Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently

Quick Orientation

In “Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently,” Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur explore the essential shift from individualistic “market-share” thinking to a collective “mind-share” approach in an increasingly complex world. This book argues that true intelligence is not static or solely internal, but a dynamic, cultivated process that flourishes between people, especially those with diverse ways of thinking. Through four core strategies—Mind Patterns, Thinking Talents, Inquiry, and Mind Share—the authors offer practical tools and insights to unlock the full potential of individuals and teams, fostering innovation and connection in an era that demands collective wisdom. This summary will clearly explain each key idea and actionable step to help you apply these principles in your own life and work.

Introduction: Great Minds Don’t Think Alike…but They Can Learn to Think Together!

This chapter introduces the core problem addressed by the book: despite our capacity to think, humans struggle to think effectively with those who think differently. It highlights the authors’ belief that intelligence is a verb, requiring cultivation, and that true collaboration is essential for survival and competitiveness.

The Need for Collaborative Intelligence

The authors emphasize that we often misread and miscommunicate because we don’t understand diverse thinking styles.

• Core Problem: People habituallly misread each other, leading to miscommunication and blame, because they haven’t been trained to think well with those who think differently.
• Intelligence as a Verb: Intelligence is not a static noun, like a cup to be filled, but a dynamic capacity requiring constant cultivation and understanding how each person is uniquely smart.
• Collaborative Intelligence (CQ): This is defined as the ability to think with others on behalf of a shared purpose, requiring dignity for differences in thinking to face complex challenges effectively.
• The “Rope” Metaphor: Many conflicts are like a tug-of-war, with opposing forces pulling apart; resolution comes by taking pressure off and bending the ends together, asking how all needs can be met.
• CQ Assessment: A self-assessment helps evaluate current collaboration quality with five key work relationships, serving as a benchmark for growth.

Hinge Time: Shifting from Market-Share to Mind-Share Mentality

The world is shifting from a market-share economy, valuing scarcity and individual power, to a mind-share world, which values ideas, relationships, and collective influence.

• Market-Share Mentality: Defines value by shortage (I have it, you don’t), solves problems analytically, focuses on deficits, and leaders are heroes who accrue power.
• Mind-Share Mentality: Value is created by ideas and relationships (the more we share, the more we have), requires influence with others, and leaders act as hosts.
• Questioning for Possibility: Market share seeks quick answers; mind share asks “what is possible?” which encourages wonder and generates new ideas.
• Velcro Teams: The rise of remote, short-term project teams globally necessitates influence over power for breakthrough work.
• Adapting Strategies: Old strategies of needing to be right or eradicating differences are unsustainable; CQ allows for maximizing intellectual diversity.

Activating the Four Strategies of CQ

The book outlines four core strategies and “breakthrough practices” to develop collaborative intelligence.

• Four Strategies: Mind Patterns (unique info processing), Thinking Talents (natural strengths), Inquiry (framing questions), and Mind Share (mindset shift for alignment).
• Breakthrough Practices: These are embodied, deliberate practices designed to connect learning with physical experience, making new concepts immediate and available under pressure.
• “Thinking Alive” Practice: By interlacing fingers in a non-habitual way, one experiences how awkwardness can lead to increased awareness and aliveness, encouraging new ways of thinking.

This introduction sets the stage for understanding that effective collaboration hinges on acknowledging and leveraging the diverse ways in which people think.

Recognizing How Your Mind Works

This chapter introduces the concept of “mind patterns,” which describe the unique ways individuals process and respond to information. Understanding your own mind pattern is the first step toward better learning, communication, and collaboration.

How Do You Pay Attention to Attention?

The mind constantly shifts between three states of attention, each useful for different types of thinking.

• Three States of Attention: Focused (concentrating on tasks, details), Sorting (digesting info, weighing options, through confusion), and Open (imagining, exploring possibilities, daydreaming).
• Cultural Bias: Society often overvalues focused attention, labeling sorting and open attention as unproductive “distraction” or “spacing out.”
• Relational Logic: The mind weaves different ideas and makes associative leaps in the open state, creating new connections.
• Value of All States: All three states are crucial for effective thinking; innovative ideas often emerge from the open state.
• “Daily Practice to Reclaim Your Attention”: Focus on one sense (feel, hear, see) for a minute, describing only sensory information without judgment, then shift to another sense to re-center the mind.

The Three Languages of Thought: What Triggers Your Attention to Shift?

