Weekly Training Booster Ep#6: How to Use the Six Thinking Hats Theory

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the sixth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about the six thinking hats. Designed by Edward De Bono, these 6 hats help teams to solve problems with this incredible problem-solving tool. You can choose how you sequence the hats to get the best results.

You Can Read the 6 Thinking Hats Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Okay, good afternoon or good morning, depending on when you're watching this. Welcome to MBM's weekly training booster. This is number six; how the time flies when you're having fun. Okay. Today is about how to use, and how to understand the Six Thinking Hats, the tool that's been developed by Edward De Bono. For me, Thinking Hats is a super powerful way of helping unlock the potential and to support team thinking. So Darren, give us an overview of De Bono's Six Thinking Hats.

Darren A. Smith:

It's a way of problem-solving as a team. That's its best application, I think, having used it for the last 20 years. It can really help a team to focus, without having to worry about being sidetracked on positioning themselves in the discussion, my opinions here, your opinions here. So it can really help a team to focus and solve a problem. And the Six Hats are various colors, they were created by, as you said, Edward De Bono, and I'd like to share them all with you.

Andy Palmer:

All right, good stuff. So what I'm going to ask you to do then is pick a hat, give us an overview of any one of them, anyone that comes to mind for you?

Darren A. Smith:

Well, let's do the one that people would most heard of, which is the black hat.

Find out how to apply the 6 thinking hats theory with this training booster

Andy Palmer:

Okay, and what's the black hat?

Darren A. Smith:

The black hat is being a naysayer or a negative Nellie as some people would call it. So you're in a discussion, and the idea is that the team together wear each hat at a time, a metaphorical putting on a colored hat. So at this point, each member puts on the black hat altogether, and we have a problem to solve. And the problem might be that project XYZ isn't working. And then what we do on a flip chart is write down all the problems with this project, "Well, it doesn't work because Bob's not engaged, the client doesn't like it, we're going to run out of money." And we'd list all the problems, all the things that are going to go wrong, all the negativity.

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff. And I guess that then allows people to get those thoughts out of their head and, at the same time, manage their own perception that maybe they're not being negative. They're actually just trying to spot stuff that can happen, the risks that are going to be associated with the project, to then figure out if we need to accept, mitigate, transfer them, or whatever we need to do with them. So it's a good way of unlocking that thinking where naturally the majority just don't want to go to that black hat thinking. But this helps us to take us there.

Darren A. Smith:

And you can also imagine Bob and Ron in a room, and maybe Bob's negative and Ron's saying, "Oh, but we don't want to be negative." You can see the tussle going on. Whereas if we'd all agree to put on the black hat and we're all negative together for a few minutes, great.

Andy Palmer:

All right, absolutely. Good stuff. All right. Pick another hat, what other colors and what [crosstalk 00:02:54]?

Darren A. Smith:

Okay, we'll go opposite and we'll talk about the white hat of the six thinking hats. Or, as we call it an MBM terms, the detective hat. And this is saying, "What do we not have? What facts and information should we go and seek in order to solve this problem?" So we don't understand enough about the customer on this project, or we don't have enough data, or we need to find out what the shopper thinks. That's our white hat.

Andy Palmer:

Good stuff.