Six Thinking Hats

Six Thinking Hats (Edward de Bono) is a parallel thinking method for a single focus question. Rather than mixing logic, emotion, optimism, and critique in one back-and-forth, the thinker or group takes six complementary roles in sequence, all wearing the “same hat” at each step. That keeps facts, gut reactions, risks, upsides, and new ideas from talking past each other.

Each hat’s meaning, constraints, and bullet formats are defined once in The Hats; the closing Blue pass is in Blue Synthesis.

How to run it with this skill: one hat per section, clearly labelled; never mix two hats in the same section; always close with Blue synthesis that integrates earlier hats and adds no new facts, risks, ideas, or recommendations beyond what those hats produced.

Setup (run before starting)

Before executing hats, establish in one short block:

1. Focus question — one sentence
2. Mode — which hat set (see table below); default: Full
3. Depth — how much detail per hat (see table below); default: Standard
4. Hat order — list the sequence you'll follow