How to Tackle Tough Decisions with the Six Thinking Hats Method

Listen on Spotify.

When was the last time you and your team made a major decision together? Did you have to encourage others to over their opinion and give input? Did one person do all the taking? Once an idea was put forward, did everyone get on board with it without coming up with other ideas?

The advantage of having people with various backgrounds and experiences in your team is everyone can offer an original perspective and make valuable contributions. The problem is, it can be tricky to tap into all of that valuable insights when you have many people involved in the discussion. Gaining valuable insights from your teammates can be especially hard when you’re all asked to make a difficult decision.

We know we tend to make poor decisions, but if you want to make better, more balanced decisions as a team — in a way that allows room for everyone to voice their opinion — try to use the Six Thinking Hats. This tool helps you tackle biases and tough decisions with parallel thinking.

Read our post on cognitive biases for more.  

In the rest of this article, we’ll explore how to use the Six Thinking Hats to help make tough choices. Later, we’ll discuss what questions you should ask while wearing the different hats. First, we’ll ask what the Six Thinking Hats method is.

Let’s get into it.

What is the Six Thinking Hats Method?

The Six Thinking Hats method was the brainchild of Edward de Bono, psychologist, physician, and author. It’s a role-playing exercise in which participants don six metaphorical hats that each represent a different way of thinking.

What purpose does this role-playing exercise serve?

Edward de Bono argues that this method has two main benefits.

• It helps you focus on the discussion and banishes confusion, so you can tackle one aspect of the decision at a time. For example, you may choose to examine the potential risks, before moving on to discuss the potential advantages.
• It means you’re less likely to get boxed into one type of thinking, so you focus solely on the risks or advantages and instead give due consideration to every aspect of the decision.

Typically, when you make a decision as a team, at least in Western cultures, one person makes a statement and another person challenges it until you all reach some form of decision. Instead of taking this argument-based approach to decision-making, the Six Thinking Hats method encourages parallel thinking.

Parallel thinking focuses on what could be, rather than on what is. It also ensures that each member of the team is concentrating on the same part of the decision at the same time.  This allows the team to work together to find a solution to any problems and continuously move the discussion forward so you can make a better decision.

How it Works?

The Six Thinking Hats method is structured, formal and best suited for:

• Complex, significant decisions.
• Discussions involving many people.
• Decision-making processes you need everyone to take part in.
• Mind-mapping sessions in which you need to explore all the possibilities and potential outcomes in depth.  You might like our post on mind-mapping mistakes.

It’s time to break down the steps of this method.

Step 1

Define the problem under discussion. For this method to be effective, all the participants in the decision-making process must be focused on the subject or problem under discussion.

Step 2

Appoint someone as your team leader. They wear the metaphorical blue hat for the whole process and inform the rest of the team when the time comes to don a different hat.

Step 3

Work your way through each of the hats as a group. Ideally, each participant should spend about a minute wearing each hat, before you collectively move on to don the next one. So, if you have 6 people involved in the decision, you should spend 6 minutes wearing each colour hat.

You can add more time if needed, but it’s best to keep each session as brief as you can to make the best, most productive use of your time.

Step 4

After you’ve cycled through all six of the hats, you should make a decision and plan what actions you need to take next.

Now, let’s find out about the hats themselves.

The 6 Thinking Hats  

There are 6 colours of thinking hats.

The Blue Hat

This person is the team leader and moderator. Every other member of the team gets to wear the blue hat twice, once at the start of the process and once at the end.  This is so you can frame the discussion and, later, draw conclusions. When you don the blue hat, you should try to see the big picture.

The person appointed as the blue hat for the whole process:

• Begins the discussion and concludes the meeting.
• Sets the agenda.
• Enforces rules.
• Poses questions.
• Announces when to change hats.
• Asks what the conclusion of the debate is.

The White Hat

The white hat is concerned only with facts. When you wear the white hat, you should attempt to stay neutral and consider the facts before you without making inferences about them. Here is where you may bring up any relevant research you have done on the topic or talk about studies you’ve read.

You might also ask questions like:

• What must we find out?
• What do we already know?
• How do we get the information we need?

The Red Hat

When you’re wearing the red hat, you are free to express your emotions. This phase of the discussion is all about validating everybody’s first instinct without overanalysing things.

You shouldn’t spend too long wearing the red hat, because you don’t want anyone overthinking their gut reaction.

During the red hat phase, you might ask:

• How do you feel about that idea?
• Do you feel this is a good idea?
• What’s your gut reaction to that?

The Black Hat

When wearing the black hat, you must consider any potential risks and how you would deal with them. Wearing the black hat is essential and could save you time, money and effort. It could also mean you don’t end up wasting the resources available to you.

Questions that might be posed when wearing the black hat include:

• What are the limitations of that choice?
• Should we take this decision further?
• What could go wrong if we go with this option?

The Yellow Hat

If it’s time to enter the yellow hat phase of the discussion you need to think of the benefits of a given choice and come up with ways you might put a plan into action. This may prove harder than assessing the risks under the black hat because humans are naturally sensitive to danger.

The ultimate purpose of the yellow hat session is to work out if an idea is any good or not.

During the yellow hat session, you may ask:

• What are the strengths of this option?
• How could this plan work in our favour in future?
• How would this idea work?

The Green Hat

The green hat phase is there to help participants avoid seeing only a single option and disregarding, or not looking for any alternatives.

When we wear the green hat, we’re encouraged to think creatively to find other possible solutions. We can use the creative green hat session to come up with solutions to the risks and challenges pinpointed in the black hat phase.

Here are some examples of questions posed in the green hat phase.

• Where could this idea lead?
• What makes this option attractive?
• How can we cut the costs this would entail?
• Do we have any alternatives to this option?

How to Reach a Decision with the Six Thinking Hats Method

When you reach the end of the process, you will have included all participants in the decision, ensuring balance, fairness and a significant reduction in bias.

At the close of the discussion, the moderator wearing the blue hat should as the group for their conclusions. As you’ve taken a balanced approach to the decision, you and your team should naturally come to a decision and plan the next steps you must take.  

Wrapping Up

By using the Six Thinking Hats method to tackle tough decisions, we can create a shared way of expressing ourselves and our ideas and emotions. This helps us communicate more effectively and helps us make them in a more productive, efficient way. It also hopefully leads us to make better decisions too.

Why not try it out the next time you and your team face a tough decision?

You never know, it may be just the approach you need.