Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats
See also: Creative Problem-SolvingDo you ever get the feeling that you may not be thinking ideas through effectively? You may tend to overlook the downsides, perhaps, and then end up in a mess. Alternatively, perhaps you dwell too much on the negatives and never do anything new or different for fear of the consequences. This can happen to both teams and individuals, and in personal lives or at work.
If this sounds familiar, you may need something to help you think through ideas from all angles. One tool that is often used for this purpose is Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. This page explains more about this concept, and how you can use it to structure your thinking and information-gathering.
Six Thinking Hats
Edward de Bono was a Maltese physician and thinker (see box).
Edward de Bono was an extraordinary man. Trained as a physician, he studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, and was instrumental in establishing the school of clinical medicine at Cambridge. He held faculty positions at Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. He was also a professor at many other universities around the world, including at least one Professorship in Thinking as well as all his medical appointments.
De Bono was the originator of the term lateral thinking. He was interested in helping people to think more clearly and communicate better, primarily as a way to improve governmental and geopolitical policy-making—but also for individuals.
His approaches to thinking have been widely used for many years, although there is some criticism that they have not really been studied, and there is little evidence for their efficacy. Despite that, these approaches remain popular.
De Bono's book Six Thinking Hats was first published in 1985.
It sets out an approach for teams or individuals to use to work through ideas in a structured way, avoiding many of the pitfalls of unstructured thinking. The idea was to create a method that would actively and formally harness different parts of the brain, and different processes of thinking.
It is not clear neurologically whether these six types of thinking actually exist, or can be compartmentalised like this. However, it is a reasonable starting point for a structured approach to idea generation and assessment—hence its wide acceptance in business and academia.
De Bono identified six types of thinking, and gave each of them a coloured hat:
The Blue Hat represents 'big picture' thinking or managing the process of thinking through ideas. This is the hat that you are wearing when you start to summarise the discussion or thinking, or make lists of the advantages and disadvantages.
The White Hat represents neutral facts and information: an objective approach to the situation. This may be considering what information you have already gathered, and its accuracy, and it may also identify where new information is needed.
The Red Hat represents feelings and emotions, including 'gut feeling' and general emotional reaction to the idea. When you are wearing this hat, you can simply express feelings, without worrying about whether they are logical.
The Black or Grey Hat represents the negative: the disadvantages and risks associated with the idea. It is sometimes called the 'judge's hat' or 'devil's advocate', and requires critical thinking and good risk assessment skills. The question that you are asking when wearing this hat is 'What could possibly go wrong?'
The Yellow Hat represents the positive: the advantages and opportunities that may be opened up by exploring the idea further. When you are wearing this hat, you do not consider any of the downsides, only the positives and potential value.
The Green Hat represents new ideas and the creative process of exploring new ideas and directions.
The colours of the thinking hats are not set in stone. You may want to change them to avoid any cultural problems. For example
- In China, saying that someone is "wearing a green hat" means that their partner is being unfaithful.
- Black as a negative and white as a neutral may not be helpful in many cultures. Grey or purple may be easier as concepts, as they are less charged.
- A blue hat emoji is sometimes used to indicate that someone is lying.
You can find out more about the importance of being culturally sensitive in our page on Intercultural Awareness.
Using the Six Thinking Hats
The next issue is how you should use the six hats.
The answer to that is that it depends on you, and also what you want to do.
1. Working through sequentially
As an individual or even as a team, you can simply work through the six hats in sequence, as a way to help you think through an idea.
You should change hats 'officially' when you feel that you have thoroughly explored each area.
The drawback to this is that you might find that new ideas or pieces of evidence emerge later in the process. It is therefore probably ideal to allow a more iterative approach, jumping backwards and forwards between the hats as new ideas occur, new evidence emerges, or you feel you need a change of thinking.
There are two aspects are important here.
The first is to ensure that you cover all six hats in some way.
