea or problem -which hat to put – the conversation itself essentially takes the lead.

For example, let us suppose that a luxury jewellery merchandise company contemplates whether to open a new concept store in Milan. The decision is made by the general manager and a team of ten people reporting to her. If they were to use the six thinking hats technique, the general manager would be assigned the blue hat to guide the conversation. At first, she would most likely ask the team to wear the white hat and put on the table all the known information. At this stage, topics such as the potential renting space and its location, the rent amount, and the competition active in the wider geographical area would be discussed.

In the next step, feeling that the idea is missing something, the general manager might decide to continue asking by asking to wear the green hat. With this move, she expects to hear new proposals that would finalize the idea and make it a strong one before continuing with its evaluation. Such proposals could be as creative and outrageous as hanging an antique luxury car from the ceiling.

Now that the idea has been enriched and has started to look more appealing, the general manager might decide to implement the black hat so that the team does not get carried away by ephemeral enthusiasm and thus make wrong decisions. Wearing the black hat, she asks everyone to highlight what might go wrong and finally evaluate the points made altogether. For example, what if a piece of the car breaks and falls onto a customer? The exchange of ideas continues in this manner. However, the general manager can always return to a hat already used when she thinks it is appropriate or even ask individually one person for their opinion adopting a specific coloured-hat. For example, if the general manager notices that one person can’t think positively while wearing the yellow hat, she might ask this person individually to wear the red hat for a moment to express their negative feelings and then move on.

Although wearing different coloured imaginary hats might sound childish to some; this technique has been used by corporate teams of professionals numerous times, leading to brilliant outcomes and creations. After all, it is a commonplace that feelings are hard to tame or control even for successful and knowledgeable professionals. So, in your next team-based project, why not give it a try?


Sources: (De Bono Group, Mind Tools, Lucid Chart)

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