The beauty of the DeBono thinking with his ‘hats’ philosophy is that it is not only a thinking tool but also a communication (interpersonal) and personal development tool, additionally a decision making and problem-solving tool. It builds confidence and character; it helps to enable others and to bring about useful connection.
This exercise is about gaining ‘thoughtful’ feedback inside the parameters of deBono; ways to leverage new ways of thinking about your habit thinking and addressing people to suit their style of thinking; their habit thinking. Mark yourself against the 6 options, 1 most used, 2 next and so on down to six, rarely used.
Do the exercise on yourself – then get some feedback from someone you know and trust by them also doing the exercise, separately. Compare the results – they may be different to your own observations of yourself? This helps you and them see that different people see us differently and that we need to understand to deal with them differently.
Then chose some of your colleagues and ask them to allot a score 1 to 5 as to where it could be useful for you to develop. Where first to concentrate on and so on.
Note the two predominant behaviours you exhibit in most situations. Life is full of habits. We progress when we not only recognise that but learn to grow our thinking.
From this information, you can start to plan how you might bring some additional ‘colour’ into your thinking and behaviours – how you might develop past personal habitual behaviours that most people allow to take over. Give each person a copy of this and then collate the responses to get a general picture –
See the differences, the similarities – make some decisions, take action.
It is good to get your team to do the exercise on themselves and then get other peoples – it make a great difference when we recognise that not everyone things like we do and that there is always a better way to commence a discussion.
