Six Hats

White Hat: sharing the facts and figures
Red Hat: expressing feeling and emotion

When completing the reading for this month about the white and red hats, I will admit that I was a bit skeptical about the usage of this method.  I wondered how effective it would be if members of a meeting were constantly saying, "Put on your red hat," or "Let's use our white hat thinking."  However, when I applied it to my own problem, it started to become more clear.

The problem I chose to address with a coworker for our assignment is one that I feel very passionately about.  Unfortunately, I feel that I play the role of the "Pleaser" that Randy Fujishin discusses in Creating Effective Groups: The Art of Small Group Communication.  In most cases, I would rather avoid conflict at any cost than really fight for my own opinion.  Overall, I have never been very opinionated, but I know that learning to communicate my needs and opinions effectively would impact my life very positively.  When I worked through this difficult situation with a coworker using both my white and red hat, I realized that when using them together, I could communicate this problem without being totally confrontational.

I think that reading about each of the last four hats more in depth will help me to become a more effective communicator.  Sometimes problem solving is prevented due to lack of skills in interaction and/or processing. However, I think that the way in which the hats are used and the order in which they are presented could really help with organizing problem-solving methods.

Thus far, I have really only reflected on how I can use the hats to overcome my own problems, or how I can use them in my classroom to help the class come up with a solution to a problem.  With more information on the other hats, I hope to be reflect more on how they can be used in large group discussions, such as grade-level or staff meetings.