{"id":3961,"date":"2026-10-07T09:05:44","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T09:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/?p=3961"},"modified":"2026-10-14T09:07:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T09:07:39","slug":"what-is-six-thinking-hats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/what-is-six-thinking-hats\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Six Thinking Hats\u00ae? A plain-English guide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3962\" src=\"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/What-is-Six-Thinking-Hats\u00ae-240x300.png\" alt=\"What is Six Thinking Hats\u00ae? Same meeting, six perspectives, one decision properly examined\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/What-is-Six-Thinking-Hats\u00ae-240x300.png 240w, https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/What-is-Six-Thinking-Hats\u00ae-819x1024.png 819w, https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/What-is-Six-Thinking-Hats\u00ae-768x960.png 768w, https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/What-is-Six-Thinking-Hats\u00ae.png 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> isn&#8217;t about putting people into boxes. It&#8217;s about stopping everyone from thinking in different directions at once.\u00a0Some assume it&#8217;s an icebreaker. Others assume it&#8217;s a way of assigning personality types to a team. Neither is right.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is a structured method for group and individual thinking, developed by Edward de Bono. It gives a team a shared way to examine a problem, decision or plan from different perspectives, rather than having everyone argue from a different angle at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>This guide explains what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is, what the six hats represent and where it fits alongside other structured thinking approaches such as Lateral Thinking.<\/p>\n<h2>What is Six Thinking Hats\u00ae?<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is a way to structure how a group thinks and discusses something, rather than telling people what conclusion to reach.<\/p>\n<p>In most meetings, everyone brings a different lens to the table at the same time. One person is focused on risk. Another is excited about the opportunity. Someone else has a concern they never quite get the chance to raise.\u00a0The result can be a conversation that jumps between viewpoints without properly examining any of them.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> provides a shared structure for looking at an issue from different perspectives.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of a meeting where:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cI think this is too risky.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/em><em>\u201cWell I think it&#8217;s a great opportunity.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/em><em>\u201cCan we just get the facts straight first?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>all happen at once, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> gives those different ways of thinking their own place in the discussion. It&#8217;s a method for organising thinking, not a personality framework.<\/p>\n<h2>Six Thinking Hats\u00ae isn&#8217;t just a meeting gimmick<\/h2>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to assume <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is simply a way to liven up a meeting. It isn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Each \u201chat\u201d represents a specific mode of thinking. The method gives people a shared language for recognising different perspectives and making sure they aren&#8217;t overlooked.\u00a0That matters because discussions don&#8217;t always naturally produce a balanced view.\u00a0A confident opinion can dominate. A concern can be dismissed too quickly. An interesting possibility can disappear because the conversation moves straight into criticism. Facts can get mixed up with assumptions.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> provides a structure for separating these different kinds of thinking rather than allowing them all to compete at once. The difference is between hoping a discussion covers the important angles and deliberately creating space for them.<\/p>\n<h2>What do the Six Thinking Hats\u00ae represent?<\/h2>\n<p>The method uses six named perspectives, each represented by a colour. You don&#8217;t need to learn how to run a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> session to understand the basic idea. The hats represent different modes of thinking:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>White Hat is concerned with facts, information and what is known or still needs to be found out.<\/li>\n<li>Red Hat represents feelings, hunches and intuition, without requiring them to be justified.<\/li>\n<li>Black Hat represents caution, risks, difficulties and what could go wrong.<\/li>\n<li>Yellow Hat represents benefits, value and the positive possibilities of an idea.<\/li>\n<li>Green Hat represents creativity, new possibilities, alternatives and different ways of looking at something.<\/li>\n<li>Blue Hat represents the thinking process itself: the structure, focus and organisation of the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The important point isn&#8217;t the colours themselves. It&#8217;s the deliberate separation of different modes of thinking.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Why sequencing matters<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">Knowing what the hats represent is the easy part. Most people can learn the six colours in a couple of minutes. The real skill is in how they&#8217;re used in a real discussion: the sequence, emphasis and way each perspective is brought in can all affect the quality of the thinking.