Six Thinking Hats: How to Run de Bono’s Method in a Meeting or Workshop

TL;DR

• The six thinking hats are six modes of thinking (facts, feelings, caution, benefits, ideas and process) that a whole group uses one at a time, so nobody is arguing from a different direction.
• The blue hat is the chair. It opens the session, sets the order and time for each hat, and closes it with decisions and owners.
• A 45-minute running order works for most single decisions: blue, white, green, yellow, black, red, blue.
• In a big room, have everyone wear the same hat at once and collect answers on phones, rather than shouting across tables.
• Six Thinking Hats is a registered trademark of the de Bono Group. Use it as a meeting structure, not as a proven performance boost.

Six thinking hats is Edward de Bono’s method for getting a whole group to think in the same direction at the same time. It comes from his 1985 book, and the de Bono Group still describes it as a parallel thinking process. Below: what each hat does, a timed running order, a worked example, and how to take it from a meeting room to a conference hall.

One thing first. Six Thinking Hats is a registered trademark of the de Bono Group, which runs the official programmes. I am a conference host and facilitator, not a certified de Bono trainer, and this is an independent explainer.

What are the six thinking hats?

The six thinking hats are six labels for six kinds of thinking, each with a colour. Putting on a hat (literally or, far more often, by saying its name) tells everyone which kind of thinking the group is doing right now.

The descriptions below follow the de Bono Group’s own wording, with the question the chair asks under each one.

A UK public sector improvement guide published by The National Archives gives a memory hook for each: white suggests paper, red suggests fire, black a judge’s robes and green growth.

Why does the six thinking hats technique work in meetings?

It works because it stops the most common meeting pattern: one person takes a position and another attacks it. That National Archives guide describes the habit in “cultures with a tradition of argument”, where positions come from habit as much as thinking.

Under the hats, nobody is for or against. In black hat, everyone hunts for risks, including the person who proposed the idea. In yellow, the sceptics have to find the benefits. The Penguin edition pitches the book squarely at making meetings and discussions more effective.

Be honest about what it is. The de Bono Group says the method makes meetings “much shorter and more productive” but gives no figures. A review of 42 thinking frameworks found sparse evidence that training in tools like this improves thinking in general. Treat it as a good structure for a discussion, not a guarantee.

What does the blue hat do?

The blue hat runs the process. In practice, that is the chair’s job. The de Bono Group calls it the control mechanism that keeps the guidelines in place.

The blue hat does four things:

1. Opens: the question, the outcome needed and the order of hats.
2. Keeps time.
3. Polices the hats. Anyone slipping into black hat during green gets brought back, politely and quickly.
4. Closes: summarises what each hat produced, then turns it into decisions, owners and dates.

Every sample sequence starts and ends with blue, and the Niagara Institute adds a sensible last step: send everyone the notes. Untools suggests reaching for blue mid-session too, whenever a discussion stalls. It is the same skill a good panel moderator uses: hold the structure so everyone else can think. The guide on moderating panels covers that craft.

How to use the six thinking hats: a 45-minute running order

This running order follows the “choosing between alternatives” sequence (blue, white, green, yellow, black, red, blue) that is widely given for the method. It suits one decision with a group of 6 to 12. Write the question on a flipchart before anyone arrives.

Each hat usually gets a few minutes, but the red hat is deliberately short: limited to about 30 seconds in the classic version, to catch the instinct before people rationalise it. The energy in a room is a curve, so put a session like this in the morning, when heads are fresh, not in the 1:30pm slump. The agenda template shows where a working session sits in a full day.

Which hat sequence should you use?

Use the shortest sequence that answers your question. There is no single correct order. Blue opens and closes; the rest is up to you.

Those sequences come from the summary on Wikipedia. The National Archives guide shows a longer, practical version for a team reviewing its own ways of working: agree the goal, state the facts, give everyone time to say how they feel without interruption, talk only about successes, then name what is getting in the way, then generate actions.

A six thinking hats example: one business decision

Here is an illustration (not a client story) of one decision run through the 45-minute order. The question: should next January’s sales kickoff shrink from two days residential to one day?

• Blue: “We decide today whether to recommend one day or two. We go white, green, yellow, black, red, then back to blue at 10:40.”
• White: last year’s budget, how many people travelled overnight, the feedback scores, and one gap: nobody knows how many staff have caring responsibilities that make overnight stays hard.
• Green: a single day; two half days, one of them online; keep two days but drop the evening; a one-day event plus regional follow-ups.
• Yellow: the one-day option saves a night of hotel rooms and is easier for parents. The regional idea gets managers in front of their own teams.
• Black: a single day crams the agenda, and the evening was where cross-team networking actually happened.
• Red: most of the room feels the evening matters more than the second morning.
• Blue: recommend one long day with a proper evening, and survey staff on overnight stays before booking. Owners and a date go next to both actions.

Notice what did not happen. Nobody spent 20 minutes defending their favourite option, because the black hat came after the options were on the table. Santander Open Academy walks through a similar ERP rollout example if you want a second one.

How do you run six thinking hats with a large room?

Have the whole room wear the same hat at the same time, and collect answers on phones instead of by microphone. That keeps the parallel thinking intact, and it works in a hall, not just for twelve people in a training room.

A format that scales:

1. Blue from the stage. The host frames the question and shows the sequence on screen.
2. Each hat as a table round. Tables of 8 talk for a few minutes in the current hat, then one person submits the table’s best point by phone.
3. Green starts silent. Diehl and Stroebe found that production blocking, people waiting for their turn to speak, explained most of the idea loss in brainstorming groups. Two minutes of silent writing first fixes that.
4. Red goes anonymous. Everyone types one word at once. Cringe, not reluctance, is what kills participation, and nobody has to voice a feeling in front of the CEO.
5. Blue reads it back. The host groups the answers on screen and the senior person responds.

I use RoomReader, my own live Q&A software, which runs in the phone browser with nothing to download. Any decent audience response tool can do steps 2 and 4.

The other option is giving each table one hat for the whole session. Some guides, like Lucid Meetings, describe exactly that kind of assigned perspective. It is quicker, but it misses the point: the black hat table becomes “the critics”. If you do it, rotate the hats every round.

What goes wrong with the six thinking hats?

Most failures come from the chair letting one hat leak into another. Watch for these:

• Black hat everywhere. The de Bono Group calls black “probably the most powerful” hat and warns it becomes a problem if overused. Keep it in its slot.
• Justifying the red hat. The National Archives guide is clear that people do not need to justify their feelings. The moment someone asks “why?”, it is no longer red.
• Hats as personality labels. “Sam is our black hat” turns a thinking mode into a role someone is stuck with.
• Hats that drag on. Without a clock, white hat turns into a data debate and eats the session.
• No closing blue hat. A great discussion with no owners and dates is a nice chat.

Training, trademarks and where I fit

If you want formal training, the de Bono Group, which still carries the work of Edward de Bono (1933 to 2021, author of 70 books), runs the official course. Its programme page also offers trainer certification for anyone who wants to teach the method.

What I bring is the room. Over 20 years on stage and television and more than 800 events, I have found the hard part of any facilitation method is rarely the method. It is keeping the whole room with you while someone holds the structure. If you want a conference facilitator to run a working session like this at your conference or offsite, send the agenda or check availability at hello@conferencehost.uk.