Strengthen your thinking · Area 06 of 06

Become a Better Thinking Partner (with others and AI)

How to help other people think well, and how to work well with AI.

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Why it matters

Some of the best thinking you will ever be part of will not be your own. Helping someone else think clearly is one of the most valuable things you can offer, and with AI now in the room, the same skill applies to machines as well as people.

Becoming a better thinking partner raises the quality of thinking around you and sharpens your own along the way. You learn to ask the questions that unlock other people's best work, and to work with AI in ways that stretch your thinking further than it would go alone.

A question to sit with

How well do I help others think better, on my own and with AI in the room?

How our Thinking Squad could aid you

Your guides here are people from the Thinking Squad, matched to you and to how you want to grow. They work one to one, and with groups and teams.

Each guide is qualified and informed in their area, with one mission: to elevate the quality of your thinking, conversations, decisions and actions.

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Thinking Partner Guide

Key focus areas

Active listening Challenging constructively Co-creation Accountability

AI Guide

Key focus areas

AI literacy Prompting for thinking Augment not replace Ethical and responsible use

The Thinking Marketplace

Start here

Our five top picks for this area, chosen from the full shelf for this area. Each one earns its place.

Start here book

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever

Michael Bungay Stanier · 2016

Seven questions that stop you jumping in with answers and help other people do their best thinking. You can use the first one, What's on your mind?, in your very next conversation. It made the shelf because it turns coaching from a skill you admire into a habit you actually keep.

About 4 hours (250 pages)

book

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

Ethan Mollick · 2024

The clearest guide yet to treating AI as a thinking partner rather than a vending machine for answers. Mollick's four rules, starting with always invite AI to the table, give you a working method, not hype. It made the shelf because it keeps you in charge of the thinking.

About 5 hours (256 pages)

book

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (Second Edition)

Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein · 2021

A short, quiet classic on why telling shuts people down and asking with real curiosity opens them up. Schein shows you how to ask questions you do not already know the answer to. It made the shelf because it changes the posture behind every conversation you have.

About 3 hours (180 pages)

video

10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation

Celeste Headlee (TEDxCreativeCoast) · 2015

Eleven minutes that will change how you listen. Headlee's rules, like if your mouth is open you are not learning, come straight from a career of live radio interviews. It made the shelf because it is the fastest, most watchable way in to the whole pillar.

11 minutes

book

Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World

Mo Gawdat · 2021

Gawdat helped build Google's moonshot factory, then wrote the book on what we owe the intelligence we are raising. His argument is that AI learns from how we behave, so the way you think, write and act with it is the way you teach it. It made the shelf because it turns being a good thinking partner to AI into a personal responsibility, not a technical one.

About 7 hours (336 pages)

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