Odd things can happen when hanging out with those who don’t act right, like you. I got unexpected insights when, with two friends, I walked through the Steins Collection of paintings by Matissse, Picasso and other avant-garde painters in bohemian Paris.

In most every gallery room one friend would sit on the bench in the middle of the gallery, then casually look down. I didn’t understand at first. He was deep in thought, I surmised at first. Yet actually he was closely observing the shoes people were wearing, and there was a wild variety in this art-loving crowd.

Following his eyes I saw footwear as diverse as laced up-to-mid-thigh, purple velvet boots to topless sandals. They must have been glued to the soles of the woman’s feet.

Otherwise I might not have noticed that one doesn’t see many shoes in these paintings. Faces appear more often.  Yet, when looking at a Picasso, my friend was immediately reminded of  shoes he’d seen just before we’d entered the museum.

Meanwhile my other friend would describe the emotions he saw in faces in the paintings, and on people around us, commenting on their possible personalities. As you probably anticipated by now, what my friends saw  — and did not see  –  depended on the lens through which they viewed the world. One friend is a shoe designer, visiting from Milan. The other is a trial lawyer who is accustomed to sizing up clients, judges, witnesses and potential jurors. Sharing that experience through their eyes was a considerably richer, more multi-faceted experience. In fact, when we continued our lively conversation over coffee in the adjacent café, two pediatricians at a nearby table, in town for conference, joined in the conversation.

Discover Lessons for Not Living a Narrow Life

Forget passive entertainment and learning. Would you like to live a more adventuresome life where you:

• Stumble across new ideas that dovetail with the life you want to lead yet didn’t realize it until you experienced “scenes” you want to repeat?

• Attract serendipitous opportunities?

• Have meaningful conversations with acquaintances that sometimes become friends?

• Create your own fun with others?

Here are some lessons I’m slow in learning yet that have made life more fascinating

1.  Overcome Attention Blindness

We tend to see life through the lens of our work and life experiences.  That means we miss a lot. “As long as we focus on the object we know, we will miss the new one we need to see,” says Cathy Davidson, author of Now You See it.

2.  See How Differences Can Spur Fresh Insights and Innovation

One fun way to overcome that blindness is to share new experiences with individuals quite different than you in work, life experience, temperament and values.  The color commentary you share as you see that art exhibit together, or prototype a new product or collectively plan an event or place can broaden the landscape you see in the moment and for the rest of your lives.

3.  Speak to the Glue of Greater  Adventure or Accomplishment

Even better, if you share a sweet a spot of mutual interest in the activity you and your colleagues may nudge each other into staying connected and even co-creating something new.  That sweet spot can be strong glue for your group. As The Difference author, Scott E. Page, and Group Genius author Keith Sawyer both discovered, a small, diverse group can collectively innovate better than a team of of individuals with more similarities than differences.   If  my two friends and I had realized that we  were all fascinated by design and human behavior we could have discussed that upfront, before entering the museum and perhaps had an even more meaningful time – explicitly speaking  to those share sweet spots of mutual interest.  We do now when we seek out new experiences to share.

4.  Retrieve an Atrophied Part of Your Character

When engaged in conversation with individuals who do not know you, as we did in the museum café, you can express ideas that close friends might dispute or even not hear because they do not expect them from you.  YAs Melinda Blau explained in Consequential Strangers, this gives you the opportunity  to deepen a facet of your character or explore a latent interest when in lively conversation with people who have no preconceived expectations of you.

5. Seek Out Those From Whom You May Learn the Most

The kind of individual from whom you can learn the most is also an ideal kind of dinner guest or committee member or teammate. That person is T-shaped, as Collaboration author Morten Hansen somewhat antiseptically describes this priceless trait for our increasingly complex yet connected world. Such individuals have both a deep mastery of a topic (the vertical line of a “T”) and an open, curious mind — they enjoy learning from others (the horizontal line of the “T”). I am presuming they also tend to have a flexible rather than a fixed mindset.

A gentle warning here. Even when we see ourselves  — and our colleagues in front of us — as open and curious people we don’t act right around each other.

6. Hone Your Capacity to Thrive Around People Who Don’t Act Right – Like You

Since our assets spring from different outlooks, it behooves us to keep reminding each other:

• We do not see the same situation the same way

• “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” ~ Niels Bohr

•  We get to be learners and teachers for each other, and that means changing roles more often than we do in most situations, an uncomfortable behavioral shift for many of us.

• Some individuals are givers more than takers, others are the reverse. Yet to enjoy the next chapter of your life story with more disparate characters in it – the most likely path to greater adventure, you must become — and be in the company of — people who want more or less equal give and take over time.  Absent that factor power is not perceived to be equally shared that that inevitably creates conflict as the classic Tit for Tat game studies proved.

• More than leaders, diverse people, gathered around a common interest, must become deep listeners, committed – not to being right or in control but to sticking to a common conversational thread.

That’s a different discipline.

It takes practice and patience. I am not good at it yet am eager to keep learning.

