Collaborating Better Through the 6 Thinking Hats

If you’re bilingual, studies show that depending on which language you are speaking, you “...put different emphasis on actions and their consequences, influencing the way they think about the world…” This emphasis shapes the way in which you interact with people and how you perceive both problems and the solutions to them.

While the majority of collaborative exercises and meetings are held in the same language and therefore lack the pliable perceptive changes witnessed with language, it is important for teams to foster this type of communicative and thought process, because too often collaborations either fall prey to group think or teams fall prey to feelings like one team member is always the naysayer which will shade how team members perceive a team member’s contribution to the collaboration.

Therefore, when facilitating collaborative sessions, it is important to foster a culture in which team members are required to take on different perspectives which might not come naturally to them. This is where Dr. Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats comes in.

By team leaders assigning these different perspectives to team members, team members are forced to change the way in which they normally approach collaboration and team cohesion and participation benefits benefiting the team by not boxing in a team member’s opinion and therefore discounting them or overemphasizing them.