Free Six Thinking Hats Templates

Importance

Each of the six thinking hats serves a different purpose or mode of thinking. When used by teams or during group discussions, it’s important to ensure that everyone uses the same hat at the same time. Its essence is to help avoid unnecessary conflicts between the various modes of thinking and follow a set structure or order of using the hats in resolving problems or addressing situations. By using a six thinking hats template, the facilitator can easily keep everyone reminded to use the same hat simultaneously since it also helps dictate the flow of the discussion.

On the other hand, it’s also crucial to use guide questions that are aimed to be answered when each thinking hat is being used. While these questions can be customizable to fit different scenarios, ensuring that they stick to the central theme or representation of each hat is key to achieving the ultimate goal when using or “wearing” a specific hat. A 6 thinking hats template walks you through each hat using guide questions to help you account for details and important data needed for the problem being solved or project or idea being explored.

What Should be Included in a Six Thinking Hats Template?

In order to make the use of the six thinking hats technique more effective, having a standard template is encouraged. Even more so, it helps ensure that no thinking hat—blue for organizing and planning, white for gathering facts, green for fostering creativity, yellow for establishing value, red for recognizing feelings, and black for identifying risks—is overlooked or unused in the process.

Hence, here are the key details and sections you must include:

Title Page

The first page of your six thinking hats template should include basic details about the project or idea being explored. Hence, allot this page for the following information:

• Meeting Date
• Facilitator
• Meeting Location
• Project Name/Idea/Problem

Separate Pages for Each Thinking Hat

1. Blue Hat – Conductor’s Hat; represents organization and planning through agenda setting and the sequence of using the succeeding hats
2. White Hat – Factual Hat; discusses all available and needed information as well as its key sources that will help evaluate and validate an idea, concept, or project
3. Green Hat – Creative Hat; responsible for idea generation and conceptualization
4. Yellow Hat – Value Hat; looks at the positive aspects and identifies the benefits and values
5. Red Hat – Intuitive Hat; explores the emotions and feelings for and about the topic being discussed or addressed
6. Black Hat – Cautious Hat; takes into account the negative implications of the project with the aim to take steps in mitigating the risks or consequences involved

This recommended process by TSW Training helps you effectively use the six thinking hats in a logical order, but you can always customize it the way you, your team, and your organization need it.

Completion

Lastly, allot the final page of your template for the following details:

• Notes
• Recommendations and Next Steps
• Sign-off

Six Thinking Hats Template Example

To help you better understand what this template looks like, here’s a six thinking hats example when you use it in SafetyCulture:

Six Thinking Hats Template Sample Report | SafetyCulture