Thinking Hats

1. Involves creative meaning

1.1. describes difficulties and looks for and finds solutions

2. Yellow Hat: like the sun that sheds light and is positive. It is about optimistic, hopeful and positive thinking.

2.1. Efforts, recommendations

2.2. • What is the best aspect of this? • What are its advantages? • Who can benefit from this? • How can these advantages be brought to light?

3. Red Hat: Red calls to mind anger, attitudes and feelings. It gives an emotional viewpoint.

3.1. Perception, experience

3.2. • What is your hunch about it? • What are you feeling now? • What prejudices are present? • What does your intuition tells you?

4. Green Hat: Green means blessing, productivity and growth. The colour green symbolises growth, energy and life. When thinking is done with the green hat recommendations, new opinions and alternatives are presented.

4.1. New Opinions, alternatives

4.2. •What are some new ideas on this subject? •What is interesting about this idea? •What are the differences in these ideas? • Where will this take me? • What is the effect of going forward with this idea? •When this idea is compared with what I know, what will happen?

5. Based on critical thinking

5.1. Reflective thinking and high level thinking processes...

5.1.1. thinking skills

5.1.2. arguments

5.1.3. meaning and interpretation

5.1.4. logical thinking patterns

5.1.5. theories and prejudice

6. White Hat: does not take sides and is objective

6.1. information, data, cases

6.2. •What kind of information do we have? •What kind of information do we need? •What information is missing? •How can get the information we need? •What kind of questions should be asked?

7. Black Hat: Black is pessimistic, negative and derogatory. Black reminds us of a judge’s robe. De Bono emphasised that this hat is the most beneficial and needs to be the most frequently used hat. This hat draws attention to dangers.

7.1. Risk, objective intervention

7.2. • What won't this work? • What are the consequences of? • What should be cautious of? • What were the difficulties of ?

8. Blue Hat: Blue represents calmness. It tries to have a regular and controlled thought process. The blue hat is used for looking directly at the process of thinking.

8.1. Conclusion, action-plan

8.2. •What should we do next? •What have we achieved so far? •What should we do to achieve more?