What ways have you learned to see the world in fresh ways, through your experiences with others? I’d love to know.

In a New Yorker cartoon, a bored-looking couple are sitting apart on a couch, facing a smiling therapist who says, “Any healthy relationship requires fundamental acting skills.” Clearly the Michelangelo Effect is not in play.

Couples who affirm and support each other’s best side also “sculpt” each other in beneficial ways. They become deeply committed and enjoy fresh experiences and learning – through and with their partner, according to researchers, Arthur Aron and Gary W. Lewandowski, Jr. In psychology, this is called self-expansion – growing through experiences with others. Not surprisingly, the dissolution of such relationships is especially devastating to one’s sense of self.

Reading this research, it dawned on me that the behaviors that build sustainable marriages could also help leaders model relationship-building that enables colleagues to optimize their talents for each other and their organization.

Leaders who encourage colleagues to support each other’s strongest talents and to introduce each other to new topics may also spur workers to self-organize around vital projects where they can use their disparate, best talents together. In so doing colleagues sculpt each other’s strengths as they succeed at projects they could not have accomplished alone.

Such experiences whet the appetite for further deeply engaged work together. Many of the happy couples turned their differences into sources of interest rather than conflict, enabling them to learn from each other. Leaders might evoke a similar effect by first inviting their colleagues to join in reading Marcus Buckingham’s classic book, Now Discover Your Strengths.

To understand the power of diverse people working together around sweet spots of shared interest, they might then read Morton Hanson’s Collaboration, Scott Page’s The Difference and Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius. After that the leader could champion discussions on how colleagues can dovetail their strengths on specific work projects.

As in a sustainable marriage, what’s key for relationship-building leaders to model are three traits: a strongly felt, shared mission; a mutual understanding and expressed support of each other’s strengths and a desire to learn, grow and create with others.

As a relationship-building leader, you can measure how well you are doing by adapting a few questions from the marriage researchers, Aron and Lewandowski:

• How much has working with this colleague resulted in your learning and doing new things?

• How much has knowing this colleague made you a better person?

From other marriage researchers, we can glean further insights into how leaders can grow their organization by enabling colleagues to do greater work together through passionately engaged and sustained relationships at work.

The renowned Gottmans believe that those in happy marriages exhibit certain behaviors with each other. While some researchers criticize the Gottmans for scant proof that marital happiness can be connected to these behaviors, they seem worth considering for building closer, productive engagement at work. I have adapted some of them, slightly for modeling relationship-strengthening leadership at work:

• Know each other. Discover and be mindful of their strongest likes and dislikes, greatest talents and passionate interests.

• Focus on each other’s best qualities and opinions of each other, and the rewarding times you have shared.

• Interact as frequently as needed to stay engaged in the shared work. Speak forthrightly about differences so you experience working disagreement and can trust that you know where you stand with each other.

• Allow your partner to influence you so you both can feel heard and can learn from each other.

• Solve your solvable problems. Don’t try for complete agreement on everything. Consider, does this difference between us affect our top goal or can we work around it?

• Understand your partner’s underlying conflict that is preventing resolution. Either find a way to address it directly or offer an alternative that can overcome it. If you two are disagreeing for more than ten minutes, by the way, you are probably not discussing the underlying problem. Not resolving it means it will probably grow.

• Create shared meaning. Find strong sweet spots of shared interests, values, past experiences, needs or traditions.

Since many of us spend the majority of our waking hours working, the leaders that show us how to accomplish greater things through stronger relationships will probably become increasingly sought-after.  Perhaps it is not too odd to look to the secrets of lovingly engaged couples for insights about how we can make our work more meaningful and satisfying together.

Whether you’re on a project team, party-planning or seeking customers’ input to improve your product you have more chance of success with the right collaborative tools.

Often, the trouble is finding the best methods or tools when you need them. Here’s a shareable list to which you can add your favorites. It’s exciting and overwhelming to see the flood of inventive software, apps and more that pop up every day to help us.

Here are some of the tools and ways they can be used to accomplish more with others:

• Brainstorm and plan together, drawing your ideas on the wall. Turn any smooth surface into a “dry erase” place using IdeaPaint.

• Your team can stay on task and be accountable to each other using AtTask.

• Start a learning community where peers, fellow enthusiasts, employees, customers or fans teach each other, using Bloomfire.

• Enable all club or association members or business employees to participate in suggesting innovations and growing great ideas from fuzzy inceptions to solid, actionable projects, with Brainbank.

• Teammates can quickly and dynamically create and refine charts, allowing other users to be invited in to review, comment on, and update a diagram in a matter of minutes without having to go through the process of saving a copy of a file, attempting to email it, making sure the recipient has the same program, and waiting for a reply, using Creately.

• Find out what your employees really know about your business and thus crowdsource innovation, tapping the “wisdom of crowds” to improve what you sell and how you sell it, using Crowdcast.

• For crowdsourcing funding for creative projects try Kickstarter.

