Six Thinking Hats: examine one question together

Six Thinking Hats is Edward de Bono’s way of organising attention around six modes of thinking: information, feelings, benefits, risks, alternatives and the process itself. In a group, participants examine the same mode together, then move to another. The purpose is to separate different kinds of contribution long enough to understand them.

The hats are temporary prompts. They are not personality types, job descriptions or a reason to assign one employee permanent responsibility for being positive. A person can raise a concern during the risk round and offer an alternative during the creative round without becoming inconsistent.

The practical output is a record of what the group knows, feels, expects, questions and needs to investigate. It may support a decision; it does not give the participants authority they did not previously have. This guide uses a fictional public library considering limited evening self-service access. The library, participants and proposed findings are hypothetical throughout.

Understand the six functions before choosing a sequence

The De Bono Group’s description identifies the six functions and their symbolic colours. The summary below restates those functions in plain language and adds original questions for the library example.

Hat	Focus	Question for the fictional library	Boundary
White	Information known or needed	What do we know about evening demand and entry problems?	Separate records from assumptions
Red	Feelings and intuition	How does this proposal feel to you?	A feeling does not establish another person’s behaviour
Yellow	Potential value and benefits	Who could benefit, and through what change?	Optimism is not a benefit forecast
Black	Difficulties and risks	Where could entry, help or supervision break down?	Describe a mechanism, rather than dismissing everything
Green	Alternatives and new possibilities	What other arrangement could meet the need?	An idea remains a proposal
Blue	Thinking process	What question are we considering, and what happens next?	Process management is distinct from decision authority

The official deBono one-page guide explicitly directs group discussions to use the same hat at the same time. This matters more than whether the room contains physical hats. Use names or icons alongside colours so people can follow the process without colour recognition.

Decide whether this is the conversation you need

Use the approach when a group has one reasonably clear question and needs to examine different aspects without repeatedly switching between advocacy and rebuttal. The library’s question is bounded: “Should we prepare a supervised trial of evening self-service entry, and what must be resolved first?”

If people mainly have different topics to discuss, Lean Coffee may be a better fit. If many participants need to meet and explore shared questions across small tables, World Café offers a different conversation structure. Neither format is equivalent to reviewing one proposal through six modes.

If the team needs more materially different options, first choose an ideation method that fits that task. The hats can include creative thinking, but running all six modes does not ensure the group has explored the full solution space.

Do not use the exercise as an alternative to specialist assurance, required consultation or a confidential dispute process. It is a poor fit when the proposed change is already fixed and the sponsor hopes a workshop will make it look participatory. State the available choices honestly.

Bring people, evidence and authority into the room

For the library, include someone who understands readers’ experiences, the caretaker responsible for the building, staff who handle exceptions, and a manager who can authorise the next investigation. Consult people affected by evening access rather than treating internal role-play as their voice.

Stakeholder mapping helps identify absent knowledge and affected groups. A library user who needs assistance at the entrance may reveal a condition the team would not notice in a general discussion about convenience.

Prepare a concise evidence pack: relevant usage records, actual operating hours, current support arrangements and unresolved questions. A polished proposal should not occupy all the preparation time. Everyone needs to see both the intended benefit and the conditions behind it.

GOV.UK’s research-planning guidance recommends turning unfounded assumptions into questions and researching relevant user groups. Applied here, “readers will manage independently” belongs in the question log until the team has investigated what managing independently would require.

Explain who will decide, whether minutes identify individual contributors, and how someone can contribute privately. Six perspectives do not remove organisational hierarchy. A person may still hesitate to contradict a manager or discuss a concern about lone working.

Explore one perspective together

Begin with blue thinking: agree the question, output, scope and process. The facilitator explains that everyone will consider each substantive perspective together. The facilitator still manages the transitions and the record; that responsibility does not make them the only person allowed to think about the process.

The Open University’s account of the technique describes the whole team examining a question from the perspective currently in use. That supports the parallel structure. It does not establish that every relevant viewpoint will be represented simply because all six rounds take place.

For each round, allow a short private pause before sharing. Invite one contribution at a time, permit people to pass and keep a written route open. The aim is useful participation, not a theatrical performance. People can say “information”, “concern” or “alternative” without pretending to wear anything.

When a contribution belongs elsewhere, preserve it and return to the current task. “The reader may need help with a card failure” can become a risk to examine later rather than a challenge that stops the benefits round. An urgent safety concern, however, deserves immediate attention. Process discipline should not become a rule for ignoring it.