The specific sequence of kinesthetic, auditory, and visual (KVA) elements triggers shifts in attention.

• KVA Elements: Kinesthetic (sensing, feeling, doing), Visual (seeing, imagery), Auditory (hearing, words).
• Triggering Attention: Each person has a preferred sequence (mind pattern) where one KVA element triggers focused attention, another sorting, and the third open attention.
• Mind Patterns and Personality: Mind patterns describe how you think, not personality; they reveal conditions that maximize thinking, learning, and communicating.
• “What Is Your Mind Pattern?” Assessment: A maze-like self-evaluation guides individuals to one of six possible mind patterns by observing which KVA elements trigger their different states of attention.
• Maria’s Story (VKA Pattern): A famous singer discovered her visual (focused), kinesthetic (sorting), and auditory (open) pattern, realizing driving helped her think and adapting her work environment to her pattern to reduce stress and increase influence.

Why Do Mind Patterns Matter?

Recognizing your mind pattern liberates intellectual capacity and challenges self-limiting beliefs.

• Self-Liberation: Understanding your mind pattern helps overcome limiting beliefs like “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m shy,” revealing how these are often misinterpretations of natural thinking processes.
• Conscious Shifting: Knowing your pattern allows you to consciously shift between focused (3-2-1 sequence) and open (1-2-3 sequence) attention to suit different tasks and achieve desired outcomes.
• “Shifting from Stuck to Thinking Free” Practice: Acknowledge being “stuck” (e.g., a clutched wrist) but then focus on the 98% that is free to open new possibilities.
• Angie’s Story (KVA Pattern): Angie’s discovery that auditory input made her daydream and kinesthetic input helped her focus transformed her understanding of her learning challenges in school, leading to breakthroughs in communication.

This chapter emphasizes that by recognizing your unique mind pattern, you gain an operating manual for your own mind, enabling you to think more effectively and collaborate more fluidly.

Recognizing How Others’ Minds Work

This chapter extends the concept of mind patterns to understanding others, providing a “CQ Playbook” to bridge intellectual differences and foster effective collaboration in teams and one-on-one interactions.

How to Get Past Clashes in Styles of Inquiry and Move Toward Collaboration

Misunderstandings arise from false assumptions about how others think. The CQ Playbook offers a structured approach to address these.

• CQ Playbook Steps:
  1. How Do You Think?: Review your own mind pattern and conditions for effectiveness.
  2. What Has Worked in the Past?: Observe clues in others’ language, preferences (KVA triggers), and responses to different communication styles. Ask about past successful interactions to find replicable conditions.
  3. What’s Your Game Plan?: Modify your communication approach to suit the other person’s preferences based on gathered insights.
  4. What Effect Are You Having?: Actively notice the real-time impact of your communication, shifting focus from self-blame or blaming others to how you are delivering content.
  5. What Adjustments Can You Make?: Use a “Common Breakdown” chart to identify typical communication impasses (e.g., talks too much, misses emails) and apply specific adjustments (e.g., invite movement, keep emails short, send recaps).

Putting the CQ Playbook into Use

Applying the CQ Playbook can transform challenging relationships and foster effective partnerships.

• Steve and Joseph’s Story: Seth’s bosses, Steve (KAV) and Joseph (VAK), initially struggled after a merger. Joseph (VAK, visually focused, auditorily sorting, kinesthetically open) found Steve’s (KAV, kinesthetically focused, auditorily sorting, visually open) pacing and lack of email responses frustrating.
• Bridging Differences: By mapping their mind patterns, it became clear their “problems” were actually thinking differences. Joseph realized their old office, with shared architectural models and Steve’s pacing during discussions, had naturally facilitated collaboration.
• Game Plan and Outcome: Joseph initiated daily “walk-and-talks” with Steve and ensured a new assistant handled visual communications for Steve. These small changes, leveraging their complementary patterns, transformed their partnership, allowing them to work in sync.
• Coping with Challenges Table: Provides specific advice for common work challenges (e.g., presentations, performance reviews, conflict) tailored to each mind pattern’s needs for focused, sorting, and open attention.

How Teams Can Maximize Intellectual Diversity

The CQ Playbook can be scaled to entire teams, transforming habitual meetings into dynamic, collaborative sessions.

