6 Hat Thinking: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For 6 Hat Thinking, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
About 1 minute
Try it here: choose the thinking mode to use
Choose the mode that fits your decision today, since each one looks at the same problem from a different angle.
Which mode do you need for your decision today?
Practices that may help
- Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats assigns six distinct thinking modes — facts, emotions, risks, optimism, creativity, and process — to six metaphorical colored hats, so that everyone in a group (or a single thinker) focuses on one mode at a time rather than arguing from mixed positions. Evidence for the specific technique comes largely from organizational case studies; the underlying principle of parallel versus adversarial thinking has support in group cognition research. - Parallel thinking drill: all hats in sequence for a real decision
Run a real pending decision through all six hats in sequence to experience the full method before adapting it.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - Blue hat: manage the thinking process itself
Step back from the content to manage which hat is needed next — the blue hat is the meta-thinking conductor.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - Green hat: generate new ideas and creative possibilities
The green hat is for generating alternatives and possibilities without evaluation — quantity and novelty over quality and correctness.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - White hat: establish the facts before opinion
Separate what is known from what is inferred — the white hat is for data only, with no interpretation.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - Black hat: identify risks and why something could fail
Apply the most rigorous critical scrutiny to the idea — the black hat is the voice of caution and evidence-based pessimism.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - The 6 Types of Working Genius (Patrick Lencioni)
Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius model describes six activities — Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity — that are required to complete any meaningful work. Each person finds two of these energizing (geniuses), two draining (frustrations), and two neutral (competencies). The model is a practitioner framework; it lacks independent peer-reviewed validation, but it provides a practically useful vocabulary for team role awareness. - Respect the three-outcome limit — not two, not five
Three is enough to be purposeful and few enough to be achievable; going beyond it dilutes attention across too many focal points.
The Rule of Three for Productivity, Made Practical - Generate solutions without premature evaluation
List as many potential solutions as possible before judging any of them.
Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical - Yellow hat: find genuine value and best-case scenarios
Actively search for why the idea could succeed and what value it would create — the yellow hat requires optimism to be evidence-based, not cheerleading.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’ve got one real decision in front of me and my head is doing all of it at once
- Our conversations just wander wherever the loudest voice takes them, and whole angles get skipped while we overcook others
- Every fresh idea gets shot down the second it’s spoken
- We keep arguing in circles and I’ve realized half of it is that nobody’s separated what we actually know from what we’re each just assuming
- We’ve all fallen in love with this plan and the room’s gone warm and agreeable, and now it feels almost rude to be the one raising what could go wrong
Related concerns
- 6 Hats
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats assigns six distinct thinking modes — facts, emotions, risks, optimism, creativity, and process — to six metaphorical colored hats, so that everyone in a group (or a single thinker) focuses on one mode at a time rather than arguing from mixed positions. Evidence for the specific technique comes largely from organizational case studies; the underlying principle of parallel versus adversarial thinking has support in group cognition research.
- Six Thinking Hats At Work
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats assigns six distinct thinking modes — facts, emotions, risks, optimism, creativity, and process — to six metaphorical colored hats, so that everyone in a group (or a single thinker) focuses on one mode at a time rather than arguing from mixed positions. Evidence for the specific technique comes largely from organizational case studies; the underlying principle of parallel versus adversarial thinking has support in group cognition research.
- What Are The 6 Thinking Hats
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats assigns six distinct thinking modes — facts, emotions, risks, optimism, creativity, and process — to six metaphorical colored hats, so that everyone in a group (or a single thinker) focuses on one mode at a time rather than arguing from mixed positions. Evidence for the specific technique comes largely from organizational case studies; the underlying principle of parallel versus adversarial thinking has support in group cognition research.
- 6 Hats Theory
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats assigns six distinct thinking modes — facts, emotions, risks, optimism, creativity, and process — to six metaphorical colored hats, so that everyone in a group (or a single thinker) focuses on one mode at a time rather than arguing from mixed positions. Evidence for the specific technique comes largely from organizational case studies; the underlying principle of parallel versus adversarial thinking has support in group cognition research.
- Black Hat Caution Six Hats
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats assigns six distinct thinking modes — facts, emotions, risks, optimism, creativity, and process — to six metaphorical colored hats, so that everyone in a group (or a single thinker) focuses on one mode at a time rather than arguing from mixed positions. Evidence for the specific technique comes largely from organizational case studies; the underlying principle of parallel versus adversarial thinking has support in group cognition research.
- Blue Hat Process Six Hats
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats assigns six distinct thinking modes — facts, emotions, risks, optimism, creativity, and process — to six metaphorical colored hats, so that everyone in a group (or a single thinker) focuses on one mode at a time rather than arguing from mixed positions. Evidence for the specific technique comes largely from organizational case studies; the underlying principle of parallel versus adversarial thinking has support in group cognition research.
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