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The key is sequencing:<\/strong> building the right order of hats to use so the discussion covers what it needs to, rather than jumping between perspectives at random. Get the sequence wrong &#8211; moving to Yellow Hat optimism before the risks have had a proper airing, for example &#8211; and the discussion can end up just as unbalanced as it would have been without any structure, just with colour-coded labels on it.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is something teams learn to use together, rather than something one person reads about and tries to run solo.<\/p>\n<h2>Can Six Thinking Hats\u00ae be taught?<\/h2>\n<p>Yes. That&#8217;s the whole point of it being a method rather than a personality trait. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> isn&#8217;t about naturally balanced people running naturally balanced meetings. It&#8217;s a learnable approach that can be applied to individual and group thinking.<\/p>\n<p>That makes it particularly useful for teams that already know each other well &#8211; where habits, assumptions and hierarchy can otherwise influence who gets heard and which ideas get explored.\u00a0You don&#8217;t need a naturally balanced team to have a more balanced discussion. You need a shared method.<\/p>\n<h2>What does AI have to do with Six Thinking Hats\u00ae?<\/h2>\n<p>AI has made it easier than ever to produce an answer quickly.\u00a0But a fast answer isn&#8217;t necessarily a complete answer.\u00a0AI-generated analysis can sound confident and comprehensive while still missing important perspectives. It may identify the facts and obvious benefits, for example, while giving less attention to risks, human reactions or genuinely different possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>That creates a familiar problem in a different form: a team can mistake a fluent answer for a fully considered one. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> provides a way of thinking about that problem. It gives teams a framework for considering whether an issue has been examined from the different perspectives that matter: including those that may not have appeared in an initial AI-generated response.<\/p>\n<p>AI can produce a confident-sounding answer.\u00a0The question is whether the thinking behind that answer has been properly challenged.\u00a0It&#8217;s a similar problem to the one AI creates for idea generation, covered in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/blog\/what-is-lateral-thinking\/\">our guide to Lateral Thinking<\/a> &#8211; a fluent AI answer is a starting point, not a finished one, whether the task is generating options or examining them.<\/p>\n<h2>Where does Lateral Thinking fit in?<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> and Lateral Thinking are often mentioned together because both were developed by Edward de Bono, but they do different jobs.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is primarily a structured way to examine an idea, decision or plan from different perspectives.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-lateral-thinking\">Lateral Thinking<\/a> is primarily about opening up new perceptions and generating alternatives that teams might not otherwise reach.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The distinction matters.\u00a0Examining an idea properly doesn&#8217;t automatically mean the team had enough good alternatives to examine in the first place. Teams also need ways of challenging established thinking and opening up new possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>The two approaches are complementary rather than competing.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-lateral-thinking\"><strong>Lateral Thinking<\/strong><\/a> helps generate alternatives and challenge established thinking.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> provides a structure for examining an issue from different perspectives.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Together, they form part of a broader approach to creative and critical thinking.<\/p>\n<h2>Six Thinking Hats\u00ae, creative thinking and critical thinking<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is closely related to both creative and critical thinking, but it isn&#8217;t simply another name for either.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Critical thinking<\/strong> is the broader process of examining, questioning and evaluating information, assumptions and conclusions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Creative thinking<\/strong> is concerned with generating new or useful ideas and possibilities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">The method brings different kinds of thinking into a shared structure. The Green Hat explicitly creates space for creativity and alternatives, while the other hats represent different perspectives that can bring facts, caution, benefits, feelings and process into the wider discussion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">That makes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> particularly relevant to teams that need to do more than simply generate ideas or criticise them. It creates a framework for recognising that good thinking can involve different perspectives and that those perspectives don&#8217;t always naturally appear in a meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"isSelectedEnd\">The real value comes from being able to move between different kinds of thinking deliberately, rather than allowing one mode of thinking to dominate the discussion.