• Stimulating innovation, being creative together
• Sharing ideas and criticizing them to tend towards a practical action plan
• Making meetings much shorter and more productive
• Allowing people to take a different role than the one they usually endorse and think in a different way than they usually do
• Envisioning all sides of a situation / proposition
• Reducing conflict among team members.

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Six Thinking Hats of Edward Bono is a simple, effective parallel thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused and mindfully involved. A powerful tool set which once learned can be applied easily after!

To successfully use this method, we encourage you to use it in small groups (6/8 persons) that need to achieve something together.

Start by introducing the participants to the method :

The “6 hats thinking” is a tool that allows everyone to propose their ideas, to make a collective analysis of their strengths and dangers and finally to see the ideas that motivates most of the members of the group.

Each Hat refers to a different way of thinking:

1. The White Hat calls for information known or needed (“The facts, just the facts.”)
2. The Yellow Hat symbolizes brightness and optimism. Under this hat the group explores the positive aspects and probes for value and benefit.
3. The Black Hat is judgment - the devil's advocate or why something may not work. Spot the difficulties and dangers; where things might go wrong.
4. The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition. When using this hat each member of the group can express emotions and feelings and share fears, likes, dislikes, loves and hates.
5. The Green Hat focuses on creativity; the possibilities, alternatives and new ideas. It's an opportunity to express new concepts and new perceptions.
6. The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process. It's the control mechanism that ensures the Six Thinking Hats guidelines are observed.

The 6 hats can be used in many ways according to your goal. One of the ways to make the group work on propositions is to use them in a very structured way. By this we mean that all the group’s members will use the same Hat at the same time, in a specific order and for a limited period of time that will be decided by the facilitator before beginning the exercise.

Concretely, the group will go from a way of thinking to the other in an organized way.

For the purpose of discussing new ideas, the structure can be :

• 1/ White hat (10’): Expose the facts.

As the facilitator of the session, take notes on a flipchart so it is easy for everyone to remember what was said. Ex: We need to create an output for day 6. We have no budget for it, we can only use the resources we have here and now…

• 2/ Blue hat (15’): Summarize what are the resources and remind the frame.

Explain on which order you will use the hats. As the facilitator, you should again take notes so that the group can always remember the frame. Ex: We have paper, printer, ink etc. to prepare a fanzine. We have to produce it in one day and the topic has to be about conflict management. We can count on a technical expert to help us, etc.

• 3/ Green hat (20’): Creativity

Give green post-its to everyone and ask to each person to write ideas on it. As the facilitator, you can decide to put the constraint of a maximum of X ideas per person (or not). These ideas have to be written in a short way, meaning either using a key word or a short sentence. It has to be easy and fast to read by everyone. Collect the ideas as soon as they are written; while the group keeps thinking, organize them by putting the ideas that are similar together. Once the time is finished, read out loud all the post-its and present the way you associated these ideas. Take time to clarify and modify together the way the ideas were organized if needed.

• 4/ Yellow hat (15’): Positive criticism

Now it is time to criticize the ideas in a good way. The group should focus on what are the good aspects of the ideas. It can be the resources they have, the motivation they feel, the new opportunities it offers, etc. without any limitation on the number. Again the participants have to write their propositions on post-its (yellow this time). Give them 15 minutes to think about all the positive aspects of all the ideas that were proposed by the group, not only the one’s they put on the table. When the time is over, invite someone to read out loud one post-it and to tell to which idea it is related. Take it and put it next to the green post-it with the idea that corresponds. Then ask the other members of the group to share if they have other positive criticisms of the same idea or association of ideas. When the groups has finished with one of the topics, invite them to go to the next idea and so on, until all the yellow post-its have been shared.

• 5/ Black hat (15’): Negative criticism

Same process than for the yellow hat but with red post-its and for bad criticism. It is time to focus on what could impede this idea to be implemented. What are the dangers the group might encounter?

• 6/ Red hat (10’): Feelings & intuitions

It is time to say how we feel about everything that has been shared. Propose a sharing circle so everyone can expose to the others how they feel. Each person will take the speech one after the other in a specific order (clockwise or anti-clockwise). There is no debate, no questions, no answers. The circle will be over once everyone has talked. If the speech goes to a person who is not ready to talk, he/she can pass and the speech will come back to him/her later.

Before jumping into the blue hat again, propose a weighting of the ideas or association of ideas. Give each person the opportunity to make 6 votes: 3 to say “I really like this idea or association of ideas” (using the symbol “+”), 3 to say “I don’t like this idea and I don’t feel comfortable doing it” (using the symbol “-“).

If the participants want to vote for a specific idea they have to put the symbol on the post-it, if they want to vote for the association of the ideas they have to put it near all the post-its concerned.

They can freely choose to use the 3 votes on the same idea or to give one vote to 3 different ideas. They can also choose to use fewer votes than they have, for ex: to use 3 positive votes and only 1 negative, or 2 and 2…

After the weighting you should give an overview of what emerged.

• 7/ Bleu hat : Summarize

Coming back to the blue hat helps to summarize what happened and to prepare the group to make a plan of action so a decision can be made.

• Flipchart and at least 2 papers: one for the facts and the frame and one for the emerging ideas with the post-its
• Many post-its of different colors: green, yellow and red.