The contemporary operating environment for U.S. military forces requires a new emphasis on collaboration across services, across government agencies and with non-governmental agencies and host nations to create global stability. This paper documents an effort to capture the expertise of experienced military and non-military players in these operations. Interview findings, operational lessons learned, and previous research form the basis for our investigation into how best to prepare our forces to plan and execute operations in Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental and Multinational (JIIM) environments. First, we reviewed documents that reflected lessons learned or other insights into these types of collaborations. Second, we conducted interviews with military and civilian experts in operations that required collaboration among the military and other organizations, as well as host nation officials and citizens. Third, we analyzed those interview transcripts and combined them with the findings of the document review in order to derive themes that expressed the high-level cognitive skills evident in JIIM operations. We found the following themes in the document and interview data: Understand the situation within its historical, regional, and cultural context; Understand the other participants; Shift perspective; Establish and maintain common ground; Build capability to affect the situation; Visualize the operation; Support information exchange; and, Maintain flexibility. We describe our six-step thematic analysis method and the resulting themes. Finally, we report on our theme validation process with SMEs. The resulting themes currently form the basis for high-level learning objectives as part of an emerging joint staff-training product for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.