• Just as Cisco, with its popular I-Prize, involved BrightIdea and Spigit in crowdsourcing innovative ideas you can use a crowdsourcing tool to tap the wisdom of the crowd. That way you can efficiently filter out best ideas and recognize and reward those who submit them as Ireland did. Jive offers another robust approach to crowdsourcing.

• For your group, start a Wordpress blog-like social network that enables everyone in your company, school, sports team or niche community to contribute ideas, using BuddyPress.

• Co-create maps for that you can share via your mobile phones, using CloudMade.

• In real-time, meet with colleagues around the world, using dimdim to participate in real-time meetings. You can collaborate by sharing their desktops, slides, and other materials with each other. Meeting participants can also chat and speak to each other, as well as broadcast themselves via webcams. Or up to ten people can meet for free online, and share screens and co-draw items using Mikogo.

• Spot a pothole or graffiti when out doing errands? Use CitySourced on your cell phone to report them to city hall for quick resolution. This is an opportunity for government to use technology to save money and improve accountability to those they govern, using CitySourced.

• Effortlessly group text your committee, team or group of close friends with GroupMe. It works on every phone.

• If several of you are planning an event, trip or project and want to easily share and track expenses, use WePay.

What other tools have helped you in collaborating?

Please add them to this list of 97 tools.

Then you might want to peruse this list of collaboration-related books and sites – and add your own favorites, of course, in the spirit of sharing and collaboration.

“I had a woman in Idaho tell me that her options for employment went from one job to hundreds because of her ability to work from home after receiving broadband,” said DigitalBridge founder, Kelley Dunne.

In partnership with others including Internet providers he offered online access to rural or otherwise “underserved areas of the country such as Native American reservations, rural communities and inner-city low-income housing.”

Dunne ‘s lifelong work path provides us with step-by-step insights on how to accomplish greater things with others and savor the friendships along the way.

Here are his steps that we can adapt to our work in our own way, even at a later stage in life:

1. Continuously deepen expertise in one single area that matters to you and matches your talents.

2. Practice working in teams, as a leader and a team player – especially self-organized teams – those not required by a “boss.” More important than leading in this increasingly connected and complex world, see how to become the Most Valuable (kind of) Player most needed in each situation.

Then you’ll stay sought-after for future opportunities on other teams. Morten Hansen calls this T-shaped management yet anyone – even non-managers – can practice it.

3. Learn how to scale and/or replicate the projects on which you work.

4. Keep an eye out for problems to solve and opportunities to seize, where you can employ your deep expertise and befriend apt partners along the way, before you need them.

5. When that irresistible problem or opportunity presents itself be ready. To tackle it find the right partners who complement your talents (and no extra people) and who share a sweet spot of mutual interest with you to tackle that task.

Together get specific on your actionable goal to create a different service, product or organization and/or to serve a different niche better together than you could on your own.

In keeping with those steps, Dunne described what he has done, in a recent interview:

1.“As I started my career, I decided that if I was going to participate in society, I wanted to first do something to serve others. I joined the Army, where I was involved in rolling out some of the first digital wireless communication systems.”

2. “Being a lieutenant in the Army taught me accountability, leadership and teamwork.

I eventually joined a very small company that was delivering DSL technology to apartment communities across the country. We grew rapidly.”

3. “I brought vision, leadership and execution and the ability to build a scalable business. In 2000, when we sold it to Verizon, it became Verizon Avenue.”

4. “I began to see that as the world evolved more into a wireless one, we could create different business models toserve areas that were harder to reach.”

5. “I came up with a plan to do this and pitched it to Verizon. We applied new technologies for underserved areas of the country such as Native American reservations, rural communities and inner-city low-income housing.”

We worked in cooperation with other partners in the industry to help figure out how to serve different parts of the country.”

“I’ve always been an admirer of One Economy. I love the way they ran it like a business, created very collaborative public-private partnerships and focused on the holistic solution – not just access but content training and sustainability.

Here was an opportunity to bring wireless to underserved communities on a bigger scale with a very well-respected organization that has a long track record and is poised to do some fantastic things both domestically and globally.”

Next step for Dunne? He is now the excited new ceo of One Economy, eager to train and mentor more “Digital Connectors” to help low income people improve their lives, including by gaining access to computers and online resources.

Hint: Collaborating around a sweet spot of mutual interest often leads to dreaming bigger and opens new doors of opportunity and friendship.

“The bottom-up world is to be the great theme of this century.” ~ Matt Ridley

Nobody can know everything, nor do everything well.

Yet you can know someone who does – or know somebody who knows somebody who does.

And that may be the secret to staying sought-after in this increasingly complex and connected world.

In fact, next to honing your top talent your most vital trait to strengthen is probably your capacity to collaborate – especially with those extremely unlike you.  Seven of the ten trends in how we work involve being adept collaborators.

“Collaboration is the new competition.” ~ Pamela Slim and Michele Woodward

The next trick is understanding exactly how to connect so others want to collaborate with you. It starts with speaking to the sweet spot of mutual benefit.

