Six Thinking Hats: Examples of Benefits
Although I started learning Six Thinking Hats only in Feb 2010, I do feel I have some experiences now. I read several Prof. de Bono's books, read the CD materials, practiced with my children, and provided several training seminars to ~70 engineers and ~200 operators. But I found I could not enforce people to think, even to my children, which may end up with an opposite effect. The thinking process is not really an attractive process for the younger generation when comparing to playing a video game.
I also encountered several people in Hong Kong that were officially trained in Six Thinking Hats classes, but I did not find they are practicing it. They just treated this as one of their knowledge.
When they use Six Thinking Hats, they found they need to spend some more time but they did not realize the benefits (although I did find some improvements). I found I lack something to motivate people to treat thinking as an important part of life so that they can put effort to improve them.
I start this thread with the target to get some real examples. How life was changed after practicing Six Thinking Hats? These may be good stories to tell during classes and to talk to people for motivating people to spend more effort.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on -
Trying the new marking scheme with (6 - 28 marks)
For each hat (except red hat), we provide a mark in the range of 1-5 for
1: not good (I do not want to have zero)
2: got one obvious point
3: the obvious points are more or less fully covered the subject
4: got one suggestion that is deeper in the subject area
5: fully covered the subject area
For red hat, we use three point system:
1: not well expressed
2: expressed some of the feelings, such as happy and sad
3: expressed deeper or true feelings
Example 1: Discussion with my daughter
Topics: How to be happy on birthday!
Red Hat:
Want to be happy but not much.
[3 marks, true feeling]
Yellow Hat:
Factors and events that caused happiness: Play; Gifts; Li-shi (money); Birthday party; Friends joining the party; A lot of balloons; IQ questions and pinnacle game during the party
[3 marks, a good collection of points, but obvious]
Black Hat:
Factors and events that caused unhappiness: Breaking balloons; Mother did not agree on my suggestions; Some friends did not come due to various reasons
[3 marks, a good collection of points, but obvious]
White Hat:
Other birthday party locations; Select better foods
[3 marks, a good collection of points, but obvious]
Green Hat:
Not enough friends, need to have more friends;
[2 mark, did not try hard enough to give more ideas]
Blue Hat:
Play more; Learn to be happy - easier to accept disagreement; Building friendship with more classmates in the new year
[4 marks, she did not mention "easier to accept disagreement". I suggested this and she more or less agreed this. So, the discussion can be an educational process.]
Total marks: 18/28
Any comments to this.
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on
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Dobilas,
Thank you for the kind words. I am experimenting and learning the way to train people in different levels of abilities. Previously, I claimed I trained PhDs and researchers with success. But when I faced my own children and the staff in my current job, I found there are a lot for me to change.
My children have a tendency to give a couple of ideas to each hat and then say "done". I am hoping there is a marking scheme that can help them to self realize the quality of their thinking.
Your grading scheme and the test fulfill very well the goals for a school course. I believe test is part of the learning in a course. Some sort of pressure is needed.
[I am preparing for business trip to Beijing. Continue later.]
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on
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With Doblias' suggestion, I tried using grades, not marks, to evaluate the thinking process. I think we can simplify the evaluation process with grades. The following is the proposal:
A+: Extraordinary thinking: complete coverage of the topic and provide good ideas on most aspects of the six hats
A: Excellent: complete coverage of the topic and provide at least one good idea in one of the six hats
B: Good: Well cover the topic
C: Fair: Most of the aspects of the six hats are covered
D: Poor: Not covering well the topic
The following is an example with my son:
Topics: First week in secondary school
Not exciting
New friends; Two friends from kindergarten re-met at secondary school; Helping other students not coming from the linked primary school; There are a lot of school clubs
Too many rules although less that primary school; Need to wear school tie and tight the first collar; Lower form students cannot turn on mobile phones; Cannot bring electronic dictionaries; Cannot bring magazine
Know the teachers; Learn the practices in school; Details of the various clubs
Flexible school hours
[blue hat] This a good start. Need to decide which clubs to join and learn to plan the timing
Grade A: It covers well the topic. Good ideas showed (1) Helping students from other schools (i.e. not from the directly linked primary school), (2) Learn to plan the use of time.
This can be a easy grading scheme. Parents and teachers can grade them quickly. Students can have a drive to (1) cover all the aspects, and (2) give good ideas.
Please comment.
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Permalink Reply by Danny Stevens on -
That's a good observation Dobilas.
Perhaps the grades could be something like this:
E : Excellent
G: Good - a little more training or effort could lead to excellent if desired
C: Competent - It could be fun from here to push for good or excellent
R: Retry required - not yet competent, so some work is needed
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Permalink Reply by Danny Stevens on
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That is very good Raymund. I like the move away from marks, which is often mechanistic and gives the feeling of being objective while often missing the real value.