• Mind-Pattern Team Map: This tool visually displays the intellectual diversity of a team, showing who has which mind patterns and identifying collective strengths and gaps.
• Optimizing Environment: Adjusting physical spaces (movable chairs, whiteboards), visual aids (large fonts, graphic recording), and auditory conditions (silence, reduced distractions) to accommodate diverse mind patterns.
• Agricultural Company Example: A leadership team used walk-and-talks with smartphones for photos representing their vision. This multi-senssensory approach, fitting diverse KVA patterns, opened their minds, turning old guard vs. new into an atmosphere of alliance, leading to breakthrough results.
• Multi-Sensory Team Practices: Practical exercises like Musical Brainstorm (music + Post-its), The Mural (drawing metaphors), The Pizza (round-robin idea generation), and The Sculpture (silent problem representation) encourage diverse thinking and collaboration.
• “Bending to Blend with Another” Practice: This embodied practice, inspired by Aikido, demonstrates how to move from rigid opposition to flexible influence by physically experiencing “bending” to another’s movement and then “blending” to gently redirect.

This chapter underscores that recognizing and adapting to others’ mind patterns is crucial for turning potential breakdowns into collaborative breakthroughs, both in individual interactions and within teams.

Uncovering Your Thinking Talents

This chapter delves into “thinking talents,” which are innate, energizing ways of approaching challenges. Identifying your unique talents and understanding their “shadow attributes” can help you maximize your contribution and foster collaboration.

What Are Your Unique Thinking Talents?

Thinking talents are distinct from skills and are deeply intrinsic to who you are, providing natural joy and excellence.

• Definition: Thinking talents are natural, intrinsic ways of approaching challenges that provide energy, joy, and lead to excellence without burnout.
• Self-Assessment: Readers sort 35 “thinking talent” cards into “ALWAYS,” “SOMETIMES,” or “NEVER” energizing categories, then narrow down to their top 5-8 strongest, dominant talents.
• Examples: Talents include Adapting, Believing, Connecting, Focusing, Innovation, Mentoring, Optimism, Storytelling, and many more.

Shadow Attributes

Shadow attributes are the rough or unconstructive expressions of a thinking talent, revealing its hidden potential.

• Recognizing Hidden Talents: Some struggle to identify talents due to deficit-oriented cultures, past criticisms, or talents being “invisible” because they come so easily.
• Uncovering Through Shadows: Shadow attributes (e.g., “arrogant” as the shadow of Having Confidence, “skeptical” for Thinking Logically) are clues to underlying talents.
• Transforming Shadows: The process involves naming the talent, containing its unconstructive expression, and aiming it towards positive goals.
• Nadine’s Example: A marketing executive realized her “bossy and conceited” feedback was the shadow of Having Confidence, which she then aimed effectively to become an account director.
• Jack’s Example: A CTO transformed his “skepticism” (shadow of Thinking Logically) by naming, containing, and aiming it to ask clarifying questions constructively, improving collaboration.

Why Do We Lose Touch with Our Thinking Talents?

Societal and personal influences can lead individuals to suppress or overlook their natural strengths.

• External Factors: Criticisms in childhood (e.g., “too full of herself,” “exaggerating”) or societal norms can steer individuals away from their talents.
• Internal Factors: Talents come so easily that they may be taken for granted, making them seem “invisible” or irrelevant.
• Architect Example: An architect, criticized for “girl stuff” interest in people, discovered his Feeling for Others talent and became a successful HR specialist, thriving by aligning with his natural gifts.

Discovering Your Cognitive Style

Thinking talents can be grouped into four “cognitive styles”—Analytic, Procedural, Relational, and Innovative—which reveal preferred ways of approaching problems.

• Cognitive Styles: Each style (Analytic: why, breaking apart; Procedural: how, step-by-step; Relational: who, human connection; Innovative: what if, new ideas) represents a different approach to challenges.
• Thinking-Talents Map: This visual tool helps plot and see where your talents cluster, revealing dominant styles and “blind spots”—quadrants where talents are lacking.
• Blind Spots: These are areas where one worries and stresses due to the absence of natural talents, highlighting where collaboration and external support are necessary for excellence.
• “Lights You Up/Burns You Out” Chart: Helps individuals recognize situations where their talents naturally energize them versus those that deplete them.

Creating Internal and External Coherence

Practices can help integrate clashing internal talents and form partnerships to complement blind spots.

• “Inner Board of Directors” Practice: When facing tension or decisions, imagine each talent as a wise advisor, asking how it can contribute to the challenge, fostering internal alignment.
• “Forming Thinking Partnerships” Practice: Identify blind spots on your talent map, then seek out individuals with complementary strengths to form partnerships, reducing worry and enhancing performance.
• Anne’s Story (Nonprofit CEO): Facing a career crossroads, Anne used her “inner board of directors” to leverage her relational talents (Standing Out, Enrolling, Feeling for Others) and partnered with Angie to address her analytic/procedural blind spots, enabling her to successfully launch a new venture while staging her departure.