“A radically different order of society based on open access, decentralized creativity, collaborative intelligence, and cheap and easy sharing is ascendant.” ~ David Bollier

For a project on which I am collaborating on with the remarkable Kris Schaeffer, ably assisted by Steven Toy (expect an announcement in December) here’s some books that helped me discover why and how to collaborate:

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky, Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity and Reap Big Results by Morten T. Hansen,  Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, The Culture of Collaboration by Evan Rosen, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy by Moises Naim, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, The Firefly Effect: Build Teams that Capture Creativity and Catapult Results by Kimberly Douglas, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

See other books on collaboration that I recommend at Listiki and please add your favorites. After all its a collaborative list.  I also tweet about  examples of collaboration here.

“Collaborations are strengthened through appreciative relationships.  You know you’ve got it right when you find yourself in a relationship in which you are listened to, dream together, choose to contribute, act with support, and are positive.” ~ Ben Ziegler

Become an opportunity-maker for the member organization that most matters to you. Imagine that your association or special interest group kept innovating to create more value and meaning for members.

That’s what TED has done and we can too by taking three collaborative steps over time:

1. Offer a single major conference  – as most associations already do, of course. Involve the members in choosing topics, speakers and formats, base on core guidelines, chosen by member vote. Create a format that enables members to participate in reach a single – and singular goal.

2. Encourage the launch of local conferences yet don’t try to control them. Instead create ground rules for local leaders to succeed while maintaining the quality of the “brand.”

3. Co-brand a fresh version of your national conference with another respected organization on vital topic that matters to the members of both organizations. Allow the founders of your local conferences to co-sponsor that new conference by enabling their members to view it together in their area.

The team at the TED conference announced this third step today.  See how you could adapt these steps to the member group that most matters to you.

Step One

The national TED conference has grown increasingly popular throughout the past 22 years, with the biggest community of members becoming those who avidly watch the videos of speakers.

Step Two

Building on the strength of that largely online community, TED launched, just last April, local events dubbed TEDx. Rather, in true collaborative fashion, they announced guidelines for these local events and invited people to co-host, design and run them. In just one year local leaders stepped up and hosted over 600 such events around the globe.

Hint: To encourage local events, the guidelines start with the benefits for the local organizers and provides an easy-to-follow toolkit: “In the spirit of ‘Ideas Worth Spreading,’ TEDx is a program that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience through events they themselves organize, design and host.

We’re supporting approved organizers by offering a free toolkit that includes detailed advice, the right to use recorded TEDTalks, promotion on our site, connection to other organizers, and a little piece of our brand in the form of the TEDx label.”

In so doing, local communities bonded, learning together and created other local collaborations.  Imagine! In over 25 languages were spoken at these talks with opportunities for translation to spread the messages farther – and make speakers more well-known, thus spurring participation by great speakers.

Hint: the more popular your events become the more people you attract to donate their services.

This is the path to peace – and savoring your life with others. Diverse individuals meeting to learn and share best ideas with each other – and, in conversations during the event and afterwards, to find ways they can accomplish greater things together, than they can alone.

Step Three

Today the third step was announced. A new event is linking local groups to the mother ship of the national group – around a new topic area, yet connected to the underlying TED brand of innovation, new ideas – and solving a problem together.  Local groups will get to meet and share this new event live – with other local chapters around the world.  The announcement was that “On September 20, 2010, more than 150 of the world’s leading thinkers and doers will come together in New York for TEDxChange, convened by Melinda French Gates … and hosted by TED founder Chris Anderson.”

With such member loyalty, interest and clout accumulated by TED it can attract a big-time partner – the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Also together they share a Sweet Spot of mutual interest – bringing bright minds together to address a big problem: how to improve health around the world.

Plus smart partners tie their collaboration to as many meaning goals and events as they credibly can.  For example, this conference is tied to the 10th anniversary of the famous Millennium Development Goals.

This is a three- stage template that you could use to grow the value and visibility of your profession association – and make it more meaningful for your members.

In fact any member-based club or special interest group could adapt it to their needs to grow its capacity to make powerful changes while imbuing its members with a sense of meaning in their participation.

Think what the Rotary Clubs have accomplished over 20 years with their single goal, bottom-up approach to wiping out polio.  Imagine local Rotary clubs have rallied around this single cause and have raised about $127.4 million for this cause – plus personally worked on projects to make it happen. That gives their lives meaning and builds extraordinary bonds between members and with those they selflessly serve. That dedication and progress towards a singular goal (key to great collaboration) attracted the Gates foundation as a partner.

Tip: When people bring out each other’s best talents in collaboration around a sweet spot of mutual interest they accomplish greater things together than they ever could on their own – and they savor the experience along the way.

To make your member-based organization a member-attracting tool for major change and a source of meaning in the life of your members what singular goal would you suggest they achieve?  For your organization, how would you adapt this three-step approach that has been wildly successful for TED?

Life is getting better faster. Food is more widely available; we live longer; more people have money and violence, disease and child mortality are down all around the world. Yet there will be turmoil.

“The bottom-up world is to be the great theme of this century,” predicts Matt Ridley in his controversial new book Rational Optimist.

