Everyone attends trainings. Some attend them religiously from the moment the trainer says “Good Morning, my wonderful trainees” till the words "I enjoyed giving you training" come out of his mouth. But there are some trainees who disappear somewhere along the course of the sessions. The reason being that they would have checked their mails and found something more important than the training. So some trainings are conducted in an external venue by many organizations and the main motivation for this is to prevent trainees from getting distracted by stuff not related to the focus of the training. But in this age of mobile connectivity where your cellphone will work even if you are dropped in the middle of the Sahara, it is difficult to become disconnected. Even during these trainings, we can find people on their cellphones. But I will not go into it because this is not the focus of this article.
One such training was happening somewhere in the face of the Earth and the topic for a particular session was "Use of Six Thinking Hats for decision-making". And the decision to be made was "Whether coffee should be banned in office?". When this was announced, the seven trainees were surprised. Where was the question of decision making? Out of the seven, six were coffee addicts and the remaining one was from Mars. So the answer was a near-unanimous "NO". But the process had to be followed because it is training. The trainer started the video on "Six Thinking Hats" which was scheduled to run for 10 or 11 minutes. The trainer quietly disappeared outside the room and started talking on his cellphone. But I will not go into it because this is not the focus of this article.
"Six thinking hats" is a tool created by Edward de Bono and the six hats correspond to six different styles of thinking. White hat stands for data analysis (past trends, gaps in data etc.), Red Hat stands for emotions, Black hat stands for pessimistic viewpoint, Yellow hat stands for optimistic viewpoint, Green hat stands for creativity and Blue hat stands for process control. The person wearing the Blue hat controls the proceedings and the rest wear hats of the same color at any instant and think according to the color of the hat (It is well worth reading Edward de Bono's book "6 Thinking Hats" for more information on this technique.) As soon as the video displayed "The End", the trainer walked in. If you remember, the trainer was talking on the cellphone so far, But I will not go into it because this is not the focus of this article.
The discussion started with the trainer wearing the Blue hat and the trainees from Earth and Mars wearing the White hat. After some points were thrown in and promptly jotted down in White chart (how can anyone forget those charts in such an activity), they moved on to the Red hat thinking and so on. The following are some of the points thrown in each mode of thinking -
White - "International Coffee Committee (ICC) says that coffee has cured madness in 90% of cases", "Sources not to be named say that 5 cups of coffee is necessary for work to be done" etc.
Red - "There will be outrage if coffee is banned", "Some employees love coffee more than copy (as in copy and paste)" etc.
Black - "There will be absolutely no networking. Gossips will become extinct", "Consumption of water will increase leading to water shortage" etc.
Yellow - "People will spend more time at work", "Employees will have less medical complications, so lesser medical leaves" etc.
Green - "Make drinking Assam tea mandatory", "Ban coffee but keep the coffee cups" etc.
As soon as the discussion ended, a young dude took his cellphone out and whispered "just a sec…just a sec…" and ran out of the room. But I will not go into it because this is not the focus of this article.
Now it was time for the Blue-hat-wearing-trainer to summarize and this is how he did it - "Drinking coffee has it's own advantages and disadvantages. But if you want something to refresh the mind, soul, body and tongue (special mention) in office, nothing comes close to a cup of coffee. So coffee will not be banned in office. And on that happy note, let's break for a cup of coffee". Everyone came out of the room and each went to a corner and started talking on the cellphone. But I will not go into it because this is not the focus of this article.
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