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How to Supercharge Collaboration: Connectional Intelligence 101, with Erica Dhawan, Collaboration Consultant and Co-Author, Get Big Things Done
10 years ago, Malcolm Gladwell, famous author, coined the concept of a “connector” as one of the three types of people that create the rise of social epidemics, and that idea of being a connector, captivated corporate America, and really global corporations around the world for the last decade. But in today’s era, I’d argue that the idea of being a “connector” is outdated because we are all connectors, we are over-connected. So the job today, is not just to say whether we’re a connector or not. It’s really about, how do we connect intelligently in today’s world to drive value, not only for our teams and organizations, but for our broader stakeholder networks?
Connectional Intelligence (CxQ)
A lot of the ways that we measure relationships, especially in the digital workplace is about quantity. How many LinkedIn followers do we have? How many Twitter followers do we have? How many email subscribers do we have? But my book and research on connectional intelligence shifts that notion from quantity to quality. Because having a lot of networks doesn’t necessarily lead to measurable change. The key is the skill of how you leverage your networks of people, ideas, and resources in an over-connected era, that really drives value for your organization, for your clients and customers, and for your employees.
So connectional intelligence is about shifting the notion of old school networking to really tap into the curiosity, the community-building, the courage of leveraging all of the relationships that you already have, to drive unprecedented new value. One of the great examples I like to share about connectional intelligence is from Amazon. Many of us have heard of Amazon Prime, which is today the quintessential, central strategy for Amazon as they move and drive the retail industry in the future.
But actually, many don’t know that that idea came from a mid-level employee within the company, who posted this idea on an ideas forum at Amazon years ago. He had this idea that there could be a Costco-like buying club for Amazon customers. So he decided to post about this on an ideas chat, internally at Amazon. There was an array of different people that responded: many people saying this would never work because shipping costs would be too high, or Amazon had never done this before, and it didn’t fit within their existing strategy at that time. But because he was willing to be curious and share his ideas with the community outside of his day to day role, an executive picked it up, ended up sharing it with Jeff Bezos, it ended up being tested. And today, now over a decade later, it is central to Amazon’s strategy. So the real quintessential idea around connectional intelligence is that our greatest sources of help are where we least expect them, but we have to be willing and curious to ask, how can we include and design different ways to engage others outside of the traditional experts to solve problems? How might we ask for their ideas and how can we really use that to lead our companies into the next wave of the future?
Building on IQ and EQ
We’ve all heard of IQ as basic knowledge and 20 years ago, emotional intelligence came to stage as a key leadership trait. But in today’s world, we can’t just rely on IQ and EQ, when most of the time we’re leading a virtual, global, multi-generational, often matrix team. We’re often not in the room with our teammates, or our clients and customers. We need to rely on new ways of connecting. And connectional intelligence is that third skill that builds upon IQ and EQ in our modern workplace. Connectional intelligence isn’t new. Some of the greatest leaders in our history like Leonardo DaVinci, Marie Curie, Steve Jobs, all had this ability to connect ideas, people, and resources, in new and different ways to create value. But the scale depth and breadth of our digital workplace has dramatically scaled up the ability to use connectional intelligence today. So it’s not anymore about the lone genius who has a specific expertise and drives a breakthrough. Today, anyone and everyone can use the power of connectional intelligence.