The SIX THINKING HATS

Have you ever attended a meeting and you dread the whole duration of being in there because the entire session was just not going anywhere?

Have you ever experienced being in one where some members were just sitting down wondering what's going on while some were busy contributing ideas and feedbacks but no one seemed to bother much about what they are saying?

Well I have been to many kinds of meetings and having to chair one recently was pretty intimidating for me as I had my big boss as the observer sitting at the back silently monitoring the situation and outcome of the 2-hour session. In a nutshell, he was just there to judge me and to check out my capabilities.

What I was thankful about was that my distance learning course has sort of helped me a little on how to manage certain aspects of my job and since I am learning Critical Thinking for this semester, one topic that I particularly like would be the 6 Thinking Hats.

Six Thinking Hats???



The Six Thinking Hats was introduced by Edward De Bono who is a renowned expert on creative and critical thinking. It is a very useful tool to be applied especially during a rigorous meeting.

The special agenda for this ad hoc meeting was titled as "How to Increase Sales by 120% within the Next 6 Months". Well, 120% was indeed a far-fetched figure or some might put it as "Mission Impossible!!!"

Anyway, I suggested to all the members in using a new method to conduct the meeting. I told them that it was actually very simple. Instead of having some to dominate in generating ideas during the meeting; some to kill off the ideas by pouring cold water; some whose mind would be wondering somewhere else while some who might declare a pillow as their best friend - we would instead get EVERYONE involved by using the invincible 6 different colors of hats at certain juncture. Each hat color represents a distinct type of  thought.

 



=   Objective (Pure and Neutral) Eg. Facts and Figures

=   Creative (Growth and Fertile) Eg. Generating of Ideas

=   Process (Far and Wide) Eg. Organizing and Control

=   Intuitive (Rage and Emotions) Eg. Feelings and Hunches

=   Negative (Gloomy and Serious) Eg. Weaknesses and Objections

=   Positive (Sunny and Bright) Eg. Visions and Dreams

Hence when you are asked to put on the Green Hat, you should only be thinking of any ideas that come to your mind without even a hint of negativity. Share your ideas generously. When it's time to put on your Yellow Hat, the positive aspects of the idea would be discussed thoroughly. However when it involves wearing the Black Hat, we will then focus on what and why the idea is not our cup of tea.

By being asked to put on a different color of Hat each time, we are actually consciously conditioning our mind by stimulating the brain to work on the required information needed. This enables the meeting process to run smoothly in an organized manner with the high possibility of acquiring a viable end result.  

So apart from the usual SWOT analysis that is often incorporated into meetings so as to address certain topics, imparting my knowledge by getting all and sundry to experiment with the 6 Thinking Hats was an eye-opener for everyone (including my boss!) and was fun too at the same time. Everyone had a cheerful smile at the closing note. One cheeky fellow even stood up by giving me a salute in a jokingly manner while he said "Hats off to you, lady boss!"