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Soft Skills
Put on your ‘Thinking Hats’
The Six Thinking Hats is an amazing tool for decision making
even in the hospitality business, says Vishal Pandey
Hospitality is a tough business. Day in and day out we are all under tremendous
pressure to deliver and woo our customers. Having worked in this industry for
so many years and that too an industry that I dearly love, I have constantly
applied Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. Believe it or not, it has worked
for me and I know lots of people who apply it successfully in their daily life.
In the 1980's Dr. Edward de Bono invented the Six Thinking Hats. It is a framework
for thinking and incorporates lateral thinking. It is an amazing tool for decision
making, strategy formation, focus thinking, convenient mechanism for 'switching
gears' and problem solving in our day to day life.
What are the Six Hats? Basically Six Hats represent six modes of thinking and
are directions to think rather than labels for thinking. That is, hats are used
proactively rather than reactively. These hats are indicative of both emotional
states as well as frames of mind.
Basically the Six Hats represent six perspectives:
- White hat thinking: facts, figure, information
needs and gaps, what is needed, how it can be obtained
- Red hat thinking: feelings, intuitions, emotions,
hunches, justification, present views without explanation
- Black hat thinking: caution, judgment, critical,
why something is wrong, logical negative view
- Yellow hat thinking: logical positive, why
something will work, logical positive views
- Green hat thinking: creativity, alternatives,
proposals, what is interesting, possibilities, hypotheses
- Blue hat thinking: is the overview or process
control hat. Looks at the 'thinking' about a subject and not at the subject
itself
Vishal works for a Dubai based hospitality and tourism research
and consulting firm doing assignments across Middle East and North Africa region
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