“Doctors are having to get used to well-informed patients who have researched their own illnesses. Journalists are adjusting to readers and viewers who select and assemble their news on demand. Engineers are sharing problems to find solutions…. Politicians are increasingly corks tossed on the waves of public opinion. Dictators are learning that their citizens can organize riots by text message. `Here comes everybody‘ says author Clay Shirky.”

In this bottom-up world individual specialization and free exchange of goods are vital to improving more lives according to Ridley. Human intelligence is becoming collective, not individual – thanks to these two inventions. We can generate more value and options with for each other.

As proof, he recaps the course of economic progress in this way. When humans invented specialization and trade, I could make something and you could make a different object, crafts we each excel at. Each of us trades our best products rather than making them all ourselves.

Then I can focus on making mine better and faster. As others do likewise we trade and sell better products and have more choices, thus spurring further innovation – both in making and trading goods.

Thus consumption could grow more diversified (making life better), while production grew more specialized. William Easterly counters Ridley’s premise: “Specialists often have the most to lose from new technologies that displace the old ones they know so well, and may want to block innovation.” Yet it seems that the power of the marketplace in a networked world to hear about that innovation would eventually push aside such stonewalling specialists’ attempt to block access to the new, new thing.

Our opportunities multiply as human intelligence becomes “collective” and we generate more value with for each other.

Near the end of the book Ridley pulls together many threads of his argument for an optimistic future with these bold forecasts:• “Large corporations, political parties and government bureaucracies will crumble and fragment as central planning agencies did before them.”

• “Monolithic behemoths, whether private or nationalized, are vulnerable as never before to this Lilliputian assault. They are steadily being driven extinct not just by small firms, but ephemeral aggregations of people that form and reform continuously. The big firms that survive will do so by turning themselves into bottom-up evolvers.”

• “People will more and more freely find ways to exchange their specialized production for diversified consumption.”

• “‘The online masses have an incredible willingness to share’ says Kevin Kelly. Instead of money, `peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction and experience.’”

• Among the pitfalls we face, predators and parasites can piggyback on the work of others as freeloaders and worse. They can spark terror or spread a false belief: “The integrated nature of the world means that it may soon be possible to capture the entire world on behalf of a foolish idea, where before you could only capture a country, or perhaps if you were lucky an empire.

• “It will be hard to snuff out the flame of innovation because it is such an evolutionary, bottom-up phenomenon in such a networked world. However reactionary and cautious Europe and the Islamic world and perhaps even America become, China will surely now keep the torch of catallaxy alight, and India, and maybe Brazil, not to mention a host of smaller free cities and states….”

I’m surprised that Ridley ignored the role that language played in the evolution of human progress especially as it is vital to specialization and trade.

Another area that Ridley does not explore and that Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan raises is that the rise of the collective brain that Ridely cites may, in fact, be collective brains – people who band together around their common interests.

While the upside is the sense of belonging that engenders, the downside is, as Ridley has suggested is “generally speaking the more cooperative a species is within groups, the more hostility there is between groups.”  If this future scenario does happen then we may have more and more kinds of tribes and more kinds of intense disagreements amongst them – and worse.

Also, while I, like Ridley, think “open” markets aid innovation I have this caveat. To be truly open there must be a level playing field for competition and a true accounting for all costs to the public in the price of that product – that means no hidden subsidies, protections or costs of clean-up, etc. by government. That base line role of government regulation will always be hotly contested and arduous to craft and to enforce yet it is a vital role of a government of the people – for the people.

Three ways you can thrive in a bottom-up world are to be quotable, forge profitable partnerships and turn strangers into allies.

The sum of us can be more powerful (and fun) than one of us… sometimes. The confounding thing is exactly how we make it happen.

Even when we have a strong desire to collaborate, we are  likely bump up against into each other because, as in love,  good intentions don’t always lead to mutually satisfying behavior. Yet, as in love and friendship, the togetherness of collaboration is where our most meaningful moments in life often happen. We have the opportunity to either step away or stay steadfast in creating something greater than we can alone. Sometimes we can even savor the bumpy moments along the way. What’s your favorite quote for collaborating? Here’s some ideas.

“Independence is a political concept, not a biological concept.” ~ Margaret Wheatley

“Maybe we are not here to see each other but to see each other through” ~ anonymous

“We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action.” ~ Clay Shirky

“If you want to have great partnerships, be a great partner. Get beyond yourself. Give up the notion that you are well-rounded, and stop expecting your colleagues to be universally proficient. Incorporate someone else’s motivations into your view of the accomplishment. Loosen up.

