[2021-10-18] Six Thinking Hats
This evening, Shane and I used a helpful technique to assess a condominium apartment he's considering. The technique was Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats.
Six Thinking Hats is a process whereby groups look at a proposal from six different perspectives in turn:
- White Hat: focusing on the facts—what’s known or what’s needed.
- Yellow Hat: looking at the positive aspects of the proposal—the value and benefit it will create.
- Black Hat: spotting the difficulties and dangers—where things might go wrong.
- Red Hat: exploring feelings, hunches and intuition.
- Green Hat: considering alternatives and new possibilities.
- Blue Hat: ensuring that the principles of the Six Thinking Hats process are followed.
I saw this approach in action eight years ago when I participated in a meeting during which we used the Six Thinking Hats to review a proposal. It was freeing to be able to express all perspectives on a proposal. Knowing that we would have a chance to share all ideas over the course of the discussion, we could focus on one perspective at a time, for example, really digging into the advantages of the proposal knowing that we’d get a chance to look at the disadvantages later.
It was also more comfortable to be working as a group on one perspective at a time rather than having participants counter each other’s thinking. And rather than find the most negative person in the group annoying, we applauded all his ideas about where things might go wrong when we were using the Black Hat.
At the same time that I attended the meeting eight years ago, I read a Harvard Business Review article about the importance of entertaining diverse, dissenting views. Noreena Hertz, professor and author of Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World, states in Every Leader Needs a Challenger in Chief that we are drawn to people who agree with us. We get a dopamine rush when we receive information that confirms what we already believe. However, dissent offers significant value. Hertz writes:
When group members are actively encouraged to openly express divergent opinions they not only share more information, they consider it more systematically and in a more balanced and less biased way. When people engage with those with different opinions and views from their own they become much more capable of properly interrogating critical assumptions and identifying creative alternatives. Studies comparing the problem-solving abilities of groups in which dissenting views are voiced with groups in which they are not find that dissent tends to be a better precondition for reaching the right solution than consensus.
While Shane and I already trust each other and have confidence that any dissent we might express is well intentioned, it was useful to use the Six Thinking Hats and to be rowing in the same direction each time we put on a different hat. The tool also enabled us to keep various perspectives separate in our minds, rather than trying to hold everything in our heads simultaneously.
If you have a difficult decision to make with many considerations and want to discuss a possibility with one or more others, consider using the Six Thinking Hats.