Follow the library question through a practical sequence

After the opening blue round, the library begins with white thinking. The team lists actual demand information and what it does not know. Attendance before closing is not automatically evidence of unmet demand after closing. A request for longer hours is relevant, but it is different from observing a person use a late service.

The red round invites reactions without requiring a technical defence. One staff member might feel relief about fewer requests to stay late; another might feel unease about unreachable readers. Let those reactions stand without turning them into measured facts. Offer a pass, and avoid pressing anyone to disclose personal experiences.

Yellow thinking examines potential value. The team asks which readers might gain time, whether borrowing or study space matters most, and what must remain available for the benefit to occur. “Longer hours are good” becomes a more inspectable claim when linked to a specific task.

Black thinking examines failure pathways: an entry card fails, a reader cannot operate a door, a support call goes unanswered, or an incident occurs during a limited staffing arrangement. Record conditions and consequences instead of labels such as “people cannot be trusted”.

Green thinking explores alternatives. Could the library offer one staffed evening rather than several unstaffed periods? Could a narrower collection service meet part of the need? Could assistance be available by an agreed call route? Alternatives need not be variations of the original technology proposal.

Then return briefly to white thinking for the information those alternatives require. End with blue thinking to review the record, assign investigations and confirm the next decision. Allow roughly an hour or more for this bounded question, extending the process when participants need time or evidence is complex. This sequence is an editorial adaptation, not an official optimal order.

Convert perspectives into questions and commitments

Keep four outputs separate: sourced information, participant reactions, candidate interpretations and follow-up actions. A complete page of coloured notes can otherwise make everything look equally established.

The library might leave with this original, hypothetical decision record:

Contribution	What it currently establishes	Needed investigation	Owner of the next step
Readers request later access	A need has been expressed by consulted people	Which tasks, times and support needs are involved?	User-research lead
Staff feel uneasy about failed entry	A concern matters to staff	Rehearse a card failure and help-call route	Caretaker and service manager
Longer hours could help commuters	A plausible benefit mechanism	Explore recent journeys and a specific evening task	Librarian
One staffed evening is an alternative	An option exists	Check staffing, demand and operating cost	Library manager

Use assumption mapping to prioritise the belief that would most affect the next commitment. If the key uncertainty is entry and support, the library needs a bounded experiment or rehearsal, rather than another meeting that repeats the same perspectives.

For an interface or message, concept testing can examine understanding and task performance. Keep the conclusion bounded: successfully completing an entry rehearsal does not establish long-term demand or safe independent operation in all circumstances.

Handle dissent without assigning people an identity

A participant who raises several risks may understand a dependency others have missed. Do not call them “the black hat” or imply that the next positive round cancels their concerns. Equally, a speculative concern should remain open to investigation.

Ask curious questions about the condition: “What would have to happen for that failure?” and “Where have you seen something similar?” Our systemic-question guide helps connect concerns with context and interactions rather than diagnosing the person.

Edmondson’s 1999 field study links psychological safety with learning behaviour in work teams. It is not a trial of Six Thinking Hats. Pay attention to how concerns are received: recording a risk politely is insufficient if the speaker is later punished for identifying it.

Preserve unresolved disagreements. Two people may interpret the same information differently or value different outcomes. A tidy consensus is not the only legitimate output. The decision owner needs to see material uncertainty and disagreement when deciding what happens next.

Connect the review to a defensible decision

The hats organise thinking; criteria and authority organise the decision. If the library must compare staffed access with self-service entry, a weighted decision matrix can make trade-offs visible once the options and evidence are sufficiently developed. Do not turn hat colours into numerical scores.

For a larger design session, place this review inside a workshop with an explicit next test. Explain what happened to participant contributions afterwards. A perspective review without follow-through can become a recurring discussion ritual.

In the fictional example, the manager authorises an entry-and-help rehearsal and additional conversations about evening tasks. The service has not been approved. The workshop has identified what must be learned before a supervised trial can be considered.

Evidence and limitations

The official and university sources establish the method’s structure. The wider team-learning research provides context for participation. None of these sources demonstrates that this particular sequence improves library decisions, prevents conflict or shortens meetings by a predictable amount.

The method can leave missing expertise, unequal authority and weak evidence intact. Six modes of thinking do not equal six independent sources of knowledge. Use them when they help the group give different contributions proper attention, and keep important factual claims tied to evidence beyond the discussion.