What are the Six Thinking Hats?

Today marked the start of our summer workshops for the learning center and human resource departments.

I've organized two weeks of teaching new tools and practicing old ones. We kicked off today with Six Thinking Hats.

If you're not familiar with this thinking framework, you should check it out immediately. I never get tired of singing its' praises.

Here's a google search for 'six thinking hats pdf'. This will give you plenty of info to choose from. Or you can order Edward de Bono's book from Amazon.

The class is excellent. I enjoy putting strong tools into the hands of people who need them.

We had a good session today, with a lot of practice exercises. I'm looking forward to seeing it rolled out. It's amazing to see the shift from an exercise done without the Six Thinking Hats, to one done with them.

The basic concept is that debate results in an 'arm-wrestling' mentality that reduces any possibility of finding the best answer through synthesis. Any election shows how true this proposition is.

Instead, Six Thinking Hats proposes that we work through the six types of thinking together. The six types are:

• Blue/Process, 
• White/Information, 
• Red/Emotion, 
• Yellow/Positive, 
• Red/Negative, 
• Green/Creative

This way, we can leverage the intelligence of all participants. Sounds a little Utopian, I know, but it works!

If you think your group would benefit from reduced debate, better ideas, and more engaged participation, then take a look at Six Thinking Hats.

Where does Emotion Come From?

One of my favorite things about travel is that I finally get the time to read.

Today, I finished "blink" by Malcolm Gladwell.
Quite an interesting book, about how the best decisions are sometimes the ones made instantly.
Like most books I enjoy, it veers into many unexpected directions.

My favorite quote regards the surprising discovery, by a team of German psychologists, that your facial expression can influence your emotion (vs. the opposite view)

"...we take it as a given that first we experience an emotion and then we may - or may not - express that emotion on our face. We think of the face as the residue of emotion. What this research showed, though, is that the process works in the opposite direction as well. Emotion can also start on the face.
The face is not a secondary billboard for our internal feelings. It is an equal partner in the emotional process."

Which makes a pretty strong argument for the age-old warning "if you keep making that expression, your face will freeze"!

Tomorrow, I start on "The Wisdom of Crowds".