Six thinking hats exercise

Since engineers and business leaders do so much of their work as teams, teamwork skills and interpersonal communication are increasingly important for professional success. Try this group thinking exercise to examine differing points of view on an. Six thinking hats center for teaching and learning. Six thinking hats is designed for individuals and groups looking for effective thinking tools for better outcomes. To use the six thinking hats technique in a brainstorming scenario in order to assess the ideas generated in previous exercises. With the group, the facilitator determines an order to use the hats. Document resume cs 509 316 author carl, walter john, iii. The purpose of thinking hats is to focus your way of thinking, so putting an actual hat on your head may help you or your students, or it could just be a new form of distraction. Use this comprehensive guide on how to solve problems using the six thinking hats in business and life. Dec 04, 2012 six thinking hats exercise venture labs course stay klassy team dec 2012 slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. Six thinking hats theory and how to apply it to problem. The key is to list questions that everybody can focus on and cycle through. Six thinking hats brainstorming technique training 1.

Apply the six thinking hats approach with or without hats. By breaking down thoughts into six parallel or lateral areas, it allows a spectrum of thought, from gut feeling to data analysis, to be separately discussed. The six thinking hats technique for problem solving youtube. Use it to challenge and improve the way you think together, to reach better decisions and more innovative solutions. The facilitator passes out a worksheet with descriptions of the six hats to each group member. The six hats of critical thinking and how to use them. Creativethinkingandcriticalthinkingarebothimportantaspectsofproblemsolving. The six thinking hats exercise guide free download as pdf file. Parallel thinking guides thought processes in one direction at a time so we can effectively analyze issues, generate new ideas, and make better decisions.

Six thinking hats used with welldefined and explicit return on investment success in corporations worldwide, six thinking hats is a simple, effective parallel thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused, and mindfully involved. The six thinking hats model creates six artificial contexts for thinking, corresponding to the primary thought modes of objective, subjective, critical, and creative. The timer can ask for any of the six thinking hats. Six thinking hats and the associated idea parallel thinking provide a means for groups to plan thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive way, and in doing so to think together more effectively. You can take the term thinking hats as literally as you like. Brainstorming technique used in process improvement, project management and problem sloving. Three key exercises to define team roles saberr blog. Six hats for parallel thinking activity description. How to use the six thinking hats technique lucidchart blog. Now that you have a solid understanding of the six thinking hats problemsolving process, its time to briefly point out how these hats work together to help you formulate effective solutions and new ideas. A study presents a perceptual model of thinking called the six thinking hats and argumentativeness as a predictor of response to the model. A facilitator is recommended to lead the exercise and keep time. Six thinking hats enables a systematic thinking for better ideas and decisions. Six thinking hats in the classroom 6 thinking hats activities.

As he pulls out the six hats, you notice that each one is a different color. It seems too simple to just mock up a meeting so i was wondering, does anyone out their have a good exercise that they run to bring t. Six thinking hats brainstorming technique overview travis eck senior business process analyst. Optimistic judgmental creative emotional directiongiving factual. The exercise promotes collaboration and creativity by providing a structured way for team members to analyze their design concepts and prototypes. The theory suggests that people tend to have a preferred approach to problem solving, i. Download the activity description and six hats description worksheet as a pdf here. Use the six thinking hats to solve your next creative challenge. These are the six thinking hats, showing various different ways of approaching problems but of course, not everyone is alike, and people will naturally prefer some ways of thinking to others.

May 24, 2012 presents an efficient technique to help you in your decision making process. This parallel thinking technique provides a structure for students to explore six distinct perspectives of a complex issue or scenario. The six thinking hats exercise guide creativity thought. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. A thinking hat is a metaphor for a certain way of thinking. It transforms thinking and communication, as well as halving meeting times and doubling their effectiveness. As you work through your six thinking hats exercises, you may want to come up with more questions that take into account the optimistic role of the yellow hat. To counter this tendency, in the 1980s he codified the six thinking hats technique, which invites people to explore multiple perspectives of a question or problem. You may wish to enlarge these to a3 size, so students have more space to write. Six hats thinking merely offers an alternative way to look at things.

Six thinking hats six thinking hats is a strategy that teaches students be flexible thinkers. This led to the development of his, now famous, six thinking hats theory. How to use the six thinking hats to improve your thinking. Sep 23, 2019 whether it is finding a new strategic approach, refining your marketing, or creating new product designs. Aug 22, 2017 how the thinking hats can help the six hats exercise asks you to actively explore different ways of thinking about a problem. The premise is the human brain thinks in a number of distinct ways that can be deliberately challenged, and hence planned for use in a structured way, allowing one to develop tactics for thinking about particular issues. How to solve problems using the six thinking hats method. The six hats exercise described below provides a framework for students to practice both. This approach for using six thinking hats is lightweight and lowoverhead, but gets you 80% there without requiring everybody to know the details of the six thinking hats. The blue hat writes down the creative problem statement on the board. The six thinking hats technique is a classic dynamic for encouraging communication in businesses, but its also common as an exercise in universities and elementary school classrooms. Free resource for teachers six thinking hats classroom.

Ask for green hat thinkingwhat ideas do you have to solve the black hat problems. The idea behind the 6 hats approach is that people bring different. The six hats thinking exercise for edc to promote creativity and teamwork. There, its used to teach children how to think better and make decisions as a group. It allows emotion and skepticism to be brought into what might normally be a purely rational process, and it opens up the opportunity for creativity within decision making. It concludes that, by imagining that you are wearing different hats, you will be encouraged to think about the problem from different perspectives. Marty, walks in to the meeting carrying a bag of hats. A powerful tool set, which once learned can be applied immediately. His most famous work deals with the concept of lateral thinking.

He associated this with people wearing different hats and identified the different approaches by using hats of different colours. The six hats exercise helps the discussion to be more balanced and take various points of view and ideas into account, and forces people to take positions that may not necessarily be natural to them, which forces us to be more creative in our thinking. By mentally wearing different thinking hats people are forced to look at a problem from different perspectives. The thinking hats exercise is a kind of roleplay in which different perspectives are represented by hats of different colours. Ask for black hat thinkingwhat would make it difficult to provide free wheelchairs. Use the six thinking hats to solve your next creative.

With the group, the facilitator identifies a topic for discussion. Six thinking hats brainstorming technique training slideshare. It seems too simple to just mock up a meeting so i was wondering, does anyone out their have a good exercise that they run to bring this theory alive. The technique encourages a group or an individual to approach the issue at. Students learn about six different types of thinking they can apply to any situation, represented by different colored hats. To counter this tendency, in the 1980s he codified the six thinking hats technique. His work is now widely used in education and business.