Put your thinking cap on…but is it Red, White, Green, Blue, Black or Yellow?

Ah, I loved this particular exercise taken from a book on ‘Resilience’, so much so that it has become the subject of its own blog.

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

-Edward de Bono

The ‘Six Thinking Hats Model’ is a great way to ‘step outside your box’; i.e. if you’re naturally optimistic, then you might not consider all the potential downsides to a decision, whereas if you’re naturally pessimistic then you might not be able to see the potential opportunities before you.

Edward de Bono published the ‘Six Thinking Hats Model’ in his 1985 book of the same name. It can be used on your own, or in groups…in fact, it’s probably most useful in group meetings where it has the added benefit of avoiding confrontation given that every different perspective is valid.

In the Six Thinking Hats model, each hat has a particular style of thinking:

Yellow

• Best-case scenario
• Hope
• Benefits

Black

• Caution
• Downside = risks & weaknesses
• Potential problems, obstacles

White

• Neutral
• Objective
• Data
• Information

Red

• Intuition
• Feelings
• Impact on others

Green

• Creative thinking
• Alternative solutions
• Refine & develop ideas

Blue

• Process control: time & agenda management
• ‘The big picture’
• Summarise

Conclusion

There aren’t many psychological models which are so simple yet so effective, ones which can be used by oneself or in groups, in fact ones which can force naturally pessimistic people to be optimistic (and vice versa!)

Try it, give it a go, see if ‘Six Thinking Hats’ can tempt you to step outside yourself….

If you never change your mind, why have one?

-Edward de Bono