“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” --Edward de Bono
Edward de Bono is one of the leading authorities in the field of lateral and creative thinking, treating thinking as a teachable skill to be enhanced and improved. de Bono has written over 70 books on the subject including Six Thinking Hats where he writes about the need to compartmentalize the various aspects of personality in order to analyze business problems and decisions. In the book, he separates these feelings into six thinking hats, allowing us to use each of the six areas to get a different perspective and to build more understanding of others’ perceptions.
Six hats are:
- White - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
- Red - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling
- Black - logic applied to identifying problems or barriers, seeking mismatch
- Yellow - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
- Green - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
- Blue –the hat worn by those facilitating and directing the process
Six Thinking Hats provides a technique for looking at decision making from a number of different points of view, by allowing emotion and skepticism to be brought into purely rational decisions. This affords the opportunity for people to be more positive and creative.
Consider: how could putting on a different hat change your thinking?
For a good overview and examples of Six Thinking Hats in action, check out this post on MindTools.
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