Six Thinking Hats: Edward de Bono's Method With Examples

By Kevin Kim · Updated Oct 13, 2026

Six Thinking Hats is a meeting method created by Edward de Bono in which a group looks at a problem through six separate modes of thinking, one at a time: facts (white), feelings (red), risks (black), benefits (yellow), new ideas (green) and process control (blue). Everyone wears the same hat at once, so people explore the issue together instead of arguing positions.

Where Six Thinking Hats Comes From

Edward de Bono published Six Thinking Hats in 1985. Open Library's record for the original edition lists it as a 207-page Little, Brown book from that year, and Hachette lists a later trade paperback that frames the method around one problem: "The main difficulty of thinking is confusion." The hats are his answer. They pull emotion, information, logic, hope and creativity apart so you deal with one at a time.

The idea underneath is what de Bono called parallel thinking. On the De Bono Group's own page, it's contrasted with ordinary argument. In argument, one side tries to defeat the other. In parallel thinking, each person puts thoughts forward alongside everyone else's, without attacking them. The same page calls the hats a practical way to do this.

That's the real shift. Most meetings quietly assign roles: the optimist, the skeptic, the person who always raises the budget. Six Thinking Hats turns those personalities into modes anyone can switch on. The skeptic gets a proper slot for caution. The optimist gets a proper slot for benefits. Nobody has to defend a personality.

Key Facts

• Origin: Six Thinking Hats was first published in 1985 by Little, Brown and runs 207 pages in that edition.
• Core rule: Under the method, everyone wears the same hat at the same time, so the group can explore all sides of an issue together.
• Process hat: The De Bono Group describes blue as process control: it manages the thinking and keeps the method's guidelines in place.

The Six Hats

Each hat is a direction of thinking, not a personality type. The De Bono Group's program page defines them like this, and the table adds a prompt you can use in the room.

White hat: facts only

The De Bono Group sums this one up as "The facts, just the facts." In practice it means numbers, dates, customer quotes and known gaps. It's fine to say "we don't have the churn figure for Q3." That gap becomes a task rather than an argument.

Red hat: feelings without justification

Red is the hat people skip, and it's often the one that explains why a decision stalls. It covers emotion and intuition, so it's the place for "this feels rushed" or "I don't trust this vendor." Ask people to state the feeling and move on. Nobody has to defend it, which is the point.

Black hat: careful judgment

Black looks for risk. The De Bono Group's page calls it probably the most powerful hat, and also warns it becomes a problem when overused. That matches most people's experience: teams that default to black thinking kill ideas before anyone has built them out. Give risk its own slot and it tends to be sharper and shorter.

Yellow hat: value and benefits

Yellow is deliberate optimism. It asks what's good about the idea, who benefits, and under what conditions it works. It isn't cheerleading. A strong yellow round names specific benefits and the assumptions behind them, which makes the black round that follows more honest.

Green hat: new ideas

Green is where you generate options, extend a promising idea, or fix a problem black just raised. It overlaps with creativity as a skill, but here it's time-boxed and sits alongside the other modes rather than replacing them.

Blue hat: the process

Blue manages the session. It sets the objective, picks the hat sequence, keeps time, summarizes, and calls the next step. It's the hat the facilitator wears most, which is why it pairs naturally with facilitation skills.

Six Thinking Hats vs Related Methods

People often compare the hats to other group techniques. They solve different problems, and they combine well.

A few notes on how these fit together.

Brainstorming is a single mode. The hats give you the other five modes around it, so you aren't stuck choosing between "generate more" and "pick one." A devil's advocate carries all the criticism on one person's shoulders. With the black hat, the whole group takes that role together, and then moves on.

The ladder of inference is a good partner for the white hat. If someone offers a "fact" that's really an interpretation, asking what a camera would have recorded gets you back to data. For teams that want to ground ideas in user research first, design thinking supplies the front end, and the hats can structure the discussions inside it.

Why It Works: Parallel Thinking

Think about a typical product-launch meeting. The VP says the date is realistic. The engineering lead says it isn't. Each defends a position, and the conversation is now about who's right, not about what's true.

Parallel thinking changes the structure. The group spends five minutes on facts, then five on risks, then five on benefits. The engineering lead's schedule concern still gets raised, but it arrives in the black hat slot, as a contribution to the group's map of the problem, not an attack on the VP. The VP's confidence gets its own yellow slot, backed by specifics.

That separation does three practical things:

1. It lowers the cost of speaking up. Naming a risk during black hat time isn't disloyal, because everyone is doing it.
2. It stops mixed-mode statements. A line like "That won't work, it's ugly, and we never had budget for it" blends a risk, a feeling and a fact. The hats pull them apart.
3. It balances airtime. Because every hat applies to everyone, quieter people can contribute to modes they'd normally leave to others.

It's also a useful check against groupthink. A scheduled black hat round makes dissent part of the process, so no one has to be the lone dissenter.

A word on evidence. Six Thinking Hats is a widely used facilitation method. Much of the writing about it is by practitioners and trainers, and the benefits claimed on training sites are the vendors' own. Treat the method as a structure for discussion that many teams find useful, not as a proven way to hit a specific result. You can judge it for your team the same way you'd judge any meeting format: did the decision come faster and did people leave clearer?