This chapter underscores that self-awareness of one’s thinking talents and blind spots is critical for personal effectiveness and for building powerful, complementary collaborations.

Becoming a Thinking Partner to Others

This chapter expands on using thinking talents to foster collaboration with others, especially in challenging situations. It provides a three-step process to increase your influence by understanding and acknowledging others’ unique thinking styles.

Increasing Influence with Others

Influencing others means creating permeability in your thinking and being open to genuine collaboration, not control.

• Beyond Control: Influence means creating openness in your own thinking to be influenced by others, rather than forcing them to adopt your perspective.
• Walk Curiously in Another Person’s Shoes:
  1. Ask Energizing Questions: Inquire about times they felt engaged or what energizes them in their current work.
  2. Identify Thinking Talent(s): Observe their responses and refer to the thinking-talents map to pinpoint which talents or cognitive styles drive their energy.
  3. Acknowledge and Establish Rapport: Communicate using their preferred “language” or style, demonstrating respect and understanding.
• Jan’s Story (Designer and Carpenter Mike): Jan, a “tough broad,” used these steps with Mike. By asking what an ideal work environment was, she discovered his Making Order and Precision talents (procedural/innovative). Acknowledging his meticulousness and ideas transformed their relationship, leading to Mike’s engagement and valuable suggestions.

Engaging with a Person Who Challenges You

Difficult interactions can be transformed by understanding the underlying thinking talents behind annoying behaviors.

• Transforming Challenges: Instead of labeling someone “difficult,” ask which thinking talent might be hidden behind their annoying behavior using the shadow-attributes map.
• Questions for Engagement: Inquire about specific annoyances, link them to potential talents/shadows, identify blind spots, consider what to learn from them, and explore how to create a supportive partnership.
• Nick and Martin’s Story (CEO & Chairman): Nick was frustrated by Martin’s constant complaints and focus on past mistakes. By mapping Martin’s talents (strong in Thinking Ahead, Innovation, Strategy, but blind spots in procedural and relational), Nick realized Martin’s “worry” stemmed from where Nick excelled.
• Leveraging Differences: Nick realized he was trying to influence Martin where Martin had blind spots. By shifting his approach to acknowledge Martin’s vision (innovative) first, then offering procedural and relational support, Nick could get Martin’s buy-in.
• “Warrior, Not Worrier”: Nick used his natural sales and mentoring talents to become a “thinking partner” with Martin, transforming their dynamic and eventually leading to Nick’s promotion.

How to Use Thinking Talents to Become More Effective as a Team

Identifying and mapping collective thinking talents can illuminate a team’s intellectual capital, strengths, and blind spots.

• Team Talent Mapping: Team members complete their own assessments, then combine results onto a single map, revealing collective strengths and missing talents.
• Insights from Maps: Maps reveal predominant cognitive styles and areas where the team might struggle (blind spots).
• Bolthouse Farms Example: Their senior leadership team discovered an abundance of innovative and procedural talents but a lack of analytic ones. This explained why they generated ideas quickly but didn’t evaluate financial implications. They then hired an analytic talent to vet new ideas.
• Addressing Collective Blind Spots: A team map can reveal whose thinking is missing (e.g., a team member absent who carries a key talent), prompting strategies to seek that input or integrate it.
• Re-aiming Shadow Attributes: An engineering firm put a manager with a strong Wanting to Win talent (shadow: always battling for resources) in charge of winning new clients, leveraging his competitive drive constructively.
• “Bending to Blend with Another” Practice: This two-part practice (In Your Own Two Hands and Whole Body Practice) uses physical exercises to demonstrate the futility of rigid opposition and the effectiveness of gently “bending” to another’s energy, then “blending” to influence direction.

This chapter underscores the importance of actively seeking to understand others’ unique thinking talents, not just for personal influence but for building highly effective, adaptable teams that leverage their collective intellectual capital.

Discovering Your Inquiry Style

This chapter focuses on the power of asking great questions, known as “inquiry,” to open minds, bridge differences, and foster new possibilities. It challenges the traditional “answers-first” mindset prevalent in many cultures.

Inquiring from the Inside Out

Shifting to an inquiry mindset requires a “growth mindset” and a willingness to embrace uncertainty.

