REaCT: Lessons of tolerance - Inclusive teaching of adults

The six thinking hats method was created by Edward De Bono, who is a leading authority in direct teaching of a thinking as a skill. He created the concept of lateral thinking and developed formal techniques for deliberate creative thinking.

De Bono proved that effectiveness of the thinking can be improved and can be improved through practice. ‘Usually, the only people who are very satisfied with their thinking are those poor thinkers who believe that the purpose of thinking is to prove yourself right - to your own satisfaction. If we have only a limited view of what thinking can do, we may be smug about our excellence in this area, but not otherwise.’[1]

As per author the difficulty in thinking is the confusion with too many thoughts at once. The main aim of six thinking hats method is to separate emotions, information, logic, expectations, hopes, ideas, creativity, etc. The challenge is to separate these from one another and think about one of them at a time.

‘The six thinking hats allows us to conduct our thinking as a conductor might lead an orchestra.’[2]

Each hat is defining thinking on specific aspect of a matter. It allows people to switch out of their usual thinking track in order to get them to think differently about the matter at hand.

In order to utilize the method in full it is important to start with playacting and roleplaying skills.

Playacting is imitating a desirable behaviour until this becomes your second nature. First you start with playing the role physically not mentally. By adopting physical poses and trying to go through motions. Your brain will follow the role you are playing. ‘If you playact being a thinker, you will become one.’[3] This is important to realise this for the purpose of this method in order to try to open new views and opinions.

Roleplaying which is playing at being someone else allows ego to go beyond its normal restrictive self-image.

’People do not mind “playing a fool”, so long as it is quite clear that they are just playing a role. They even take pride in putting on a good performance and playing an extremely foolish fool. That now becomes a measure of achievement and excellence. The role has taken over and the ego is now the stage director.’[4]

The role gives freedom. Without the protection of a formal role the ego is at risk.

The hat role is broken down into 6 different character roles, represented by 6 coloured thinking hats. Without the formality of the hats some thinkers would remain permanently stuck in one mode and one way of thinking.

The main values of using the six thinking hats method are:

• Defined role-playing, which defends the ego of a person and allows to say and think in a way that one could not otherwise.
• Attention directing, which allows to direct one’s thinking to one aspect after another and not all at once.
• Convenience of use the symbolism of the hats, which allows to ask a person (including yourself) to think in certain mode, e.g. stop being negative, be creative, give emotional responses, provide facts, etc.
• Establishing the rules of the game, which is based on the fact that people are good at memorising rules of the games therefore they are able to adopt them.  The rules established in this method concern thinking. The ‘game’ of thinking is mapmaking of different aspects instead of arguing.