Six Thinking Hats Persona Exercise

Yellow hat thinkers look for the benefit, value, and potential positive outcome in everything and provide deliberate constructive thinking as a counterweight to critical thinking. They also think about opportunities, are willing to explore remote possibilities of success, and make concrete proposals and suggestions for what to do.

Black hat thinking prevents groups from doing overly risky things, introduces caution and skepticism to the conversation, and identifies why something may not work. These thinkers also point out how something does not fit available resources, policy, strategy, or mission and question the strength of the evidence and conclusions.

White hat thinkers collect available information, focus on objective facts and figures, and separate facts from interpretation and belief. They also prevent distortion of information and ideas and exclude hunches, intuition, judgment, feeling, impression, or opinion from their decision-making.

This type acts as the “conductor of the orchestra,” organizes and manages thinking of the different hats, and provides an overview of the conversation. They make sure people stick to their hats, break up arguments, and ask for an outcome at the end—a summary, conclusion, decision, or solution.

This thinking style generates new ideas and ways of looking at things, suggesting multiple courses of action. Green hat thinkers are invested in making changes and innovating and are interested in thinking through all the alternative ways to solve a problem or launch a new initiative.

Red hat thinkers acknowledge the hidden emotions that affect every conversation and decision, bringing them to the surface. They insist that feelings have a right to be made visible, and they give voice to gut reactions, intuition, hunches, intuitions, and impressions.