• Power of Questions: Great questions are catalysts for breakthroughs, transforming stuck thinking into new possibilities, especially by shifting from “who is right?” to “what can I learn?”
• Fixed vs. Growth Mindset (Carol Dweck):
  • Fixed Mindset: Believes intelligence is unchanging, avoids challenges/feedback, sees setbacks as personal failures, limits inquiry.
  • Growth Mindset: Sees intelligence as evolving, views obstacles as learning opportunities, and enables asking “What can I learn from this? How can I grow? How can I do this better?”
• Personal Application: Recognize areas where you adopt a fixed mindset (e.g., with certain people) and use inquiry to shift to a growth mindset, opening to influence and collaboration.

The Three Kinds of Inquiry

The book introduces three categories of questions—Success-Based, Intentional, and Influential—that act as a compass for clarity and collaboration.

• Success-Based Inquiry:
  • Purpose: Accesses your own wisdom by focusing on past successes in similar challenges.
  • Benefit: De-compartmentalizes knowledge, builds confidence, and shifts away from dwelling on past failures.
  • Questions: “When in the past have you been successful in a similar situation? What did you personally do?” “How was the breakdown transformed into a breakthrough?”
• Intentional Inquiry:
  • Purpose: Helps you reconnect with your “virtuous intent”—what truly matters to you—especially when feeling lost or overwhelmed.
  • Benefit: Provides clarity, strength, and helps you determine where you want to go, acting like a magnetic compass.
  • Questions: “What is most important to you about this?” “What is surprising/inspiring/challenging you?” “What feeling do you want to have when you leave this meeting?”
• Influential Inquiry:
  • Purpose: Identifies where you have natural strength in influencing others and where you need support, aligning questions with different cognitive styles.
  • Inquiry Compass (Four Directions):
    • Analytic (“Why?”): Focuses on facts, data, logic, efficiency, and identifying what’s wrong.
    • Procedural (“How?”): Focuses on steps, timelines, resources, planning, and execution.
    • Relational (“Who?”): Focuses on feelings, people’s needs, support, relationships, and developing others.
    • Innovative (“What If?”): Focuses on new ideas, possibilities, vision, and cutting-edge approaches.
  • Blind Spots in Inquiry: Avoiding certain quadrants means missing critical perspectives and can lead to being “blindsided” by others’ questions or concerns.
• Ayla’s Story: A marketing director compartmentalized her relational inquiry style (great with clients) from her leadership role, showing how self-limiting beliefs can restrict influence in a mind-share environment.

Why Does Inquiry Matter?

Artful inquiry, rather than certainty, is a hallmark of effective leadership and collaboration.

• Peter’s Story (CEO): Peter, a new CEO, initially adopted a fixed mindset, shutting down his team and analysts. Through an “experiment” (challenging himself to be effective rather than “right”), he learned to apply his relational inquiry skills (used with his daughter and in sailing) to his team and analysts.
• Shifting Dynamics: By asking open-ended questions and focusing on understanding others’ perspectives first, Peter transformed a “fault fest” meeting into a million-dollar collaborative session.
• Leveraging Team Intelligence: Peter’s realization that his innovative blind spot was a company pitfall led him to bring George (innovative) and his CFO (analytic) to analyst meetings, leading to positive reports and a stock price rise.
• “Embodied Inquiry” Practice (Butterfly on Wrist): This physical practice demonstrates how to move from rigid “convincing” (pushing against resistance) to gentle “inquiring” (lightly touching a wrist, following its movement, and then subtly redirecting), mirroring how flexible inquiry leads to influence.
• Claudia’s Story (Nonprofit Director): Overwhelmed by staff problems, Claudia used embodied inquiry to recognize her tendency to “push” and feel “stretched.” By engaging her staff with inquiry (butterfly on wrist), she created a management team and gained time to use her relational influence, leading to significant growth for the arts center.

This chapter highlights that by cultivating an inquiry mindset and mastering different types of questions, you can unlock personal wisdom, bridge differences, and drive collective progress.

Discovering the Inquiry Styles of Others

This chapter emphasizes that truly collaborative intelligence involves recognizing and leveraging the diverse inquiry styles of others, moving beyond simple agreement to a richer understanding of what is possible.

How to Get Past Clashes in Styles of Inquiry and Move Toward Collaboration

Different cognitive styles often clash, especially between left-brain (analytic, procedural) and right-brain (innovative, relational) thinking, leading to breakdowns.