The table below shows some questions that might help you to ensure that this happens.
Colour | Questions |
Blue | How do we want to manage this? When will we know that we have completed the process? What do we do next? How much time do we have? |
White | What evidence is there for this? Where did this fact come from? How reliable is the source? What are everyone's opinions? |
Red | How do we all feel about this? What do we like or dislike about it? What is my gut feeling on this? What feels 'right' here? |
Black | What could go wrong? Why might that happen? What are the downsides to success and failure? Where might we struggle with this? Which groups or individuals would be negatively affected? What is the worst-case scenario? |
Yellow | What are the benefits to this? Who would be happy if we did this? How much value could we add? What is the best-case scenario? |
Green | What would happen if we...? What if we did this completely differently? Can we turn this upside-down in some way? How could we solve that? |
The second aspect is to make sure that you cover each hat in similar depth.
To do this, it is helpful to document your thinking in public, rather than taking notes (either separately or just one person). Flipcharts and white boards both provide ways to do this. When you think you have finished, check that you have a similar number of points for each hat. If you are very short in one area, it is worth going back and revisiting that one, to make sure that you have covered it in enough depth.
2. A more structured approach
De Bono's website and structured training programmes suggest that a more structured approach may also be useful, especially with groups.
You always start with the blue hat, so that the group can agree the process that they are going to use. After that, however, certain sequences of hats are considered more useful for particular activities.
For example, in generating initial ideas, it may be helpful to use a sequence of blue–white–green–blue. In other words:
Start by agreeing the process;
Explore the facts;
Generate ideas, perhaps using brainstorming techniques; and
Agree that you have completed the process.
When assessing alternatives, it is a good idea to use five or six hats in the order:
Blue to agree the process;
White to agree the facts;
Green if you wish to identify potential alternatives (this step can be ignored if you have already generated enough alternatives);
Yellow to discuss the positives;
Black to identify the disadvantages and risks;
Red to explore feelings about each alternative; and
Blue to agree that the process is complete.
The stages using the white and green hats can be relatively long. It takes time to gather facts and discuss them. The white hat stage can even be largely completed before the group gets together, and shared as a discussion document. This will prepare the ground before a conversation or meeting. Brainstorming can also often be more productive if it is pursued for longer without judgement.
However, it is important that the yellow and black hats are only used for a few minutes each. This will avoid getting stuck in an extensive discussion of the pros and cons. The red hat session can be even shorter if you just want to get everyone's 'gut reaction', rather than fully explore feelings.
It may be helpful to ask someone neutral to facilitate the discussion. This will ensure that the process is managed correctly and consultatively, and also that someone is keeping an eye on the process even when others are engrossed in the task.
There is more about this in our page on Facilitation Skills.
Benefits of the Six Thinking Hats
Using the Six Thinking Hats has several benefits for both individuals and groups, including:
It gives equal airtime to all perspectives. When you are under time pressure, it is easy to focus on facts and ignore feelings. Similarly, when things feel difficult, it is easy to dwell on the negatives. The Six Hats makes sure that you don't fall into these traps.
It gives everyone the opportunity to contribute. Sometimes one person, or one type of thinking, can dominate in a group. The Six Thinking Hats makes sure that this is not the case, especially if the discussion is facilitated effectively.
It tends to encourage openness and listening. The Six Hats ensures that everyone focuses on one aspect of an idea at a time. This tends to mean that groups are more open to discussion on each aspect.
It creates space to discuss feelings as well as logic. Often, especially in business or groups, feelings tend to get forgotten or hidden. The Six Hats makes space to share emotional reactions without it feeling inappropriate. This can surface an important aspect of decision-making in a very helpful way.
A Final Thought
The Six Thinking Hats may not be supported by much academic study or evidence. However, this approach is widely used across businesses and by individuals, which suggests that many people find it helpful.
If nothing else, it gives a structure and a template for discussion of ideas in an open way—and that alone makes it worth trying.