#60 Jim Dethmer: Leading Above the Line
Jim Dethmer, founding partner at The Conscious Leadership Group, shares practical advice on cultivating self-awareness, moving beyond a victim mindset, and shifting motivations from fear to love and play. He discusses making impeccable agreements, developing emotional intelligence, and applying conscious principles to parenting and blended families.
Deep Dive Analysis
12 Topic Outline
Introduction to Conscious Leadership and the Line Model
Cultivating Self-Awareness Through Reflection, Instruments, and Feedback
The Importance of Self-Acceptance for Personal Growth
Understanding Different Motivations: Fear, Guilt, Shame vs. Love, Play
Shifting from Victim Consciousness to Creator Consciousness
The Role of Emotional and Body Intelligence in Decision Making
Making Clear Agreements and Maintaining Integrity
Addressing Unhealthy Relationships and Unstated Agreements
Practical Steps for Developing Emotional Intelligence
Strategies for Creating a Feedback-Rich Environment
Applying Conscious Leadership Principles to Parenting
Key Lessons for Successful Blended Families
8 Key Concepts
Above the Line/Below the Line
This model describes two states of being: 'above the line' means you are open, curious, and committed to learning, operating from a place of trust. 'Below the line' means you are contracted, defensive, in a state of threat, and attached to proving you're right.
Self-Awareness
The ability to accurately see oneself, not just strengths and weaknesses, but specifically one's current state of consciousness—whether one is open or contracted, in service of outcomes or egoic defensiveness.
Emotional Literacy
The foundational ability to identify what you are feeling in any given moment and to accurately name that emotion. This is a prerequisite for developing deeper emotional intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Beyond literacy, EQ involves knowing what you're feeling, allowing the energy of emotions to flow through your body without getting stuck, and then pausing to extract the wisdom or lesson that the emotion is there to teach you.
Victim Consciousness
A mindset where one believes life is happening 'to' them, feeling at the effect of external people, circumstances, and conditions. Happiness and effectiveness are seen as contingent upon external factors.
Creator Consciousness
A mindset where one actively and consciously chooses to be responsible for their own experience, understanding that life is happening 'by' them. This involves taking 100% responsibility for one's reactions and beliefs.
Integrity (Agreements)
In the context of agreements, integrity means being clear about what you've said you will or won't do, keeping those agreements, renegotiating them before they are broken, and cleaning up any broken agreements without excuses or justifications.
Whole Body Yes
A concept for making agreements where one checks their head, heart, and gut to ensure genuine, full alignment and willingness to commit. This prevents making agreements out of obligation or passive compliance.
12 Questions Answered
The 'single black line' model suggests that at any given moment, you are either 'above the line' (open, curious, trusting, committed to learning) or 'below the line' (contracted, defensive, in a state of threat, attached to being right).
Self-awareness can be cultivated in three ways: through self-reflection (pausing and turning attention inward), using instruments (like personality tests), and creating a feedback-rich environment where others provide honest input.
After gaining self-awareness, the next step is self-acceptance. Instead of self-criticism, accept yourself for being where you are, take a conscious breath, and then decide how you want to proceed from a place of presence.
Many leaders have a deep-seated belief that they are not 'okay' as they are, or that something needs to be different. They fear that self-acceptance would lead to losing their 'edge' or the internal 'fire' that drives their accomplishments.
Beyond fear, guilt, shame, anger, and extrinsic rewards (money, fame), higher forms of motivation include intrinsic reward (purpose, calling, zone of genius), play (work feeling like a child at play), and ultimately, love (love of the thing itself and love for others).
To shift, first locate yourself in victimhood, then take responsibility for putting yourself there. Be willing to change, create a 'recipe' of how you contribute to the situation, and then actively do the opposite of that recipe.
Clear agreements must specify 'who is going to do what by when.' They should only be made with a 'whole body yes,' meaning genuine internal alignment, and ideally, they should be written down and tracked.
Most drama in relationships stems from unaligned commitments (not heading in the same direction) or unclear and unkept agreements. When partners or team members have different underlying commitments or fail to clarify and honor agreements, conflict arises.
Developing EQ involves deciding to commit to it, becoming emotionally literate (naming feelings), allowing feelings to flow through the body (they last less than 90 seconds if not fed by thoughts), and then extracting the wisdom or lesson from each emotion.
Take responsibility for the feedback you receive, identify and consciously choose your feedback filters, clarify your desired 'aperture' for feedback, actively ask for feedback (e.g., 'What's one thing I could improve?'), and when receiving it, ask 'How is it true about me?' instead of 'Is it true?'
