Just when you think you have mastered Emotional Intelligence, another kind of intelligence has emerged called Collaborative Intelligence, or CQ. After more than 50 years of research, authors Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur in their book, Collaborative Intelligence: Four Influential Strategies for Thinking with People who Think Differently, define Collaborative Intelligence as the measure of our ability to think, collaborate, and innovate with others.
Mastering Collaborative Intelligence, the authors say, requires four essential strategies. They are:
Mind Patterns: Your mind pattern is the way you process and respond to information. We need to learn how to identify and maximize our own mind pattern and then be able to recognize the mind patterns of others. There’s a quick little test in the book that helps you do that.
Thinking Talent: These are the specific ways of approaching challenges that energize your brain and come natural to you. The book helps you identify your talents, as well as your blind spots, and, then, once again, recognize other’s talents and blind spots with the desired outcome of increasing collaboration and diverse thinking.
Inquiry: The unique way that you frame questions and consider possibilities. By identifying your own preference, as well as the others around you, you open yourself to widening your perspective and becoming a better thinking partner.
Mindshare: Mindshare encompasses the mindset shift required to generate alignment with others. The book guides you through how to aim your individual and collective attention, intention and imagination to create and foster mindshare.
The opening quote in the Introduction states “Great minds don’t think alike … but they can learn to think together.” Read more about these 4 strategies as well as learn a variety of specific practices that,the authors say, are key to building individual and collective collaborative intelligence in your organization.
We’ll close with a review of the book by Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline
“Everyone talks about collaboration today, but the rhetoric typically outweighs the reality. Collaborative Intelligence offers tangible tools for those serious about becoming ‘system leaders’ who can close the gap and make collaboration real.”
A great read … let us know what you learn and how you apply that learning when collaborating with others.