Grades are harder, they require subjective assessment and detailed attention by the examiner, but give a much better result. They also give the student and teacher a deeper connection.
Well done.
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on
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Dolilas, Danny, thanks for the suggestions. Let's discuss the following in more details.
(1) The lowest grade means the person probably does not understand STH. I agree it is better to use "retry required" than use "poor". This grade requested the person to learn the basics of STH.
(2) The highest grade should be used only rarely to show really good performance. When the same person uses STH on different topics, he/she may get the highest grade in one topic but not other. Much effort is needed for the person to get the highest grade when compared to getting the second highest grade. This means the grading system is able to push for top performance.
(3) Level 1-5 or Level 1-7 or Level 1-4
I prefer simpler if it already fits for the purposes.
(4) Level 1-4
Level 4: Really excellent, obtained the grade only infrequently
Level 3: a person with the knowledge of STH and spent the time to think
Level 2: a person with the knowledge of STH but not putting the effort
Level 1: a person not really know STH
I expect after a few days into STH, most person will have the grade at level 2-4. The grading system provides a motivation for the person to do STH better to get higher grades, not just satisfied at Level 2.
(5) Symbol for the grades
A+, A, B, C: most people can understand this and knows which is desired.
E,G,C,R: we may need to have additional explanations.
1-4: people may ask which one is better and more explanation is needed.
(6) Grading bias
With the 4 grade system, it is quite easy to separate C from the other three. For A and B, the judgement is based on the amount of effort the person spent. For A+, the judgement is based on some excellent ideas. Thus, it seems to me that it is not difficult to do the grading for teachers, for parents and for own evaluation.
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Permalink Reply by Danny Stevens on
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One possibility for separating the more expert grades is to have a minimum number of hours spent in practice before those grades might be considered.
Another thought is that the hats can be learnt at deeper and deeper levels of skill and understanding, so you could create a spiral dynamic with grading from retry to excellent at each pass through. The bar for getting those grades is higher and the detail of the hats technique is expanded at each level.
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on
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I found my children spent too little time in thinking. For a STH topic, they usually finish within 15min. I tried some time ago for setting a minimum time but found not helpful. About a maximum time limit, I would say if they are willing to spend the time, I would let them to spend the time. I believe thinking is accumulating. When a person spends the effort this time, he/she will need less time in thinking similar topics in the future.
About spiral dynamics, I am asking my children to re-think the previous topics. When they re-visit the previous topics, they can revise and add new ideas. I will see what will happen and post the findings later.
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on
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I tried using the grading system with my children by explicitly telling them the scheme, which is
A+: Excellent ideas were provided to more than two hats. The quality of the thinking is at the top 5%.
A: Significant efforts were spent in the thinking processes and good ideas covered all the hats.
B: Ideas were provided to cover all the hats. More efforts should be spent in the thinking process.
C: It is necessary to improve the understanding of the STH. Need re-try.
It seems to me that the scheme is working. I can see both of my children are trying to put more efforts so that the grade will be better than B. Previously, without the grading scheme, they had the tendency to put down some obvious points and stopped there. I needed to discuss with them and ask questions so that they could add more ideas. Now, the grading scheme helped the pushing to put more efforts.
I also asked them to check the previous records of STH and find improvements so that the Grade can change from B to higher.
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Permalink Reply by Franis on -
I like your grading system you are using with your kids!
It is very cool to point out that a "c" grade means understanding of the use of the hats as an advantage. This is something you may expand on as your kids get better at using the hats - in the form of combining the hats in sequences to gain particular affects.
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on
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Franis, I read the hat sequence from the de Bono book many months ago and Graeme's STH for Teachers recently. My impression was that for training thinking, it is better to push the learner to find ideas from all the 6 aspects, and let the learner to decide which are important and which are not. Now, after about 6 months, my kids are more or less used to the six aspects. They did complain some hats are not needed for certain topics with good reasons. So, I think it is time to try the sequences.
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Permalink Reply by Raymund Kwok on
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Graeme,
Thanks for the comments. I tried Neutral Situations with 10 hats with my son but the result was messy. I agree that 3 hats at max is probably the best for helping the children to think the problems they are facing.
One issue is that it is necessary to remember the situations and also the sequence of the hats. When we found a topic, such as joining the handball club, we need to select which sequence is better. After we found the sequence, such as the Quick Assessment for joining handball club, we need to remember the sequence, which is yellow and blue. Previously, we just directly went into the 6 hats without going through the extra step. As the number of sequence is more than 10, it needs to take some effort to remember them. I am trying to add the sequence into the iPad/iPhone App, which probably will help quicker selection of the sequence.
I will try more with the children and also try to grade the thinking using sequence. More later.
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