On How To Reframe Your Perspective

This Week’s Topic: The Six Thinking Hats

1 Strategy 🎯 

I turned 40 this past weekend. And to celebrate, we planned an outdoor party at the park next to our house.

As the day of the party approached, everything was going to plan.

 Except the weather.

 The day before the party, the forecast was calling for a 60% chance of rain. 

 We needed to make some decisions:

• Do we cross our fingers and hope the weather cooperates?

• Do we reschedule for another weekend? 

• Do we try and move the party indoors?

Every decision had pros and cons, and the more I evaluated my options, the more I noticed myself oscillating between different mindsets.

One minute: "Let's just do it! Weather be damned! Let’s order some ponchos!"

5 minutes later: "It's too risky. We don't want people to be cold and miserable."

5 minutes later:  "We need more data. Let's see what the different weather forecasts are saying."

We ultimately decided to postpone, which turned out to be the right call.

And the process of arriving at our decision brought to life a concept that I've been thinking a lot about lately.

The Six Thinking Hats

The Six Thinking Hats is a powerful facilitation technique created by Edward de Bono, designed to help teams with brainstorming, creative problem solving and decision making.

The Six Thinking Hats represent the six most common mindsets that human beings use in order to solve problems.

Let’s do a quick rundown of each of the six “hats” before discussing how you can apply the framework. And for each of the six colored hats, I invite you to bring to mind someone in your life that you most associate with that particular style.

1. WHITE: Concerned with data and logic.

2. RED: Concerned with emotions and intuition.

3. BLACK: Concerned with worst case scenarios and contingency planning.

4. YELLOW: Concerned with benefits, upsides and opportunities.

5. GREEN: Concerned with novelty, what-if scenarios and out of-the-box thinking.

6. BLUE: Concerned with integrating difference ideas, planning, and moving things forward.

Here’s a handy cheat sheet.

There are many reasons why a brainstorming session might take a turn for the unproductive - but are the most common culprits are:

1. Unequal Participation: The conversation gets dominated by the strongest and most vocal personalities in the group. As a result, the unique ideas and perspectives of more timid group members get drowned out.

2. Groupthink: Group members conform to the majority opinion rather than expressing their own unique ideas. This is most common among conflict avoidant groups, and results in ideas that lack creativity or innovation.

3. Fear of Judgement: Group members are reluctant to share their ideas due to fear of criticism or ridicule from the group.

By applying the framework of the Six Thinking Hats to your next brainstorming or group decision making session, you can intentionally create space for your team to approach the situation from multiple perspectives, resulting in a far more diverse pool of ideas.

Here's how I structure a 90-minute Six Thinking Hats session.  Keep in mind your session might be longer or shorter based on group size and scope - make it work for you!

1. Set the Stage (10 min): Articulate the challenge at hand and explain the thinking style associated with each of the six hats.

2. Put on the Hats (60 min): Have group members "wear" each of the six hats in sequence, with everyone wearing the same-colored hat at the same time, thus approaching the situation from the six different perspectives.  Below is a suggested prompt for each hat:

    

   White (10 min) - what are the gaps in our knowledge and what information is needed? 

   Red (10 min) - what does your gut feeling or intuition tell you we should do?

   Black (10 min) - what are the worst-case scenarios and how can we prevent them from happening?

   Yellow (10 min) - what are the potential benefits, opportunities or upsides?

   Green (10 min) - what are some wild, out-of-the-box ideas?

   Blue (10 min) - how can we best integrate the different ideas and perspectives from this session into a cohesive plan?

    

   Note: Opinions differ on the optimal sequence of hats.  In my experience, I find that starting with white, and ending with blue, tends to work best.

3. Create the Plan (20 min): Define action items, responsibilities, timelines and success metrics.

By using a Six Thinking Hats approach and creating dedicated space for each style of decision-making and ideation, you can balance innovation with execution, logic with emotion, optimism with risk aversion.  This technique also deters any one perspective or style from dominating the conversation.

And because each of us has a default style, some hats will be more comfortable than others.  It’s human nature to assume, consciously or unconsciously, that our style is better than the rest.  For example, if you pride yourself on being a ray of optimistic sunshine, it may be a bit uncomfortable to shift your perspective to focusing on all the things that could go wrong.  

And in that discomfort is a valuable learning opportunity that can help you become a more well-rounded leader, collaborator and team member.

In sum - unlocking the full potential of your team's collective intelligence hinges on embracing diversity in perspectives and approaches. The Six Thinking Hats framework is a powerful tool for rapidly generating diverse ideas, while minimizing the friction associated with clashing styles.

By fostering an environment where every thinking style is valued and every viewpoint is considered, you can pave the way for innovative breakthroughs and more effective decision-making.

Did this week’s topic resonate with you? Hit ‘reply’ and let me know!

Want some help designing a Six Thinking Hats session with your team? Book a free consultation and let’s talk about it!

See you next Wednesday,

Darin

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