What do colored hats help reduce adversarial thinking and increase cooperative thinking?
Subject: Parallel Thinking - Six Thinking Hats
Event: Birthday Edward de Bono, 1933
A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos. -Edward de Bono
You have heard of the Mad Hatter, but have you heard of the Colorful Caps of Cognition? On this day in 1933, a man was born who has spent his life challenging people to “put on their thinking caps.”
De Bono is known for coining the term “lateral thinking,” which involves solving problems via indirect, creative approaches. In Six Thinking Hats, he presents a different type of thinking, a type of thinking that might be even more radical and unorthodox than lateral thinking; De Bono calls it parallel thinking.
With parallel thinking, de Bono has the audacity to take on the Greek Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. De Bono concedes that 2,400 years ago the GG3 established argumentation as an effective method for seeking the truth. However, de Bono is concerned with the limits of argument because it is too negative, too ego-driven, and too limited for the creative exploration of ideas. Too often argumentative thinking puts us at each other’s throats; De Bono’s vision was to try to put us at each other’s side -- thinking together.
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De Bono’s antidote to the limits of the traditional adversarial method of thinking is the Six Thinking Hats method, which divides thinking into six distinctly different modes. When working with a group to solve a problem, De Bono’s key rule is that everyone must employ the same mode of thinking at the same time. This is what he means by parallel thinking: instead of facing off against each other with clashing claims and arguments in the traditional debate format, parallel thinking has everyone facing the same direction. Everyone in the group puts on the same thinking cap, facing the issue as a team as they generate ideas and possible solutions. This prevents anyone in the group from slipping into instinctive negative, adversarial thinking that shuts down the generation and exploration of ideas. Each of the six hats represents a different mode or perspective. By everyone taking the same perspective at the same time, the thinking becomes more systematic and less chaotic.
First is the Blue Hat. It’s the metacognition hat, the hat where we think about our thinking. The Blue Hat allows everyone to organize their thinking, deciding the sequence in which they will wear the other five hats.
Here are the thinking modes and colors of the other hats, in no particular order:
-White Hat: Focus only on objective information and facts, not arguments. Identify the information you have, and ask questions about what information is missing and where you might find it.
-Red Hat: Focus on feelings, emotion, and intuition. What feelings and emotions do you have regarding the issue? Don’t worry about explaining your feelings or about needing to logically justify them; instead, just state them honestly.
-Black Hat: Focus on critical thinking and judgment, looking for weaknesses and problems. This is where everyone in the group gets to play Devil’s Advocate.
-Yellow Hat: Focus on positive thinking, looking for the benefits and the value of an idea. This is where everyone forgets about the “cons,” focusing ONLY on the “pros.”
-Green Hat: Focus on creative thinking, generating ideas and alternatives without judging them.
The goal of the Six Hats method is to reduce the chaos normally associated with thinking. Instead of juggling multiple modes at the same time, the parallel thinking approach allows an individual or a group to focus the thinking in one direction at a time. For De Bono, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, the Six Thinking Hats method is not just theory; he has made practical applications of it for years, working with corporations, educators, and government leaders around the world.
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What makes Parallel Thinking different from typical thinking? What six different types of thinking are used with Parallel Thinking?
Challenge - The Six Pack Thinking App: Apply the Six Thinking Hats to the following proposition: “The electoral college should be abolished.” List ideas by trying on and thinking with one hat at a time. Once you’ve created a list with ideas for each of the Six Hats, put on the Blue Hat again, and reflect on what ideas you produced that you might not have if you took a traditional approach of arguing for or against the proposition.
ALSO ON THIS DAY:
May 19, 1925: Black nationalist leader Malcolm X was born on this day in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. Born Malcolm Little, he considered Little his slave name, so he replaced it with an X to represent the lost name of his African tribal ancestors. At 21 years of age, Malcolm began a ten-year prison sentence for burglary. He made the most of his time, however, by reading and studying voraciously. In his autobiography, Malcolm reflects on his prison studies:
I never have been so truly free in my life … the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive . . . . My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. (2)
Sources:
1-De Bono, Edward. Six Thinking Hats. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1985.
2-The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books, 1965.
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