Different ways of thinking, learning, and communicating is what makes people differ from one another, which means they’re somewhat naturally cross-functional. It might be a challenge to make a team out of different individuals communicate successfully, especially if they work remotely. Luckily, there are a numer of techniques that might help to take advantage of that diversity. Six Thinking Hats by E. de Bono is one of them.
Six thinking hats – how it works
At first, the members of the team need to be laid out the problem to be solved. To support the team’s self-management, I recommend that one of the team’s members do it. In the case of less mature teams, you can simply put forward the problem to the team. The meanings of the six thinking hats:
⚪ The white hat represents sheer facts concerning the problem.
💛 The yellow one reflects optimism, so it represents advantages of solutions or ideas provided.
🍏 The green one refers to the opportunities we have in a situation given.
🔷 The blue one refers to logical thinking, devoid of emotions.
🔴 The red one relates to emotions and feelings that the problem triggers.
⚫ The black one symbolizes pessimism we display towards the problem or the solution.
Six thinking hats – the advantages
It’s a great technique because it helps you:
✅ to promote: critical thinking,
✅ to structure our thinking,
✅ to discuss a problem or a solution,
✅ to look for potential solutions.
The reason why I’m deeply in love with it is because it takes DIFFERENT thinking styles into account. It gets people to talk. You might try it out during the Retrospective.