How to Run a Six Thinking Hats Session

Here's a version that works for a 45 to 60 minute meeting with four to eight people.

1. Define the question. Write one sentence the group can answer. "Should we move the launch to March?" works. "Talk about the launch" doesn't.
2. Name a facilitator. One person owns the blue hat. They explain the method, the purpose of each hat, and agree a default time per hat.
3. Open with blue. State the objective and the sequence of hats you'll use. Post the question where everyone can see it.
4. Run the hats in order. Announce each hat, remind the group what it means, and keep the discussion inside it. If someone raises a risk during yellow, note it and park it for black.
5. Capture on a shared surface. Record points on a whiteboard or shared document, grouped by hat. The same playbook recommends this because the record becomes the meeting output.
6. Check before switching. The facilitator checks the group is ready before moving on, and manages the clock.
7. Close with blue. Summarize what came out of each hat, decide what happens next, and assign owners.

A few facilitation habits help. Keep rounds short and make the list of points, not the length of speech, the output. If someone slips into the wrong mode, redirect them kindly: "That sounds like a black hat point, can we hold it for that round?" And if the group is new to the method, use a fixed sequence rather than inventing one on the fly.

Hat Sequences for Common Meetings

There's no single correct order. The right sequence depends on what the meeting is for. One published set of presets, from the practical.li engineering playbook, is a good starting point. Blue opens and closes each one.

Two things to notice. White usually comes early, because a shared fact base prevents the later rounds from running on guesses. And green often appears twice in problem-solving sequences: once to generate options, once to repair what black exposed. That second pass is where good ideas get stronger.

If you're not sure where to start, try the "solving problems" sequence for a decision that matters and the "quick feedback" sequence for a draft or proposal that needs a fast review.

A Ready-to-Copy Six Thinking Hats Template

Copy this table into a shared document. Fill it in live, one row at a time.

Facilitator checklist before the meeting:

• One-sentence question written and shared in advance
• Sequence chosen to fit the meeting type
• Timer ready and a visible record set up
• Pre-reads limited to facts, so the white hat starts with shared data

Closing prompts for the final blue round:

• What is the decision, in one sentence?
• Which risks are we accepting, and which do we need to reduce first?
• What's the very next action, and who owns it?

Examples by Business Function

These are illustrative scenarios, not case studies. They show how the same structure applies across teams.

Sales: choosing a pricing change

A sales director wants to test a 10 percent increase for new customers. White hat: current close rates, average deal size, and the competitor prices the team has actually seen. Red hat: reps feel nervous about the conversation, and one admits she's been discounting by habit. Yellow: higher margin on deals that would have closed anyway. Black: a possible drop in win rate against the cheapest competitor. Green: test it on one segment only, with a short script. Blue: agree the test, the metric and a review date.

Product: deciding whether to ship now or wait

The team has a feature that's 90 percent done. White: open bug count, customer requests, and the support load from the last release. Black: the risk of a visible defect. Yellow: customers who've been waiting. Green: ship to a small cohort first. The pre-agreed black round keeps the engineers' caution from sounding like resistance. It also feeds directly into decision-making.

HR: reviewing a hiring process

HR is reviewing why offer acceptance has dropped. White hat covers what candidates said in exit surveys and how long each stage takes. Red hat surfaces recruiter frustration. Green proposes shorter interview loops. This is a clean fit for problem-solving, because the hats keep complaints from turning into a blame session.

Operations: post-incident review

After an outage, start with white: a timeline of what happened. Skip black until the timeline is agreed, because blame tends to leak into the facts. Then red for how people felt during the incident, yellow for what worked, black for failures, and green for fixes. Close with blue and named owners.

Leadership: a strategy offsite

Leaders can use a long sequence such as strategic planning. Yellow and black go first and give a balanced view of the plan before facts are layered in. Giving each executive the same hat at the same moment also stops the most senior voice from setting the frame. It pairs with critical thinking, since each hat is a different test of the same idea.

Do's and Don'ts

Limits and Common Mistakes

The method isn't magic, and it has costs. A full sequence takes time, so don't use it for a ten-minute stand-up. It works best when a decision is real, contested or high-stakes. Teams also run into some predictable problems.

Hats turn into labels. If people start saying "you're always black hat," the method has been misused. The hats are modes anyone can use, not types of people.

The facilitator dominates. Blue controls the process, not the content. A facilitator who also pushes their own view in every round undermines the whole structure.

Red is skipped. Teams that treat feelings as unprofessional lose real information. A short red round often reveals the actual blocker.

Rounds become debates. If black discussion turns into argument about whether a risk is real, note it and move on. The goal is to map risks, not resolve each one on the spot.

The sequence is too rigid. Beginners should stick to a fixed order, but experienced groups can adapt. If new facts appear mid-session, it's fine to go back to white.

If your team is stuck in recurring conflict, the hats may not be the right first tool. It can be worth looking at how people reason individually, using the ladder of inference, before reaching for a group structure.