Put aside your competitive nature, your prepackaged view of how the thing should be done, and your desire not to be inconvenienced with the imperfections of a fellow human being. Focus more on what you do for the partnership than what you get from it. Demonstrate trust and see if they don’t surprise you with their trustworthiness. Be slower to anger and quicker to forgive. And along the way, communicate continuously.” ~ Rodd Wagner and Gale Muller

“A radically different order of society based on open access, decentralized creativity, collaborative intelligence, and cheap and easy sharing is ascendant.” ~ David Bollier

“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

“We live in two worlds – order and chaos.  In the world of order, we plan, reflect, and think about what to do next.  In the world of chaos, things happen, we get things done, yet unpredictability persists.   In one world, we like to think we are in control.  In the other, we mingle together with increasing complexity, conflict, and uncertainty.” ~ David Spangler

“How much you groom somebody else is more important than who grooms you.” ~ Robert Sapolsky

“I am continually impressed by the inconsistency of sustained attention in relationships.  Partners complain about this all the time, and kids probably would too if they could. ‘We’ have evolved with the capacity to attend to each other, but it’s not exactly dominant in our lives. Imagine a world where it was!” ~ Thomas Bradbury

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” ~ Henry Winkler

“If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.” ~ Lyndon Johnson

“A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.” ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect, the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.” ~ E.M. Forrester

“Daily life is foreplay for relationships.” ~ Kate Feldman

“Structure influences behavior. Design spaces that make you feel “you are welcome here and that you came to the right place.” ~ Peter Block

“Safety is a basic human need.  People with a sense of security and belonging are stabilized for learning, creating, innovating. A group of wonderfully cared for, confident individuals generates great ideas.”  ~ John Sweeney

“Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.” ~ Max Lucade

“Our model of what it was to be present to each other, we thought we liked that,” she said. “But it turns out that time shifting is our most valued product. This new technology is about control. Emotional control and time control.” ~ Sherry Turkel

“Bad collaboration is worse than no collaboration. Working across organizational values can create tremendous value or destroy it – the hoarding and squabbling endemic in large companies can actually make collaboration more expensive than not attempting it.” ~ Morten T. Hansen

“Human beings are wired to care and give and it’s probably our best route to happiness.” ~ Dacher Keltner

“Dissent is the cousin of diversity; the respect for a wide range of beliefs. This begins by allowing people the space to say “no”. If we cannot say “no” then our “yes” has no meaning. Each needs the chance to express their doubts and reservations, without having to justify them, or move quickly into problem solving. No is the beginning of the conversation for commitment.” ~ Peter Block

“Groups need both carrot and stick-based rules to remain stable.” ~ Robert Axelrod

“We need to look at front porches as crime fighting tools, treat picnics as public health efforts and see choral groups as occasions of democracy. We will become a better place when assessing social capital impact becomes a standard part of decision-making.” ~ Lew Feldstein

“Consequential strangers help us stretch beyond the relatively rigid boxes that the people who have known us the longest – our family and close friends – often put us into. Through interacting with people who do not know us as well, we are more free to experiment with ourselves, and less likely to have our new behaviors and roles reflected back to us by people who object, ‘But that’s not like you!’” ~ Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman

“Collaboration is more about find that sweet spot of mutual interest and understanding and being understood, than it is about speak well.” ~ Kare Anderson

“From American Idol to The Matrix participatory media – where old and new media converge by involving fans – is influencing our culture by creating new forms of interactive storytelling. Yet by enabling people to participate in such various media they can converge as a crowd to alter the story to create new modes of engagement, some not necessarily endorsed by the creator – or the brands that back them.” ~ Henry Jenkins

“In the long history of humankind…those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” ~ Charles Darwin

“Effective collaboration is about maximizing time, talent and tools to create value. The old way was the pass-along approach. I do my job and then pass along my work product to you. You do your piece of it and pass it along to somebody else.” ~ Evan Rosen

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”  ~ Carl Jung

“Diverse groups of problem solvers outperformed the groups of the best individuals at solving complex problems. The reason: the diverse groups got stuck less often than the smart individuals, who tended to think similarly.” ~ Scott E. Page

“Open, frank communication is the lynchpin to teamwork. A fractured team is like a fractured bone; fixing it is always painful and sometimes you have to re-break it to heal it fully – and the re-break always hurts more because it is intentional.” ~ Patrick Lencioni

“If you understood everything I said, you’d be me.” ~ Miles Davis

“Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other’s prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.” ~ Cass Sunstein

“Being in a band is always a compromise. Provided that the balance is good, what you lose in compromise, you gain by collaboration.” ~ Mike Rutherford

“Some of the power has shifted from companies to people. Using social media tools (blogs, wikis, tagging, etc.) more individuals are creating semi-spontaneous ‘groundswells’ of opinions to which companies and other institutions are realizing they must respond.  From marketing to consumers organizations are being pulled into engaging with individuals.” ~ Charlene Li

“No idea will work if people don’t trust your intentions toward them.” ~ Marcus Buckingham

“Who is giving the orders to ants? No one. They are self-organizing. Each of our immune systems get smarter over the years as its biochemical parts share information, and it responds with individualized defenses, but it isn’t conscious and it has no memory. The host of that party didn’t decree that everyone would gather in the kitchen, but it happened anyway. Emergence means we sometimes act in concert for better or worse.” ~ Steven Johnson

