Meetings and group discussions are the life sources of businesses and collaborations. Today, they can be in conference rooms or held online. You, your team, and clients can brainstorm, come up with ideas, and make important decisions during meetings.

Thanks to the digital age, meetings are easier and more convenient to organize. You can virtually get together anywhere and any time with internet, messaging apps, and social media.

But are your meetings productive? Do your employees and clients feel it’s a waste of time? Because let’s face it, we’ve been to unproductive ones. We’ve felt that we can be somewhere else actually working and hitting the targets.

So how do you measure a meeting or group discussion’s success? In a nutshell, it’s when you arrive at the right plans or decisions that everyone agrees upon. It’s unsuccessful if:

• Poor communication happens.
• Individual biases come in the way of group decisions.
• The talk ends up with no clear direction.

When you face these, it’s time to wear the Six Thinking Hats.

What Are The Six Thinking Hats?

We have Edward de Bono to thank for this international bestseller he published in 1985. The doctor, psychologist, professor, author, and inventor highly believes in the importance of language and styles of thinking. He is also the father of ‘lateral thinking,’ or a way we solve problems indirectly and creatively through reasoning. It’s quite effective for brainstorming and coming up with new inspirations.

Through the years, de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats has helped create better discussions in the business rooms, and even homes. It’s still relevant in today’s age. Even when we can communicate better through technology, people have trouble listening and understanding. Often, logic is thrown out the window.

Our perception plays a big role in decision making. De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats stresses the importance of using these thinking perceptions or points of view. You can shift your perception by changing a ‘hat’. This helps you see all sides of an issue. Then, you and your team can address the problems and make the right decisions.

Six colored figurative hats (blue, white, green, red, black, and yellow) represent different manners of thinking. You and your meeting mates must wear all the hats to arrive at new inspirations and fresh perspectives.

The Blue Hat: Process and Organization

• Worn usually by the meeting’s organizer or facilitator.
• Wear this on decision makings’ initial stages and on closing stages (when finalizing ideas and getting results.)
• When a situation calls for specific perspectives, the wearer guides the group to switch hats.
• With it, you can guarantee that all Six Thinking Hats guidelines are followed.

The White Hat: Information

• Wear this fact-based hat during a meeting’s early parts.
• For gathering data, statistics, and other important facts.
• This is when you and your group decide to make plans from the information you have, or choose to research more.

The Green Hat: Creativity

• Put this on to jumpstart freestyle thinking at any given time.
• Create innovative ideas and paths to take.
• You and your team must welcome ideas with little or no condemnation.

The Red Hat: Emotions, Feelings, and Intuitions 

• Here you can present your thoughts about a topic.
• You don’t have to validate what you feel.
• Once everyone wears the hat and gives their perspectives, you can draw a clear picture on an issue.

The Black Hat: Judgment or Devil’s Advocate

• It’s the hat to wear when you want to identify an issue’s possible negative effects and future hitches.
• The team can scrutinize the decisions or ideas presented.
• Address the weak points or flaws right away.
• This helps make a plan foolproof.

The Yellow Hat: Optimism or Positive Thinking

• This is when you apply logic to a topic.
• Recognize a situation’s possibilities, conceptualize ideas, and prepare a plan.
• Worn after the Black Hat, this helps offset the effects of negative judgement.
• It pushes you and your group to move forward.

How Do I Apply This To My Business?

When using the Six Thinking Hats approach, your group does not have to wear the Hats in a specific order. What’s critical is wearing the Blue Hat first to lay down the outline and process. Also avoid wearing the Black Hat at the early stages of a meeting or brainstorming session.

Here’s a good strategy to follow:

1. After the Blue Hat, use the White Hat. Pinpoint facts and information.
2. Put on the Green Hat to come up with creative ideas and solutions.
3. The Red Hat follows. Use this to hash out thoughts and feelings about these ideas.
4. The Yellow Hat then comes in to support and encourage solutions.
5. Just remember that if the Black Hat is used too early, there will be no opportunity for ideas and inspiration to flow. This usually leads to an unproductive meeting.

This suggested strategy is very effective in making more friendly, productive, and creative meetings.

Also take note that the Six Thinking Hats approach is focused on thinking styles. It’s not about the individuals’ characters. Results are usually reliable and safe from drawbacks this way.

Today, we suffer from information overload. Sources can be unreliable. Biases take over facts. It’s important to use the logical methods in Six Thinking Hats for better collaboration efforts, online or offline.

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