Marriage and the Six Thinking Hats Part 2

Marriage and the Six Thinking Hats Part 2: Yellow Fever

In my last column I introduced you to a new of understanding and choosing your responses to your spouse. In thinking about the different personality types and communication styles typically found on any corporate staff or team, Dr. Edward de Bono discovered that such a group includes wearers of Six Hats, noting the symbolism and meaning of their colors. (Six Thinking Hats, Back Bay Books, 1999)

White Hat: This hat represents neutral and objective thinking, concerned with facts & figures
Red Hat: The red hat symbolizes the intuitive, emotional response.
Black Hat: This wearer is careful and cautious, even skeptical, the devil’s advocate.
Yellow Hat: The person under the yellow hat is sunny and positive about most ideas.
Green Hat: This fashion statement and thinking style is all about fertile growth, creativity, new ideas.
Blue Hat: Like the color of the sky which hovers above everything else, this is the organizer, synthesizer, and manager of the other five approaches, guides group toward consensus.

In the last column we noted that too often we respond to a spouse’s idea, plan, opinion, or proposal with the Black Hat. We respond with a clearly negative statement voicing what we don’t like about the idea, what’s wrong with it, why it won’t work, etc. Or we make an implied negative comment with the question, “Why do you want to do that.” That question is not an invitation to share or explain, it’s a warning to defend yourself and your idea. Note that as parents we are prone to wearing the Black Hat a lot.

You are likely thinking, “Does this mean I have to enthusiastically agree with and endorse every lame idea, bad decision, and poorly thought-through plan my spouse comes up with?” No, that would be only wearing or excessively donning the Yellow Hat. Yellow Hatters can be so positive and optimistic that they can be naïve in their evaluations. Quite frankly, too many small businesses fail in the first year because the business plan was poor or the plan was exposed to only Red, Yellow, and Green Hat people. “Oh, that’s a great idea, go for it,” they say. We need White Hat (neutral & objective thinking) and Black Hat (critical and even skeptical) commentators speaking into our deliberations before we put our financial security at stake with a “can’t miss business opportunity.” I’m a Green Hat guy by nature but somebody in our community needs to have the courage to put on the Black Hat and say that are locations in Spring Hill that are a Bermuda Triangle for businesses. Several new launches have gone into the exact same locations where multiple storefronts before them disappeared into the abyss. Who is telling these wide-eyed entrepreneurs the truth about the viability of their venture? Family? Friends? The banker? The realtor? Everyone wants to be supportive, but no one has anything to LOSE if the business fails except the owner and his family.

Here’s the bottom line. We all need wise and caring people who wear the White Hat and/or the Black Hat. We just need them to refrain from LAUNCHING the first very comments from total objectivity or skepticism and we need them not to EXCLUSIVELY speak from under those hats. Everyone in close relationship with you (spouse, children, friends, co-workers, employees, etc.) desires and deserves for you to listen and seek to understand them before making critical judgments. You desire the same.

To sit on your Black Hat for an initial response to an idea or request does not mean you have to fake a smile with your big Yellow Hat on and give two thumbs-up to a proposal that has disaster written all over it. Apart from obvious exceptions, (“Mom, can I jump off the roof onto the trampoline?”) it often just means to listen and invite your spouse ( or child ) to explore and elaborate on their thoughts before weighing in with your evaluation, positive or negative. If right now you’re dismissing this with all the reasons why this won’t work with your family…guess what color chapeau you are wearing?