• Clashing Perspectives: When analytical/procedural thinking (breaking down, converging on one answer) meets innovative/relational thinking (exploring wholes, generating possibilities), misunderstandings and frustration can arise.
• “Yes, But” vs. “Yes, And”: People who use “yes, but” often express an inner conflict between a strength (“yes”) and a blind spot (“but”). Replacing “but” with “and” allows for both perspectives to be addressed.
• Turning Adversaries into Advisers: Ask questions to understand the quadrant someone is influencing from, recognize the value of their perspective, and seek common intention.
• Charlotte’s Story (Nonprofit Director): Charlotte initially used relational inquiry, which clashed with her new boss’s analytic style. By conducting “detective work” (success-based inquiry on his past interactions), clarifying her own intention (intentional inquiry), and adapting her presentation to his analytic style (influential inquiry), she secured funding.
• Giving In to Get Your Way: The key is to “translate” your presentation into the other person’s habitual style first, then gently “bend” them towards your own, influencing them rather than demanding.

How Do I Use Inquiry in Teams?

Transforming team meetings from unproductive time sinks into powerful collaborative sessions requires intentional use of inquiry practices.

• Three-Step Inquiry for Teams:
  1. Success-Based Inquiry: Discuss past team successes and what conditions made them possible, distilling lessons to apply to current challenges. Regular reflection on “what worked?” and “what didn’t?” builds a collective handbook.
  2. Intentional Inquiry: Clarify and agree on the team’s desired outcome and individual intentions, creating a “magnetic north” for alignment (e.g., a shared visual reminder).
  3. Influential Inquiry: Use the Inquiry Compass to map each team member’s natural cognitive style, discuss team strengths and gaps, and strategically invite questions from underpopulated quadrants to ensure all perspectives are explored.
• Health Spa Example: A team with strong innovative talents but a procedural blind spot learned to collaborate with an operations colleague to implement a garden project, addressing their gap and achieving a concrete result.
• “Four-Directions Round Table” Practice: Teams break into sub-teams aligned with the four inquiry quadrants (analytic, procedural, relational, innovative) to explore a problem from all perspectives simultaneously, fostering comprehensive solutions.
• “The Pivotal Mindset” Practice: This practice helps individuals shift from rigid or collapsing responses to pressure by focusing on their breath and intention, allowing them to “pivot” to a neutral, open space, and then engage with others by first understanding their perspective (“I get what you said”) before adding their own.

This chapter emphasizes that by consistently applying different inquiry styles, both individually and within teams, you can transform conflict into collaboration, leading to more comprehensive solutions and stronger relationships.

Shifting Your Mindset

This chapter focuses on the fourth strategy: mindset, which involves cultivating a “mind-share” mentality through the alignment of your attention, intention, and imagination. This creates a powerful “future pull” that drives forward action and influence.

Three Key Aspects of Mind Share: Attention, Intention, and Imagination

These three aspects form the connective tissue of the human mind, and when aligned, they create an unstoppable force.

• Attention: Connects you to the present moment, where the power to act resides. It’s a currency to be invested, not just paid.
• Intention: Identifies what truly matters to you, directing your energy forward.
• Imagination: Explores how to realize future possibilities, providing vision and direction.
• Random Acts of Kindness: The movement’s origin illustrates how one inspiring idea, pulled by attention, intention, and imagination, can create a simple, replicable model for large-scale mind share.
• Market-Share vs. Mind-Share Mindset: A table highlights ten key differences, emphasizing a shift from power/winning to influence/connection, valuing all thinking styles, and moving from “I have it” to “the more we share, the more we have.”

Aiming Your Attention

Directing your attention consciously and consistently can rewire your brain, fostering presence and focus.

• Neural Synchrony: Full attention brings the “orchestra” of the mind into harmony, leading to heightened focus.
• Unlearning Distraction: It involves stepping out of chaotic thoughts to redirect attention to present experience and goals, like sailing.
• Aline’s Story (Global Ad Agency Executive): Aline, a VKA mind pattern, was stressed by “continuous partial attention.” By consciously applying her pattern (looking directly, touching, listening), she learned to be fully present with her son and in meetings, strategically using visuals and movement to enhance focus.
• Recognizing Interference: Identify what distracts your attention (e.g., people talking, visual clutter) and use your mind pattern to make sensory adjustments (e.g., move if listening, pause if talking, let eyes wander if staring at a screen).

