What is Six Thinking Hats?

Six hats thinking is a technique that helps individuals and teams look at problems and situations
from a variety of perspectives. In essence, the six hats direct you on ‘how to think’ rather than
‘what to think’, which means it can be applied universally.
As identified by De Bono it simplifies thinking by maintaining focus on one element at a time
and allowing a change in thinking while minimizing conflict between members in a group.
Some examples of problems where six thinking hats can be used include:
 A coffee house is getting a growing number of complaints from customers as they
are having to wait too long for their coffee – how can they solve this problem?
 A car manufacturer has found that their quality department has a worsening absence
record with several bouts of sickness from several staff – what’s happening and how
can they improve the absence levels?
It’s not all problems you know, you can apply six hats to opportunities, some examples
include:
 A coffee house finds that there is a new coffee machine on the market that can make
our coffee three times quicker than their current machines – should they buy it?
 A car manufacturer has been approached by a company offering a new incentive
programmed for its employees, they promise that the programmed will improve
employee engagement levels – should they invest in the programme?
The Benefits of Using Six Thinking Hats
The process can:
 reduce meeting times
 make them more productive
 help improve the quality of decision making
The beauty of Edward De Bono’s hats is in their simplicity. They are easy to learn and
implement in your own work and are a great tool for group collaboration and decision-making.
The biggest benefits are often seen in team working and collaborative problem solving as they
can empower diverse groups of people to work together with a common perspective in mind.
The hats promote parallel thinking, which De Bono posited as a productive alternative to
adversarial thinking (otherwise known as debate). By defining the perspective for a group, the
benefits are a reduction of negative conflict and encouraged co-operation.
What are the Six Thinking Hats?

Blue Hat – The blue hat is metaphorically worn by the individual chairing a
meeting, controlling a team, or managing a situation. They will often provide the ground rules in
the form of an agenda, goals and scope.
For example, project managers responsible for pulling together many elements to complete a
project could be said to wear a Blue Hat! In managing a project, he or she would concern
themselves with many issues such as:
 What is the problem we are dealing with?
 What are we trying to achieve in dealing with the problem?
 What will be the benefits of solving this problem?
  What is the best and most effective way to approach the problem?

White Hat – The White hat is used at the beginning and end of a session.
Used at the beginning to concentrate on the facts or data available. Used at the end of a session to
question ideas derived from using the other hats.

Green Hat – The green hat is used to encourage new and innovative ideas.
Thinking outside the box where anything should be considered. No negative thinking or
comment is allowed at this stage in the process.

Yellow Hat – The yellow hat is the optimistic hat, used to consider the
possible advantages of ideas which may have been generated by the green hat process.

Red Hat -This is the intuitive/spontaneous hat where feelings and emotions
can be expressed, such as fears and dislikes. These feelings do not need to be justified they just
identify gut feelings.
 Black Hat – The black hat is the negative but logical hat as it looks at
possible solutions or ideas to determine if they may or may not work. Negativity without reason
must be avoided as this is a red hat function.
Black hat thinkers must apply critical thinking to the solutions identified, to explore and test their
viability
Thinking Tools
PMI

The PMI Chart is a useful too to generate discussion and analysis for complex issues. The idea is
that the entries in the columns can be used as the basis for individual or group learning
activities.
 The Plus column is for advantages or strengths or positives.
 The Minus column is for disadvantages or weaknesses or negatives.
 Any ideas which don’t really classify as a plus or a minus can be put into the third
column, which can either be for Interesting or for Implications - whichever is more
suited to the content.
The PMI Chart is more valuable in discussions about difficult decisions or issues or
situations, which have many plusses and minuses.
CAF
Consider All Factors
Most people react to a situation based on their immediate awareness of the causes they
associated with the matter. However, given time to ponder other aspects of that same situation,
other considerations can be identified and included in their causal evaluation of the incident. If
taking shortcuts needed to consider multiple perspectives become the norm then rash judgments
may result.
Consider All Factors (CAF) is a strategy that directs attention to multiple considerations about a
topic. Given a specific amount of time, every possible aspect of a topic is open to consideration
rather than settling on the first ideas that pop into one’s mind.
Implementation
1. Practicing several CAF operations makes the process easier for students to apply
when they encounter a challenge.
2. The more students practice brainstorming, the more factors they will be comfortable
adding.
3. They will become more comfortable expanding their lists as they begin to
investigate the topics and discover heretofore unknown factors.
4. It takes multiple, carefully implemented opportunities to turn this strategy into a
metacognitive practice when faced with new concepts or with thinking that is
different than one’s own.
AGO: Aims, Goals, Objectives
• aim is the general direction
• goal is an ultimate destination
• objective is a recognizable point of achievement along the way.
The AGO is a device to get students to focus directly and deliberately on the intention behind
actions. What is the actor aiming for? What is trying to be achieved? What does the actor want to
bring about? What are the actor's objectives? What are the actor's goals?

Being able to define objectives helps the student's thinking in such areas as decision,
planning, and action of any kind which has a purpose.

It is enough for the teacher to say that in some cases the word aim is more appropriate and in
other cases goals or objectives. If pressed, teachers can make the distinction as follows:

• aim is the general direction

Teachers are strongly advised to concentrate on the general idea of "purpose" and not to make
the distinction. Without a sense of purpose, all actions are either reactions to a situation or
matters of habit or imitation. The intention of the lesson is to focus attention directly on purpose
as distinct from reaction.