Sunday, July 12, 2009

Rasyid & William on the 6 Thinking Hats

TLC thanks Mohd Rasyid bin Zainol Abidin and William Lai for their article on the 6 Thinking Hats.

The topics about plagiarism and Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats were knowledge we gathered during the Orientation Week for Pre-University newly-enrolled students. The lecturer who put us in stitches during his lessons was none other than the charismatic Mr Alwyn Lau. If you think you can sleep in his class, you are mistaken; the occasional boom of his voice can break you into smithereens. We were not lulled into sleep though as the logic of The Six Thinking Hats did catch our attention.

If we had thought the word “hats” has to do with fashion, we were wrong. Mr Lau’s loud voice thundered with a shocking question, “What are the four scariest words on earth?” That would be interesting to know although we would not think much about it. So we started shouting out to him, “Do you love me?”, “SPM, how many As?” and many other ridiculous answers. His head drooping, we could see that Mr Lau was highly disappointed. He clicked on his powerpoint slide that screamed loudly on the white screen, WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We were confused. What is the relationship between these scary words and the six hats? ”That’s why you are in this class today, because many Malaysian students don’t think!” Mr Lau said with a lot of emphasis on the word, “Think”. “Using the concept of the six thinking hats, you can make decisions easily and more rationally,” he explained. Now that sounded like he was finally shedding some light at the end of the tunnel. Briefly, you can streamline your thinking into six different modes identified by the different “rainbow” colours as follows:

White hat signify facts and if you put on the yellow hat it means you are focusing on positive, optimistic thoughts. Put on the black hat for negative judgement, or to have a critical view point; don a green hat to consider options and creative ideas. Wear a red hat for emotional thinking if you are like the Android Data who has no emotions and need to be injected with some. Lastly blue hat is for leadership, to process thoughts.

Each of this hat has great significance which can be useful, at every phase of our lives, be it studying, working or in your marriage.

Therefore, let us not wear Nike, Adidas or Puma; let us instead, wear our Six Thinking Hats and have faith in them that in so doing, we would have a different mind set, adapt to change and move forward with all these wonderful colours.

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