Six Thinking Hats Retrospective
The Six Thinking Hats is an efficient technique that uses different points of view to look at decisions. It helps us see a different outlook from the usual styles of thinking to a more rounded view of a situation. Six different imaginary hats are available that you can put on or take off. Every hat is a different color and reflects a different thinking style. We can get various ideas as we put on different hats.
Six Thinking Hats Examples with Overview
Green Hat
The green hat is for creative thinking. Creative thinking can involve new ideas, alternatives, new solutions, or inventions. It might also mean that something is happening.
Green hat's primary uses are:
- Exploring the situation in terms of thoughts, theories, suggestions, and opportunities.
- To make suggestions or suggestions of any kind, such as suggestions for intervention, potential decisions, etc.
- You are considering additional options or alternatives. The green hat seeks to extend the range of options before going into detail with any of them. The thinking of the yellow and black hat is used to evaluate alternatives.
- Applying some new ideas. The techniques of lateral thinking can be used deliberately to create some new ideas.
- To reveal any intentional provocations. Provocation is not a useful idea. It's a way out of the usual path of the mind.
Blue Hat
The blue hat gives our thought an outline. The following points are protected by it:
- Where are we in our reflections now?
- What is the next step?
- For our thinking, we need to set an agenda or series.
- To summarize what the thinking has done so far.
White Hat
The white hat means neutral details. White hat thinking is focused on the information available. Three key questions exist:
- What information are we going to have?
- What is the missing information?
- How do we collect the data we need?
Red Hat
The red hat is for thoughts, desires, hunches, and intuition. The red hat is not equated in facts as opposed to the white hat, but only in the feelings of people. The red hat aims to help us to express our feelings to participate in the thinking. The red hat provides these feelings with a clear label. Intuition is often based on a subject's experience, but we can't explain precisely why we have such an intuition. The red hat allows the thinker to present a hunch or intuition without supporting or justifying it.
Black Hat
Generally speaking, the black hat is the most used of all hats. It's the one that stops us from making mistakes and doing stupid things. The black hat is about truth, reality, and critical thinking.
The most important questions are:
- The most important questions are:
- Is that true?
- Is it fitting?
- Is that going to work?
- What are the challenges and dangers?
Yellow Hat
The yellow hat is generally optimistic and looks forward to the future. However, it can be used to review the past, but from the perspective of what we can learn from past experiences, i.e., to be positive and to look bright.
The most important questions are:
- What are the advantages?
- Why is it going to work?
When to use Six Thinking Hats Retrospective
Six Thinking Hats technique allows the necessary emotion and skepticism to be incorporated into what otherwise would be purely rational decisions, thereby creating an opportunity for innovation in decision-making. Plans built using the methodology of Six Thinking Hats will be more robust and durable than otherwise would be the case.