Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently

by Dawna Markova

When we are communicating and thinking well together, our faces actually “light up.”

Collaborative intelligence is the light that is necessary for our individual and collective survival.

“intellectual diversity.”

Your collaborative-intelligence quotient, which we will refer to as “CQ” throughout this book, is a measure of your ability to think with others on behalf of what matters to us all.

HINGE TIME: SHIFTING FROM A MARKET-SHARE TO A MIND-SHARE MENTALITY

When things carry value, if I have one and give it away, I lose something. But when ideas carry value, everything is turned upside down.

When you have a good idea and I have a good idea and we exchange them, you walk away with two new ideas and I also have two new ideas. The more we share, the more we have.

“Velcro teams,” where people across continents work together remotely for a short period of time, influence, not power, is needed to get breakthrough work done.

Market share determines who is right and who is wrong. Mind share asks what is possible.

Collaborative intelligence (CQ) is a critical component of mind share, because it allows you to recognize what expertise is present and what is missing.

Instructions • Identify the five people with whom you currently spend the most time at work. • Write their names across the top of the chart below.

Next, estimate the approximate percentage of time in any given week that you spend with each person and write it below his or her name.

Rate the collaboration between you and this person on a scale of 1 to 5 through the lens of each of the four qualities in the far left column

Collaborative intelligence is the flow of energy and information within and between us.

What is challenging the organization or community that you care deeply about?

Care deeply

What is the breakthrough you most want to see happen in the next year?

What do you imagine could be possible if you were truly collaborating with those who stand beside you?

What effect would that have on those who w...

THE FOUR ESSENTIAL STRATEGIES OF CQ 1. Mind Patterns: Your mind pattern is the unique way that you process and respond to information.

Thinking Talents: These are the specific ways of approaching challenges that energize your brain and come naturally to you.

Inquiry: This is the unique way that you frame questions and consider possibilities.

Mind Share: Mind share encompasses the mindset shift required to generate alignment within your team.

We are used to seeing what we expect to see, hearing what we expect to hear, and doing what we expect to do.

BREAKTHROUGH PRACTICE: THINKING ALIVE Fold your hands by interlacing the fingers as you have done habitually since you were a well-behaved young child.

Now bring your attention to the way you are doing this. Is the right thumb on top of the left or the left on top of right? • Next, unfold your fingers and refold them in the opposite, non-habitual way (i.e., if right was on top of left, put left on top of right, or vice versa). • Go back and forth between the two ways while asking yourself: Which feels most comfortable? Which feels most awkward? Which feels most secure? Which one helps you be the most aware of the spaces between your fingers? Which helps your hands feel the most alive to you?

THE MONKEY TRAP On an island not so far from here, the local people became very annoyed at the pesky monkeys who lived in the trees surrounding their village and wreaked havoc on their orderly gardens. A clever village elder created a small bamboo cage and placed a banana inside it, then hung it on the edge of his property. Late that afternoon, a monkey reached in and grabbed the banana. When he tried to pull it out between the narrow ribs of the cage, his hand was stuck. All he had to do to get free was to release the banana and slide his little hand out. But that evening, when the elder came to check the trap, the monkey was hanging from it, still clutching that banana, even though it meant the loss of his own freedom. Many of us are just like that monkey. We grasp on to something that tantalizes us, and even when we realize that to be free we have to let go, we hold on nonetheless. One of the things that most commonly trap us is the habitual pattern of our own thinking—the limiting stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what our capacities are.

Talent attracts capital far more than capital attracts talent.”

1) Input from the outside caused the children’s brains to shift from focused attention to a daydream or creative state. Their different states of attention were being produced by the different kinds of input they were exposed to. 2) There is no one way of “paying attention.”

Attention, like water, has several different “forms” or states. It can be “focused,” or solid as a cube of ice. This is a state where you give your attention to only one thing and ignore the rest of what is going on around you.

Attention can also be in a “sorting” or mediating state, shifting from inner awareness to outer and back again, sorting and digesting information.

Attention can also be “open,” creative, daydreaming, and diffuse, where you get in touch with memories, images, and ideas and transform them into new patterns, thoughts, or insights.

FOCUSED ATTENTION This describes the conscious state of mind where your brain is producing more beta waves.

SORTING ATTENTION This describes the subconscious state of mind, where your brain produces more alpha waves.

OPEN ATTENTION This is an unconscious state of mind, where your brain is producing more theta waves.

Increase the frequency of “eureka” moments, where something new is born.

we are all introverted when our attention is open, and we’re extroverted when our attention is focused.

mindsight,” or “metacognition,” using the inherent capacity of the mind to notice itself and how it works. The

You instinctively search for how things come together or can be integrated.

You tend to choose clothes that are comfortable and allow freedom of movement.

find it easier to relate to animals or nature than to people.

Your Natural Gifts and Strengths • You’re a deep listener and ask large questions to evoke the whole of what is being said.

Mind pattern kav

You do things logically and systematically.

You are able to see things from many perspectives, including the validity of many sides of an issue.

You can see the whole of something as well as its details.

You’re easily able to put things together, sometimes in very creative ways.