Aiming Your Intention

Directing your energy toward what you want to create—your purposeful intent—generates “future pull.”

• Purposeful Direction: When intention is aimed toward what’s important, energy is directed forward, preventing waste on fears or obstacles.
• Specificity: Specific intentions (e.g., “lose fifteen pounds in six months to run a 5K”) are more effective than vague ones.
• Inquiry for Intention: Using analytic, procedural, relational, and innovative questions to clarify and align individual and collective intentions.
• Client’s Story: A client discovered her intention was to help people tell inspirational stories, aligning her talents (belief, storytelling, thinking ahead) with purposeful work that energized her and reached thousands globally.

Aiming Your Imagination

Envisioning what you want to achieve and directing that vision toward your intention is crucial for inspiration and fulfillment.

• Designing Within Constraints: Imagination thrives not by ignoring constraints, but by creatively designing within them, transforming interferences into opportunities for innovative output.
• Interferences to Imagination: These include devaluing dreams, not knowing conditions for creative thought, fear of lacking capacity, or misbelieving imagination is unproductive.
• Overcoming Interferences: Use thinking talents to realize a dream’s value, create multi-sensory conditions for imagination, form partnerships for blind spots, and remind yourself of your intention with visual cues.
• Raymond’s Story (Automobile Marketing Director): Raymond, using his VAK pattern and varied talents (storytelling, optimism, mentoring, get to action, fixing it), aligned his “inner board of directors” to design a profound Super Bowl halftime show. He aimed his imagination towards unifying the nation during wartime, resulting in a powerful emotional campaign.
• “CARE” Process: A pragmatic reminder for integrating imagination and action: Create ideas, Analyze ideas, Refine your best ideas into a plan, Execute your plan.
• “Creating Future Pull” Practice: This embodied practice uses physical pressure (someone pressing on shoulders) to demonstrate how, by shifting attention to a desired future and imagining support, one can propel forward from a state of being “stuck.”

This chapter emphasizes that by aligning your attention, intention, and imagination, you can cultivate a powerful mind-share mindset that fosters dynamic “future pull” and transforms challenges into opportunities for growth and influence.

Shifting the Mindsets of Others

This chapter reveals how leaders can foster collaborative mindsets in others by applying the principles of attention, intention, and imagination to groups, using historical examples and practical tools.

Secrets of Two Collaborative Leaders: Al Carey, Jacki Zehner

Leaders who prioritize people and genuinely believe in others’ potential can shift limiting mindsets.

• Jacki Zehner (Women Moving Millions): Collaboration demands moving beyond one-upmanship to create truly respectful, inviting, and inclusive spaces, challenging ingrained non-collaborative habits.
• Al Carey (PepsiCo Americas Beverages): Negativity is often a protective habit. He inspires others by genuinely believing in their greatness, listening “underneath words” for true needs, and acting in service to their success. He sees “adversity advantage” in learning together from challenges.

Aiming Collective Attention

Treating attention as a precious currency and focusing it on existing assets can transform group dynamics.

• Attention as Currency: Attention is something given, earned, invested, and spent, not just “paid.” Leaders must actively direct it to counter digital-age distractions like “continuous partial attention.”
• Focusing on Assets: Leaders like Nick (previous chapter) begin meetings by acknowledging specific contributions, focusing collective attention on the intellectual assets present in the room.
• Guidelines for Aiming Collective Attention: Focus on successes and assets, recognize diverse mind patterns (e.g., standing, talking, looking away for focus), respect natural rhythms of attention, and communicate what you need to be present.

Aiming Collective Intention: Questions for Leaders

Aligning a group toward a shared goal creates “future pull” and inspires collective excellence.

• Collective Alignment: When a group’s individual intentions align towards a collective goal, it creates strong magnetism and commitment beyond mere compliance.
• Inquiry for Alignment: Use analytic, procedural, relational, and innovative questions to surface and align collective intention, ensuring shared purpose.
• Nigeria Meeting Example: A workshop between Shell leaders and Nigerian Ministry of Energy representatives, facilitated by the authors, used multi-sensory methods (photos, music, storytelling, standing meetings) to align diverse KAV-patterned participants. This created a shared vision for Nigeria’s future, leading to the co-creation of a technical university.
• Guidelines for Aiming Collective Intention: State intended outcomes and check for alignment, use “walk-and-talks” or murals, foster small groups and non-habitual pairs, ask evocative “What if?” questions, and create multi-dimensional representations of the collective intention.

