‘My team has worked together for a long time,’ said Kate (not her real name). ‘There are some huge benefits to that – they’re pretty comfortable with each other and everyone expresses their opinion but it seems the longer we’ve worked together, the more similar our ideas become. It’s becoming a bit of an echo chamber! Bringing new people in isn’t an option right now so I need a way to create some diversity of thought in our meetings. What do you think about Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats technique? Have you used it before?’
‘I have. What is it that appeals to you about it as a technique?’
‘It seems like it could push us to be more creative and to think about situations from different perspectives.’
That’s exactly the aim of de Bono’s technique. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a brief description of the six hats:
Blue Hat: the chair person or the project manager. Blue Hat provides a structure in terms of the goals and scope of a meeting. Blue Hat also makes sure action points get actioned.
White Hat: Data-driven, White Hat is only interested in facts and figures, remains neutral and objective.
Green Hat: Anything goes for Green Hat. What are all the possibilities, even the crazy ones? Creative and innovative, Green Hat is all about positivity and coming up with new ideas.
Black Hat: Unfailingly logical, Black Hat is here to look for the risks and the flaws. A more negative approach than some of the other hats allows Black Hat to iron out issues and build in contingency.
Yellow Hat: In contrast, Yellow Hat has an optimistic outlook and is looking out for what could go right, particularly with some of Green Hat’s more creative ideas.
Red Hat: It’s all about gut instinct with Red Hat – what is your intuition saying, whether that’s positive or negative?
There are different ways of using the Six Thinking Hats. Kate could allocate a different hat to each team member and ask them to adopt that stance for the whole meeting. Perhaps she could ask each team member to work individually through the issue, using one hat at a time for 10 minutes per hat. At the end of the hour, each team member presents a summary of their thoughts.
Kate could split the team into two groups and give each group 15 minutes to consider the issue from a particular hat’s viewpoint, then switch hats after every 15 minutes. Ninety minutes later, the two groups will both have considered the issue from the perspective of each of the six hats and the whole team will come together to share their thoughts.
This technique can be used at home as well as at work. In fact, following our session, Kate decided to have a trial run before introducing it to her team so she used the technique with her family to explore holiday options! They’re going camping this summer so they can save for a ski holiday next year.
The Six Hats technique is a creative way to gain broader perspectives and as de Bono himself says,
‘Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.’
Today’s pebble for you to ponder: Will you use Six Thinking Hats to consider different perspectives?
Michelle
Turning over pebbles is the blog of Thinking Space Coaching
If you’re interested in working on your leadership behaviours and making the most of your potential, please do email me and let’s have a conversation about how we can work together.
Turning over pebbles 