Parents can apply these principles by asking if they are parenting 'above or below the line,' recognizing that children come to teach as much as to be taught, avoiding treating children as victims, and making clear agreements with them rather than issuing edicts.
Key lessons include prioritizing the relationship between the partners over relationships with children, establishing that the biological parent has primary decision rights with the step-parent serving as a supportive advisor, having a long time horizon for adjustment, and relating to former spouses/co-parents 'above the line' to minimize drama for the children.
36 Actionable Insights
1. Locate Your State of Consciousness
At any moment, identify if you are “above the line” (open, curious, trusting) or “below the line” (contracted, defensive, attached to being right) to initiate powerful self-awareness.
2. Embrace Creator Consciousness
Shift from believing life is happening to you (victim consciousness) to choosing to be responsible for your experience (creator consciousness) to empower yourself and replenish energy.
3. Cultivate Self-Acceptance After Awareness
After recognizing a reactive or contracted state, consciously accept yourself for being there, taking a breath to prevent further contraction and allow a shift to presence.
4. Shift Towards Love and Play
Consciously reduce motivation from fear, guilt, shame, anger, rage, or purely extrinsic rewards, and instead cultivate motivation from intrinsic reward, play, and love for sustainable fulfillment.
5. Three Paths to Self-Awareness
Grow your self-awareness by practicing self-reflection, utilizing assessment instruments, and actively fostering a feedback-rich environment around you.
6. Pause and Quiet Your Mind
Cultivate a mindfulness practice to pause, quiet your mind, and create mental space, allowing you to break automatic pilot and turn attention inward.
7. Act from Presence, Not Reactivity
Once you’ve accepted a reactive state, return to presence before taking action, ensuring your response comes from your highest self rather than fear or contraction.
8. Define Clear “Who, What, When” Agreements
Make all agreements, personal or professional, impeccably clear by specifying who will do what by when, and track them to minimize drama and wasted time.
9. Commit Only with a “Whole Body Yes”
Before making an agreement, check your head, heart, and gut for a “whole body yes”; if not, renegotiate to ensure full commitment and prevent half-hearted execution.
10. Keep Agreements, Clean Up Breaks
Strive to keep all agreements, and when one is broken, immediately take responsibility to the affected person without excuses, offering to clean it up to maintain trust.
11. Embrace Candor and Transparency
Practice revealing and not concealing your thoughts, feelings, judgments, and relevant information, as candor is a key indicator of being “above the line” and fosters authentic relationships.
12. Cultivate Emotional Literacy
Practice pausing to identify and name your current emotions (anger, fear, sadness, joy, creative energy) to build foundational emotional intelligence.
13. Allow Emotions to Flow Through
Permit feelings to move through your body as sensations without feeding them with thoughts, allowing them to dissipate naturally within 90 seconds to prevent them from getting stuck and becoming moods.
14. Extract Wisdom from Emotions
After an emotion has passed, pause and ask what it was there to teach you or invite you to face, leveraging the inherent intelligence of your feelings.
15. Integrate Emotional Wisdom in Decisions
Welcome all five core emotions (anger, fear, sadness, joy, creative energy) into your decision-making process to gather their wisdom and make more informed choices.
16. Actively Seek Feedback
Take responsibility for creating a feedback-rich environment by directly asking for feedback from others, especially after specific interactions or presentations.
17. Ask “How Is Feedback True?”
When receiving feedback, instead of asking “Is it true?”, inquire “How is it true about me?” to foster deeper learning and self-reflection.
18. Internalize External Complaints
Practice “eating your projections” by examining how the qualities or behaviors you complain about in others might also be true about yourself, significantly increasing learning agility.
19. Align on Core Relationship Commitments
In both personal and professional relationships, ensure clear alignment on fundamental commitments to prevent recurring drama and foster shared direction.
20. Reflect on Decision-Making Context
Post-decision, reflect on the consciousness from which the decision was made (above/below the line, victim/villain/hero), the emotional intelligence involved, and whether all relevant information was revealed.
21. Encourage “Blurting” for Full Disclosure
In decision-making discussions, create a safe space for everyone to “blurt” out all their thoughts, judgments, opinions, and data to ensure all relevant information is on the table.
22. Clean Up Broken Agreements
Actively address any integrity breaches or broken agreements that are affecting current decisions or relationships, as unaddressed issues create “sludge” and undermine trust.
23. Reverse-Engineer Undesired Outcomes
To change an undesirable situation, create a “recipe” detailing how you would intentionally create that exact outcome, which reveals the steps needed to do the opposite.
24. Self-Empathy for Other-Empathy
Cultivate comfort with feeling your own emotions first, as your capacity for empathy and compassion with others is directly tied to your self-empathy.