“Trust is the glue that holds relationships together.” ~ Price Pritchett

“In an improv group and a successful work team, the members play off one another, each person’s contributions providing the spark for the next. Together, the improvisational team creates a novel emergent product, one that’s more responsive to the changing environment. “ ~ Keith Sawyer

“Human beings are to independent action, what cats are to swimming. We can do it if we really have to, but mostly we don’t… Instead, we do what we do because of what those around us are doing (Whatever our minds and our cultures tell us). It is our innate nature as “herd” animals that cause mass movements, not the influence of a handful of influential individuals.” ~ Mark Earls

“Be more interested than interesting.” ~ Mark Goulston

“Hot groups have members who are task-obsessed and full of passion. They share a style which is “intense, sharply focused, and full bore. Members feel engaged in an important, even vital and personally ennobling mission; their task dominates all other considerations; and although such intense teams tend to remain intact only for a relatively short period of time, that time is remembered nostalgically and in considerable detail by its members.” ~ J. Lipman-Blumen and H. Leavitt

“For productive collaboration adopt five principles: involve the relevant stakeholders, build consensus phase by phase, design a process map, designate a process facilitator and harness the power of group memory.” ~ David Straus and Thomas C. Layton

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ~ Plato

“Trafficking organizations these days take the form of decentralized networks that shift continuously, assuming new configurations as opportunities present themselves and then morphing again to meet the needs of the next moment. They don’t specialize in a single commodity like cocaine. Instead, they move whatever goods present an opportunity for profit in the present moment; drugs today, arms tomorrow, people the next day and then knock-off designer handbags after that. Yet government agencies’ understanding of the organizational structure of international trafficking networks is dangerously out of date. They go after the illicit trades as if they had a hierarchical structure with information and power flowing up and down a chain of command.” ~ Moises Naim

“If your friend’s friend’s friend (whom you may not have even met) is obese, a smoker or a zealot of some kind then it is a lot more likely that you will be too.” ~ James H. Fowler

“Hackman’s paradox: Groups have natural advantages: they have more resources than individuals; greater diversity of resources; more flexibility in deploying the resources; many opportunities for collective learning; and, the potential for synergy. Yet studies show that their actual performance often is subpar relative to “nominal” groups (i.e. individuals given the same task but their results are pooled.) The two most common reasons: groups are assigned work that is better done by individuals or are structured in ways that cap their full potential.” ~ Richard Hackman

“The best advice for parents is not to shelter their children from the suffering in the world, and to engage them in doing something to get involved.” ~ Marc Keilburger

“Some of us cry when we watch sad movies or wince when we see athletes fall. This sense of shared experience is at the core of human experience. Because our brain has mirror neurons, we are capable of interpreting facial expressions of pain or joy, the first step towards feeling empathy, which causes an instinctively imitative response – the chameleon effect. That ‘mirroring’ response enables two people to literally see they are more alike in that moment.  That similarity evokes familiarity and thus a feeling of comfort that can lead to mutual trust with others.  When these mirror neurons do not work an individual may not be aware of another’s feelings and thus act in socially incorrect ways.” ~ Marco Iacoboni

“All for one, one for all.” ~ Alexander Dumas

“There are three stages of organizational development in this networked era. 1. Fortress – an organization where there are insiders and outsiders, and the two rarely meet or interact; 2. Transactional – an organization that is engaged with their community, but with the sole focus of transactions, such as getting people to sign up for an event or make a donation; and 3. Transparent – an organization that fully engages and empowers their community to accomplished shared goals.” ~ Beth Kanter and Allison Fine

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“The world you inhabit is the world you make. Your reputation precedes you, biasing the way new colleagues deal with you. Your first moves, friendly or hostile, tip the balance for future interactions. When you exhibit trust, you will most often find trustworthiness. When you are selfish, you will most often find selfishness. When you compete, others must resort to competition. If you choose to play the game strictly for your own advantage, your attempts at collaboration will indeed be, (as Thomas Hobbes said), ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’” ~ Rodd Wagner and Gale Muller

“Let all humanity be your sect.” ~ Sikh saying

While happiness books are all the rage, none begin by showing us the inescapable first step to connecting with others.   Yet having social ties is the single best predictor of a longer, healthier, more satisfying life. 

That seemingly mundane step? Attention.

When hired by Disney to observe what infants and toddlers paid the most attention to at their Orlando theme park and hotels I was surprised to discover that it was not the colorful, lively rides, friendly staff nor the snacks.  It was their parents’ cell phones. That phone was the action center of their world as they observed it. When parents were using their phones to talk or take pictures they were not paying direct, complete attention to their children.

Whatever you pay attention to – or not – determines your world. Isolated or connected.

 It is impossible to communicate, much less bond, with someone who can’t or won’t focus on you.  Giving attention is the first and most basic ingredient in any relationship, from a casual friendship to an enduring marriage. 

Giving and receiving undivided attention, however briefly, is the least that one individual can do for another and sometimes the most.  Multitasking not only reduces performance it also removes us from deepening connection with others.

“A developmental psychologist showed three pictures to children – a cow, a chicken and some grass,” wrote John Hagel. “He asked children from America which two of the pictures belonged together.  Most of them grouped the cow and chicken together because they were both objects in the same category of animals. 

