6 Thinking Hats

For my leadership/management book, I chose to continue reading Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. I believe this book can be used for management skills. The ideas that the book talks about are very useful for running meetings.

As implied by the title, the book talks about 6 hats. The colored hats are metaphors for different types of thinking that may go into a meeting. There is the white hat, which is used strictly for stating facts about the discussion topic. The red hat deals with the emotional side of the topic. The black hat is used to look at the topic with caution, doubt or with a negative view. The opposite of the black hat is the yellow hat. This is concerned with the positive aspects of an idea or situation. The green hat is used to focus on creativity, bringing new ideas to the table or updating existing ideas. Finally, there is the blue hat. This is the organizational hat. Whether it’s a product development meeting, weekly update meeting, or any other type of meeting, the 6 hats strategy can be applied.

This strategy could help lead meetings in a very positive direction. In a typical group of people, there are people that talk loud and talk a lot and there are people that are quiet and don’t talk much. The people that are loud and like to talk a lot tend to dominate meetings. A lot of times this is a bad thing because the only perspective that is heard is from those people. Under the direction of the 6 hats, not only does everyone get to talk and let their perspective be heard, but also all types of perspectives are heard under the different hats. By allowing everyone’s perspectives to be heard, the discussion becomes very valuable.