The “Six Hats” Thinking Exercise for EDC
The “Six Hats” Thinking Exercise for EDC –
to promote creativity and teamwork
From Edward De Bono
(Six Thinking Hats, Penguin 1985)
Introduction
Since engineers and business leaders do so much of their work as teams, teamwork skills and interpersonal communication are increasingly important for professional success. To help students develop competency in these areas, many educators believe that we need to do more than simply give them teamwork experience; we need to teach teamwork.
In EDC, we use a number of methods to teach teamwork—conventional methods such as information about teamwork in the textbook and regular coaching of teams, plus more innovative methods, such as our team process checks, emphasis on team standards, and teamwork memos to help students reflect on what their teamwork experience and on themselves as team members.
The “Six Hats” exercise, from Edward De Bono, is an exercise that John Boyce introduced to EDC in his lectures on teamwork. The exercise promotes collaboration and creativity by providing a structured way for team members to analyze their design concepts and prototypes.
How the exercise works
Each team member adopts a different role—or “wears” a different hat—to offer a perspective on the design. This encourages a variety of ideas, thus helping the team avoid “groupthink.” Referring to the hats by their color instead of their symbolic characteristic (see below) encourages honest discussion while preventing people from feeling attacked. For example, it’s less confrontational to say to someone, “Take off your black hat for a moment” than to ask him or her to “stop being so critical and negative.”
The exercise can be used to analyze one or more designs. If time permits, team members can switch roles (or “hats”). Alternatively, the whole group can wear the same color hat and give an opinion from that perspective, before assuming a different color hat.
|color |characteristic |typical action |
|Black hat |Gloomy & logical-negative, but |Point out what might not work. Examine assumptions & implications. Identify |
| |truthful; negative assessment |patterns, risks, possible failures. Yes that works, but . . . |
| |(but not an argument, & not | |
| |negative emotions – those are red| |
| |hat) | |
|Yellow hat |Sunny & positive, optimistic, |Look at the benefits; explore possibilities. Make something better. Offer |
| |hopeful (but not unrealistic, not|suggestions. Generate proposals. |
| |just “good feelings”; positive | |
| |assessment | |
|White hat |Neutral, objective, concerned |Give or ask for information, facts, figures – without making an argument about|
| |with facts & figures |them. Decide if things (information) are completely true, sometimes true, |
| | |never true, etc. |
|Red hat |Emotional, opposite of neutral, |Give your gut feeling, speak your hunches; no need to justify your reaction; |
| |maybe angry |you don’t have to be consistent while wearing your red hat. |
|Green hat |Creative, abundant, growing |Cut across patterns (new thinking). Replace “judgment” with “movement”; try to|
| |(think “grass”) |think forward instead of backward. Provoke new ideas. Offer alternatives. |
|Blue hat |Cool: controlled, organized; big |Ask questions; define problems; set tasks. Choreograph the other hats. |
| |picture |Observe, comment, summarize, conclude. |
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