Chinese children on the other hand tended to group the cow and grass together because “cows eat grass” – they focused on the relationship between two objects rather than the objects themselves.”

How does this happen? Some fault our individualistic, Western upbringing, focused on improving ourselves and bent on improving our children, from birth on.  We put our infants in strollers, high chairs and car seats whilst more of the world’s mothers hold babies to their bodies and share care amongst friends and families. As Rapt author, Winifred Gallagher found, “Even before they can talk these tots are primed to attend to what others are doing and feeling.”

That’s why quotes such as these have strong appeal for us independent-minded Americans: 

“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

 ”Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.”  ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes 

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” ~ Robert Frost

Yes, they reflect important traits of self-reliance and identity.  They focus on self-discovery, learning and achievement as the highest value rather than rather than on learning with others and caring for each other. In this ever more connected world, those who will live the fullest lives may shift their mindset to see the strengths of both approaches.

Most motivational speakers, self-help writers, therapists and pharmacologists encourage us to focus on “me”.  They suggest that we  look inward to understand and improve ourselves for a happier, better life.  That’s not wrong; just incomplete.  We are most likely to learn more about ourselves, to grow and to be happy, when in relationship with others. Further, in this connected world, we have they capacity to create something greater – with others, if we pay attention to the sweet spot of mutual benefit. As every well-matched tennis or chess player and happy book club member or spouse knows, simply socializing with others enables us to bond, build community – and self-confidence.

That’s not all. Research shows that paying attention to the other guy often helps you more than him. Attending to others also evokes responses that can help us feel cared for, useful and connected to the larger world.

Paying attention is an individual effort, but it’s also a kind of social cement that holds groups together and helps them feel part of something greater than themselves.

That may be one of the reasons why the Dalai Lama, rooted in the other-directed, interdependent Asian village life, believes that “my religion is kindness.”

Psychologist Thomas Bradbury says, “I am continually impressed by the inconsistency of sustained attention in relationships.  Partners complain about this all the time, and kids probably would too if they could.  We’ have evolved with the capacity to attend to each other, but it’s not exactly dominant in our lives. Imagine a world where it was!”

Positive Illusions

There are tempting rewards for spouses who pay attention positively, ones that would seem to hold true for all enduring relationships. Research shows that:

• The most important difference between happy and unhappy couples is whether their focus is on the positive or the negative.

•  Contented spouses see each other through rose-colored glasses, holding an even more favorable view than their partners have of themselves.

• Over time, each person actually becomes more like the mate’s rosy vision. So discovered psychologist Sandra Murray.

One Takeaway to Practice

Next to honing your top talent your key to having more options in a life you can savor is to strengthen your capacity to connect  and collaborate with people extremely unlike you.

Focus on the sweet spot of common interest or mutual benefit even and especially if you don’t feel that you understand or even like that other person at first.  In so doing, like practicing yoga, you become increasingly flexible and open to new ideas, thus more relevant and able to resonate with others. Inevitably that leads a richer, more meaningful life.

Along the way of your shared experiences, you may even become friends with some of those individuals with whom you interact – even though they don’t act right, like you.  

At least this is the path I am stumbling along and mostly enjoying.  I’d love hearing how your path forward is similar or different than this.

Thank you Guy Kawasaki & team for placing two of my blogs on the top of your Alltop category – Collaboration - How We Partner and this blog.  In celebration of this recognition I finally updated my blog roll here on Moving From Me to We.

Unfortunately, whilst I posted these valuable collaboration-related links I cannot yet get them to appear. I have appealed to my blog design hero Cody McKibben for help) so let me share then with you here right now because, well we can be smarter together. 

Alltop/Collaboration

Beth Kanter

Bioteams

Center for Citizen Media 

Collaborate

Collaboration 2.0

Collective Intelligence

Cognitive Daily

Communities Dominate Brands

The Community Roundtable

Connect NESTA 

Cooperation/Berkman Center/Harvard

Consumer Generated Media 

Conversation Agent

Converstations

Creating WE / Judith Glaser

Creative Class

The Culture of Collaboration

Danah Boyd / Zephoria

Don Tapscott 

Full Circle / Nancy White

Herd 

How We Partner

Idea Architects / Jeffrey Cufaude

Interpersonal Skills Lab

Kolabora

Logic + Emotion / David Armano

Made by Many

mashable

Mass Customization 

Mastermind Group Resources

MIT Convergence Culture Consortium

MIT Center for Collective Intelligence 

Networked Performance

Network Weaving

Ning

Nudge

OpenCongress

P2P Foundation

Public Journalism Network

Putting People First

Resonance Partnership

Shel Holtz

The Situationist

Skoll Foundation

Smart Mobs

Social Customer

The Social Age

Social Edge

Social Media Biz

Social Psychology Network

Social Science Statistics

Society for Industrial & Org. Psych

Trends in the Living Networks

Ugluu

Vizthink

Wikinomics

Winning by Sharing

Wired to Care