The Hat-Trick: Using the Six Hats to Hack Thinking Ruts
Frankie Kemp
28 August 2025
Your Six Thinking Hats For Problem Solving
When it comes to navigating complex problems, leading teams, or making decisions that actually stick, we need to be mentally flexible, examine challenges and be able to do this with or without tapping into AI.
However, we become stuck in our standpoints. We’re living in a time when algorithms serve us news that confirms our biases, narrowing our worldview and deepening societal polarisation.
Additionally, conversations are squeezed into short windows, so we default to habitual thinking styles.
These ruts often reflect in group dynamics. Such interactions often reinforce the same approaches, the same reactions. Without the ability to switch perspective, we limit our capacity to challenge assumptions, uncover blind spots, and generate meaningful solutions.
And if you’re using AI to help leap creative challenges, you—the human—need to raise the right questions. Mental flexibility can’t be just tapped into a screen. The mind needs to be programmed for this, asking the questions that uncover solutions, rather than leading you into dead ends.
Enter Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats (1985) – a deceptively simple framework that helps you hold up a problem like a prism and examine it from multiple angles. You can use it as a tool for creative brainstorming. Beyond that, this is a powerful way to disrupt cognitive autopilot.
THE THINKING HATS
- ⚪White Hat thinking is concerned with objective facts and figures. What do we know, what do we think we know and what don’t we know? Where can we find information to fill in the gaps?
- 🟩Green Hat thinking is focused on creativity and new ideas. It’s focused on alternatives, possibilities and new ideas, concepts or perceptions.
- 🟥 Red Hat thinking involves emotional and intuitive responses. It provides space for a participant to give an intuitive response. As the hat concerned with feelings, you can express likes, fears, hates for example.
- 🟨Yellow Hat (logical positive) thinking is optimistic and focuses on the possible. It looks at advantages and benefits. This type of thinking will seek value if it’s not explicit.
- ⬛Black Hat (logical negative – THE CHALLENGER) thinking brings a cautious approach and identifies the weakness in an idea. The Black Hat, is not about saying, “It won’t work”, but about presenting challenges or inviting consideration of obstacles, risks or problems – before they happen. Here are some ways of presenting opposite points of view without seeming to contradict.
- 🔵 Blue Hat thinking involves the organisation of the thinking process. The facilitator or moderator of the discussion often takes the lead in Blue Hat thinking. One function is to identify the best sequence of hats to apply to the topic or problem at hand.
Why Use the Hats—When You’ve Got AI?
Sure, you can ask AI to explain the root causes of halitosis or how to make a cake out of a cucumber and an old stylus.
“Can’t I just use AI to introduce other perspectives?”
Yes, you can. Even in the age of AI, we need mental flexibility: in fact, we need even more of it. However, unless you prompt it with the right questions, you’ll get answers that reflect your own biases. That’s why the Thinking Hats are so useful—they help you ask better questions.
For example:
- How might a Black Hat thinker challenge an idea?
What risks, flaws, or unintended consequences might they spot? - How might a White Hat thinker approach a perspective?
What data is missing? What do we actually know?
You can use these questions for your own mental switching as well as for your team, your clients, your stakeholders.
They help you stretch beyond your default lens and invite others to do the same.
How a client used a ‘Hat Switch’
A relentlessly positive senior client (classic Yellow Hat) was told by a technical lead to be more critical with his team. We reframed “critical” as “challenging”—a more constructive take on the Black Hat.
It helped him ask tougher questions without losing his optimism. The download here gives you the speaking prompts that could be used intrapersonally (in your head, to yourself) or interpersonally (with others).
