Six Thinking Hats

Red connotes images of fire, warmth, and feelings. Normal business meetings don’t usually allow emotions, but they come in anyway in the guise of logic. The red hat provides the opportunity to acknowledge feelings, emotions, and intuition. A range of emotion can be expressed, including love or hate for an idea, uncertainty, and mixed feelings. The emotions can be directed toward intellectual feelings, as in the example, “That idea is very interesting” (48).

In red hat thinking there is no need to justify feelings; to do so would mean that people only put forth feelings that could be validated. The hat must be applied to a specific idea or situation, and the thinker cannot change the idea.

When red hat thinking is in use, every individual present is asked their feelings about the issue in turn. They cannot pass, although they can use terms such as neutral, confused, or mixed. The facilitator can prompt for more information about such feelings.

Red hat thinking is about emotions, feelings, and the “nonrational aspects of thinking” (50). While they are the opposite of the neutral white hat thinking, they have an important part in the six hats method because they are strong and real to people.