Feelings trump facts

I have been an admirer of Dr Edward de Bono’s work for a long time.  I have read many of his books which are always stimulating; in fact I’m just about to finish ‘I’m right, you’re wrong.’

His ‘Six thinking hats’ is one of the books that has had the greatest influence upon me and my work.  Creating a simple mechanism to break down the act or process of thinking into manageable chunks and directions is a work of absolute genius.  Like telling jokes and making love, everyone thinks that thinking is something that comes naturally to them but it doesn’t.  Thinking about thinking makes you realise how bad you are at it and leads you to understand that there is a wonderful world of untapped thoughts outside of the narrow confines of the way we use our minds.

The premise is that there are six thinking processes that can be used independently to give a better insight into any problem or issue.  Each is represented by a coloured hat which the thinker can wear to focus their train of thought or to indicate to others in their group of the current thinking style.  A yellow hat for positive, green for creative, white for facts, black for negative, red for emotion and blue for control.

In a previous life I arranged a training course, or rather a thinking course on the contents of the book.  I remember opening the day by saying that I had been looking forward to putting the hats into action for a long time but theory can be a long way from practice.  Hard as I tried I could never get the concept to stick.  The trouble was it required everyone to play along and my colleagues didn’t always have the enthusiasm for the approach as I did.

I always thought that a number of hats had to be used at the same time rather than a single one.  That was until the other day when we were talking about a difficult inter-team problem.  We had been covering the same ground repeatedly over a number of meetings and everyone knew the facts.  What people didn’t know was how everyone felt.

I put on my virtual red hat and went round the table asking people not to say what they thought but rather what they felt about the subject.  The others weren’t allowed to interject or argue.  It is very difficult to beat belief using logic.  Through this exercise we moved from a position of apparent conflict to a position of consensus with each of the group having had the chance to speak and demonstrating similar concerns and anxieties.

I now have the confidence to try this technique again, perhaps with a different colour hat but I would recommend to anyone looking to know what people are thinking to ask then how they feel.