🎩 Six Thinking Hats in Action: Examples for Technical and High-Stakes Professionals
| Hat | Focus | Typical Style | Stretch Prompt | Example in Practice |
| ⚪ White Hat | Facts, data, gaps | Analysts, researchers, auditors | What do we think we know—but haven’t verified? What’s missing? | A software rollout plan assumes user adoption. White Hat asks: What’s the actual uptake rate in similar contexts? |
| 🟩 Green Hat | Creativity, alternatives | Designers, product teams, innovation leads | What’s a wild idea that might work? What’s a workaround no one’s tried? | A software team stuck on a bug brainstorms using Green Hat: “What if we reverse the logic flow entirely?” or “Could we crowdsource a fix?” |
| 🟥 Red Hat | Emotion, intuition | Often underused in technical teams | What’s your gut saying—even if it’s irrational? What feels off? | An engineer feels uneasy about a supplier’s reliability. Red Hat gives permission to voice that instinct before data confirms it. |
| 🟨Yellow Hat | Optimism, benefits | “Can-do” leaders, solution-focused teams | What’s the realistic upside—not just the ideal one ? | An IT manager proposes a new system upgrade. Yellow Hat thinking highlights faster processing and improved UX—but needs to be balanced with Black Hat caution. |
| ⬛ Black Hat | Risks, flaws, challenges | Engineers, compliance officers, risk managers | What’s the most likely point of failure? What could go wrong if we don’t test this? What’s being overlooked? | A clinician suggests a new patient triage protocol. Black Hat thinking asks: What happens if staff misinterpret the categories? Where’s the liability? |
| 🔵 Blue Hat | Process, structure | Facilitators, project leads | What’s the best sequence of hats? Are we stuck in one mode? | A team meeting starts with Red Hat reactions, then moves to White Hat data, ending with Yellow and Black Hat evaluation. Blue Hat keeps it flowing. |
Stretching Habitual Thinking Styles
Here’s how you might challenge common defaults:
- Clinicians often lean on White Hat (data) and Black Hat (risk). Stretch them with Red Hat (intuition) and Green Hat (alternatives).
- Engineers default to Black and White. Invite more Yellow (value) and Green (possibility).
- IT professionals may overuse Blue Hat (process) and underuse Red Hat (emotion). Prompt them to voice gut reactions.
- Software teams often live in Green Hat mode. Balance with Black Hat (risk) and White Hat (evidence)
How to use The Thinking Hats in collective creative problem solving
1. THE SYSTEMATIC METHOD
Role 1: Strategy/Gathering New Ideas – everyone
Arm yourselves with the downloadable worksheet here.
We could start with a White Hat review of what we know and don’t know about the topic, then Green Hat the topic to generate some new ideas, then get a Red Hat reaction to get a quick sense of any new ideas striking the participants then evaluate what one or more of the new ideas offers while wearing our Yellow Hat, then put on a Black Hat to look at the risks or obstacles, and then shift to our Blue Hats to pull the session together and either plan how to follow up or to see if other thinking hats are appropriate to complete the exercise.
Role 2: Monitoring Role 2 – chairperson Blue Hat (or delegate someone to take on some Blue Hat duties)
The Blue Hat is used to:
- monitor how the process is working in relation to outcomes;
- ensure all participants are wearing the same hat at each stage of the discussion;
- encourage and welcome or steer comments;
- keep track of comments;
At the end of each step or the entire process, the Blue Hat can harvest or select ideas and solutions.
2. The M&M METHOD
Have a packet of M&Ms. As a meeting progresses, direct individuals to pull out an M&M from a packet: one packet each if it’s a dispersed team.
Participants need to make their contribution fit the colour of the M&M. For example, if you’re discussing a new strategy, and you pull out a blue, they can use the prompts from the worksheet on the following page to begin their contribution. You don’t have to eat the M&Ms either, but if you do, I can’t guarantee it’ll enhance your thinking.
The M&M Method nurtures mental flexibility and gamifies meetings, making them more creative as well as encouraging self-awareness.
You can do this virtually by using the customisable spin the disk game here
Six Thinking Hats Worksheet – Your Mental Flex Prompts Sheet
| Thinking Hat | Focus | Speaking Prompts |
| ⚪ White Hat | • WHAT WE ALEADY KNOW – AND DON’T • Available data • Past trends • Gaps in the data | What do we know? What do we need to know? |
| 🟩 Green Hat | • CREATIVITY • Other ways of doing things • Alternatives • Modifications | What if we… Another idea would be to… |
| 🟥 Red Hat | • EMOTION • Intuition | My feeling is… I think you’d feel, if…. |
| 🟨Yellow Hat | • The OPTIMISTIC viewpoint | I think the benefit of this idea is…
|
| ⬛ Black Hat | • The CRITICAL viewpoint (Some may prefer the word: ‘CHALLENGER’) • Why might it NOT work? | “Where are the weaknesses?” “What might not work?” “Where might this not apply?”
|
| 🔵 Blue Hat | • PROCESS control | Let’s summarise What we need to do next is… I think we need to look at how/when/what….(perhaps go to another hat) |
Your Action:
- Pinpoint the ‘hat’ or ‘hats’ you tend to favour.
- Be aware of those that could benefit your interactions or thinking.
- Download your share Mental Flex Prompts Sheet here:
If you’re looking at upgrading your Creative Problem Solving go here and see how I help companies and individuals tap into a greater mental flexibility within themselves and their communication with others. Stuck in a thinking rut? Get in touch with me here.
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