Six Thinking Hats
topic
Six Thinking Hats — Edward de Bono's structured divergent thinking framework — separates the different modes of thinking (factual information, emotional response, cautious evaluation, optimistic possibility, creative generation, and process management) into six explicitly distinguished roles, each represented by a colored hat, enabling systematic exploration of a creative challenge from each distinct cognitive orientation before integrating the insights of all modes into a comprehensive understanding.
Role
Six Thinking Hats addresses the most common dysfunction of group creative thinking — the tendency for different people's simultaneous application of different cognitive modes (some being emotionally cautious while others are analytically critical while others are creatively generative) to produce the mutual blocking that results in neither genuine divergence nor genuine convergence. By separating the modes temporally (everyone wears the same hat at the same time) and spatially (the hat role is clearly distinct from the person's genuine assessment), Six Thinking Hats enables groups to achieve the genuine divergent exploration followed by genuine convergent evaluation that mixed-mode group thinking reliably prevents.