Aiming Collective Imagination

Tapping into a group’s collective imagination, often an unused resource, is vital for innovation and progress in a mind-share economy.

• Unleashing Potential: Leaders who evoke collective imagination understand its value as a legitimate way of thinking, fostering conditions that promote it.
• Overcoming Interference: Address fears of lacking capacity or the misconception that imagination is time-wasting by displaying team talents, creating multi-sensory thinking environments, forming thinking partnerships, and sharing success stories of realized imaginations.
• “CARE” Process for Enacting Imagination: This acronym provides a pragmatic sequence: Create ideas, Analyze for effectiveness, Refine into an action plan, and Execute the plan by aligning task and talent.
• “Enacting Mind Share” Practice (Collaboration Handbook): Each team member creates a one-page summary of their mind pattern, thinking talents, inquiry style, blind spots, and preferences for communication and feedback. These are shared to create a team handbook, fostering mutual understanding and an operating agreement for effective collaboration.
• Karen’s Story (Fortune 500 CEO): Karen found her leadership team fragmented. By inviting them on a “walk-and-talk” to imagine unleashing employee potential and then creating a visual “mural” of their ideas, she fostered an aligned collective intention. The subsequent creation of a collaboration handbook further enabled the team to leverage their intellectual diversity for better “thinking together.”

This chapter concludes that by consciously aiming collective attention, intention, and imagination, leaders can foster deep collaboration, turning fragmented groups into cohesive, innovative, and highly effective teams.

Conclusion: Randori: Leading with a New Quality of Mind

The conclusion draws on the martial art concept of “Randori,” or “grasping freedom,” to summarize the ultimate quality of mind needed for collaborative intelligence. It emphasizes that true leadership involves cultivating respect for differences and leveraging collective wisdom.

The Randori: Leading with a New Quality of Mind

Just as a martial arts master gracefully redirects chaotic forces, a leader with a new quality of mind navigates complexity with balance, respect, and influence.

• Grasping Freedom: “Randori” signifies the freedom to choose how you respond, even amidst chaotic challenges, rather than being rigid or collapsing.
• Respect as Core Quality: The fundamental quality of mind is respect—meaning “to look again,” to see oneself, others, and challenges with fresh eyes, recognizing their inherent value.
• Cultivating Respect: True respect involves acknowledging the “dormant seed of greatness” in every person, leading to collaboration with hidden possibilities.
• The Grandmother’s Wisdom: A story of a midwife grandmother who, even in the face of profound tragedy, practiced seeing the hidden potential in others, exemplifying unwavering respect.
• Concluding Practice: A meditative exercise to cultivate respect by bringing to mind those who stand behind you (ancestors, mentors), next to you (colleagues, supporters), and after you (future generations). Then, apply this same expansive lens to a challenging person, imagining their supporters and future potential, ending with the open question: “What can we make possible together?”
• Beyond Expertise: The future of leadership depends less on individual expertise and more on the capacity to connect with those who think differently, bridging gaps with imagination and trust in collaborative intelligence.

Big-Picture Wrap-Up

“Collaborative Intelligence” presents a transformative framework for navigating our interconnected world. It moves beyond traditional notions of individual brilliance to embrace the profound power of thinking with others, even—and especially—those who think differently. By providing practical strategies and embodied practices, the authors empower readers to cultivate a mindset of curiosity, openness, and mutual respect, turning differences into powerful assets for innovation and collective achievement.

• Dignify Differences: Embrace intellectual diversity as a resource, not a deficit, understanding that each person’s unique thinking contributes to a richer whole.
• Know Your Mind: Identify your own mind patterns and thinking talents to understand how you best learn, focus, and create, and acknowledge your blind spots.
• Understand Others: Learn to “read” others’ mind patterns and talents, adapting your communication style to foster rapport and influence.
• Master Inquiry: Shift from providing answers to asking powerful questions (success-based, intentional, influential) to open minds, bridge divides, and ignite possibilities.
• Aim for Mind Share: Consciously direct collective attention, intention, and imagination toward shared goals, moving beyond competition to true interdependence.
• Practice Embodied Learning: Integrate new insights through physical practices, allowing the body to teach the mind, making collaborative skills intuitive and accessible under pressure.
• Cultivate Respect: Develop a core quality of mind that sees the inherent value in everyone, fostering an environment where all can contribute their unique “seed of greatness.”
• Embrace Interdependence: Recognize that true progress and flourishing come from interconnectedness and the willingness to learn, grow, and achieve together.