<\/p>\n<p>This is increasingly relevant when AI is involved. AI can make it easy to arrive at a confident-sounding conclusion quickly, but people still need to think critically about what has been considered, what may have been missed and what deserves further exploration.<\/p>\n<h2>Who uses Six Thinking Hats\u00ae?<\/h2>\n<p>Despite the name, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> isn&#8217;t a niche technique reserved for facilitators or away-days. It can be relevant anywhere a group needs to make a decision, weigh up a plan or work through a complex issue without one perspective automatically dominating.<\/p>\n<p>That includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Strategy<\/li>\n<li>Leadership<\/li>\n<li>Project and change management<\/li>\n<li>Risk and governance<\/li>\n<li>Product development<\/li>\n<li>Operations<\/li>\n<li>Customer service<\/li>\n<li>Marketing<\/li>\n<li>Sales and business development<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because the method is based on a shared structure rather than personality, it can be used with many different types of teams and working environments.<\/p>\n<p>The aim isn&#8217;t to make everyone think alike.\u00a0It&#8217;s to make sure different kinds of thinking have a chance to be considered.<\/p>\n<h2>Learn Six Thinking Hats\u00ae in practice<\/h2>\n<p>Understanding what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is only takes you so far. The real value comes from knowing how to apply the method effectively to real decisions, discussions and challenges. That&#8217;s something that&#8217;s much easier to understand by experiencing the approach rather than simply reading about it.<\/p>\n<p>Our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats workshop<\/a> introduces the method and gives participants the opportunity to experience it in practice, working with real decisions and challenges.<\/p>\n<p>Get in touch to talk about bringing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> to your team, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/calendar\">view upcoming public workshop dates<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Frequently asked questions<\/h2>\n<h3>Who invented Six Thinking Hats?<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> was developed by Edward de Bono, who also coined the term \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-lateral-thinking\">Lateral Thinking<\/a>\u201d in 1967. He later developed Six Thinking Hats as a separate, complementary method for structuring group discussion and decision-making.<\/p>\n<h3>What do the Six Thinking Hats mean?<\/h3>\n<p>The six hats represent different modes of thinking: White for information and facts, Red for feelings and intuition, Black for caution and risks, Yellow for benefits and value, Green for creativity and alternatives, and Blue for the thinking process itself.<\/p>\n<h3>Is Six Thinking Hats a personality test?<\/h3>\n<p>No. The hats don&#8217;t represent personality types. They represent different modes of thinking that can be considered as part of a structured approach to thinking and discussion.<\/p>\n<h3>Is Six Thinking Hats the same as critical thinking?<\/h3>\n<p>They overlap, but they aren&#8217;t exactly the same.<\/p>\n<p>Critical thinking is a broad term covering the examination and evaluation of ideas and information. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is more specific: it&#8217;s a defined method for structuring how a group examines an issue from different perspectives.<\/p>\n<h3>Can Six Thinking Hats be taught?<\/h3>\n<p>Yes. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> is based on a learnable structure rather than an innate personality trait. It can be taught, practised and applied to real business discussions and decisions.<\/p>\n<h3>How is Six Thinking Hats different from Lateral Thinking?<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-six-thinking-hats\">Six Thinking Hats\u00ae<\/a> focuses primarily on examining an idea, decision or plan from different perspectives.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indigobusiness.co.uk\/Workshop\/de-bonos-lateral-thinking\">Lateral Thinking<\/a> focuses primarily on generating alternatives and finding different ways to approach a problem in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>The two approaches are complementary and can support different parts of the thinking process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Six Thinking Hats\u00ae isn&#8217;t about putting people into boxes. It&#8217;s about stopping everyone from thinking in different directions at once.\u00a0Some assume it&#8217;s an icebreaker. Others assume it&#8217;s a way of assigning personality types to a team. Neither is right. Six &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/what-is-six-thinking-hats\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,252],"tags":[168,165,200,143,169,164,186,13,15],"class_list":["post-3961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creativity","category-edward-de-bono","category-six-thinking-hats","tag-critical-thinking","tag-decision-making","tag-do-more-with-less","tag-dr-edward-de-bono","tag-idea-evaluation","tag-meetings","tag-shorten-meetings","tag-six-thinking-hats","tag-thinking"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is Six Thinking Hats\u00ae? A plain-English guide - the indigo blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is Six Thinking Hats, really? A plain-English guide to Edward de Bono&#039;s method for structuring discussions and making better decisions.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wpblog.indigobusiness.co.uk\/what-is-six-thinking-hats\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Six Thinking Hats\u00ae? A plain-English guide - the indigo blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is Six Thinking Hats, really? 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