25. Consciously Manage Feedback Filters
Become aware of your unconscious “feedback filters” (conditions for valuing feedback) and thoughtfully decide which ones you want to keep to open yourself to more diverse input.
26. Directly Solicit Specific Feedback
After an event like a presentation, ask for a numerical rating and one specific thing you could do to improve, even encouraging people to “make something up” to get the feedback flowing.
27. Parent from Above the Line
When interacting with your children, especially during challenging moments, consciously check if you are “above the line” (open, curious) or “below the line” (reactive, contracted) to foster more meaningful interactions.
28. View Children as Teachers
Adopt the premise that your children are here to teach you as much as you are to teach them, shifting your perspective to one of continuous learning from their presence.
29. Empower Kids, Avoid Victimhood
Resist the urge to treat your children as disempowered victims by always rescuing them or blaming external factors for their struggles, which teaches them victim consciousness.
30. Be Candid with Your Children
Practice candor and authenticity with your children by revealing your true thoughts and feelings, fostering genuine connection and teaching them the value of transparency.
31. Appreciate Your Children (5:1 Ratio)
Live in a state of appreciation with your children, aiming to provide five times more appreciation than constructive criticism to build their self-esteem and strengthen your bond.
32. Make Clear Agreements with Kids
Engage your children in making clear agreements about rules and expectations, rather than issuing edicts, to foster cooperation and reduce rebellion.
33. Prioritize Couple in Blended Family
In a blended family, consciously prioritize the relationship between the partners over individual relationships with biological children to create a stable foundation.
34. Delegate Primary Parenting Decisions
In blended families, the biological parent should retain primary decision-making rights for their children, with the step-parent acting as a supportive consultant and ally.
35. Embrace Long-Term Blended Family View
Recognize that blending families will involve a tumultuous adjustment period and commit to a long time horizon for resolution, understanding it’s part of the process.
36. Consciously Co-Parent with Ex-Spouses
Relate to former spouses and co-parents from “above the line” to minimize drama and conflict, critically enhancing the well-being of children in blended families.
8 Key Quotes
When you're above the line, you're open, curious, and committed to learning.
Jim Dethmer
Awareness needs to be followed by acceptance.
Jim Dethmer
The antidote to fear is not courage. The antidote to fear is acceptance.
Jim Dethmer
The highest form of motivation is love. And I don't mean by that some touchy-feely thing. I mean the love of the thing, the love of the thing.
Jim Dethmer
You're only as sick as your secrets.
Jim Dethmer
Nobody upsets you. You upset yourself.
Jim Dethmer
I can only be as close as I'm willing to be revealed.
Jim Dethmer
If you spot it, you got it.
Jim Dethmer
4 Protocols
Process for Responding to a Curt Email (or similar reactive interaction)
Jim Dethmer- Notice you're curt (or contracted/below the line).
- Ask: 'Can I accept myself for being reactive/scared right now?'
- Take one conscious breath (deep into the belly) to begin changing blood and brain chemistry.
- Come back into presence.
- Ask: 'What do I really want to communicate?' and 'Am I willing to be with this email from above the line?'
- Communicate authentically and transparently, potentially revealing what you were contracted about in the first place.
Shifting from Victim to Creator Consciousness
Jim Dethmer- Locate yourself in victimhood (feeling like life is happening 'to' you).
- Take responsibility for putting yourself there (seeing yourself as the creator of your reality).
- Check your willingness to shift from victim to creator.
- Create a 'recipe' for how you've created the current situation (what you do/don't do, say/don't say, believe/don't believe, how you see others/yourself).
- Do the opposite of the recipe's components to change the situation and create a different context.
Developing Emotional Intelligence
Jim Dethmer- Decide if you are willing to develop your emotional intelligence.
- Become emotionally literate: pause at any moment, ask 'What am I feeling right now?', and name the feeling.
- Feel your feelings: allow the sensations (energy) to move through your body without feeding them with more thoughts; they will dissipate quickly.
- Pause and get the wisdom of the emotion: ask 'What is that emotion here to show me, to teach me, to invite me to face, to become aware of, to learn from?'
Creating a Feedback-Rich Environment
Jim Dethmer- Take responsibility for being the creator of your feedback reality (you get as much feedback as you're committed to getting).
- Identify your feedback filters (e.g., 'In order for me to value your feedback, I'd need you to...').
- Clarify your aperture: decide how much feedback you want in life (e.g., 'any way, any time, by anybody').
- Actively ask for feedback (e.g., 'On a scale of 1-10, what's one thing I could do to improve?').
- When receiving feedback, ask 'How is it true about me?' instead of 'Is it true?' (and consider how it might be a projection of the giver).