Six Thinking Hats

How People Think

When striving to think clearly about a situation or a problem, human beings face two major challenges.

The first obstacle is their ego. A desire to get their way, antagonize someone or show others how smart they are may cloud their judgment.

Second, people are prone to confusion. They constantly try to “juggle” such factors as “emotions, information, logic, hope and creativity.”

The “Thinking Hats method” helps you make better decisions by allowing you to focus on one of these at a time. The hats are visualization tools that relate to each of the brain’s functions.

The Purpose of the “Thinking Hats”

The Thinking Hats method has two main purposes:

1. Simplify your thinking – This approach allows you to focus on one thing at a time, instead of juggling thoughts, emotions and intuitions along with facts and figures.
2. “Switch” your thinking (or others’) – If people at a meeting are making negative comments, you can ask them to remove their “black thinking hats,” which symbolize caution and risk analysis, and put on “yellow hats,” which signify optimism. If you ask in this way, they ...