Our February social night was designed around THE SIX THINKING HATS, a model designed by Edward de Bono that can be used for exploring different perspectives towards a complex situation or challenge.
It provides a means for groups to think together more effectively, and a means to plan thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive way. Seeing things in various ways is often a good idea in strategy formation or complex decision-making processes.

Due to the nature of the method of the hats, the night was designed around 2 discussions/complex challenges, one without the hats and one with the hats and after both discussions we discussed both methods. The first discussion was done without any prior knowledge of the hats method allowing us to discuss freely and openly our thoughts and opinions, without direction, lets say. Our topic of discussion was in what ways and strategies could Italy change to improve its current economic, political and social climate – there was lots to discuss!! We eventually decided that politicians should be removed with new, younger ones; taxes lowered, and Mafia/fiscal corruption and fraud targeted.

The night then moved onto the discussion of the method created by De Bono; below is a summary of the meaning of the hats:

Types of hats

The six hats and the thinking processes that they represent
White hat – Facts & Information
Red hat – Feelings & Emotions
Black hat – Logical negative
Yellow hat – Logical positive
Green hat – Creative thinking & Possibilities
Blue hat – Control of process & Steps

The hats system was designed to create parallel thinking allowing all participants to think of the same aspects at the same time, i.e. wearing the red hat everyone thought of their feelings, intuitions and emotions on the topic. It was noticeable that our discussion was more ordered, structured and allowed us to concentrate on each aspect of a discussion, and not go off topic like in the first discussion. Our topic was ‘what should be the next ELC social night event’? We want our nights to be for its members and participants therefore we thought it would be a good chance to give some control for our members to see what they wanted to do.

To cut a long story short (as the discussion took about 40 minutes) we decided that with it being Easter we should have an Easter theme and after discussing the benefits, disadvantages and feelings of various ideas we came to the conclusion that the best idea was top host ‘CHOCOLATE TASTING EASTER NIGHT’ with films, chocolate tasting and other fun Easter and chocolate related disucssion therefore we look forward to seeing you all on the 22nd March 2013 at 19.30 at our place in Cittadella; directions can be found here: http://www.elcmantova.com

Overall, despite the small numbers, we all thoroughly enjoyed the evening and the discussions, learnt about this new technique; and gave people the chance to speak freely; one participant even said she was going to use it with her husband to solve their problems!! ELCmantova social nights, not only fun but family changing!!

See you in March