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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jim Dethmer
Read between
February 3, 2020 - January 2, 2023
Most current models are built on beliefs of scarcity and win/lose competition—a deeply rooted, flawed mindset found in most cultures and leaders. Like fear, this view motivates people for a while but it doesn’t last.
The “not enough resources” belief (money, time, energy, space, and love) and the “I/we are not enough” belief create a zero-sum game, generating winners and losers, haves and have-nots. Because we are afraid there isn’t enough for all of us, we harm the planet and each other, an unworkable approach that won’t sustain future generations.
He feels alive. Unfortunately, Tim, and many leaders like him, can’t tell the difference between being “fully alive” and feeling a mixture of adrenaline, caffeine, sugar, pressure, compulsivity, addiction, and competition, all driven by deeply repressed fear and insecurity.
LEADING FROM ABOVE THE LINE
we begin almost every session the same way—by drawing a single black line:
“From our perspective, this diagram is the most important model we know of for being a conscious leader.”
We go on to say that this model is binary: it is either/or. At any point, a leader is either above the line or below the line. If you are above it, you are leading consciously, and if you are below it, you are not.
We then ask all the participants where they currently are with respect to the line, explaining that conscious leaders know at any given moment whether they are above or below it.
Frustration builds because these types of leaders like ...
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This exercise replicates real-world leadership. Leaders make decisions (am I above or below the line?). They make decisions with limited information (I don’t know what the model means), and they judge those decisions as right or wrong.
After everyone has committed to being above or below the line by a show of hands, we go on to describe the model. We share with them that when leaders are below the line, they are closed and defensive, and when they are above the line, they are open and curious. Further, we reveal that when leaders are below the line, their primary commitment is to being right, and when they are above the line, their primary commitment is to learning.
After presenting this information, we ask again for a show of hands—who is above the line and who is below it? At this point, interesting leadership and social phenomena kick in. These smart, capable leaders have made a judgment that it is “better” to be above the line than below it. This belief causes them to distort reality so they can see themselves as above the line, the preferred state, even if they are not above the line.
We suggest that the first mark of conscious leaders is self-awareness and the ability to tell themselves the truth. It matters far more that leaders can accurately determine whether they are above or below the line in any moment than where they actually are. Distortion and denial are cornerstone traits of unconscious leaders.
We then explain
that being below the line is actually a normal state for many people.
According to Dan Goleman in his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, we are constantly scanning our env...
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leaders often have a difficult time telling the difference between a threat to the body’s physical survival and an imagined threat to the ego or identity.
In a threatened state the brain fires off a chemical cocktail designed to support us in fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fainting. Put another way, when we perceive a threat to our sense of well-being, we go “below the line.”
What does being right have to do with being below the line?
for most leaders, survival is a matter of protecting the ego or identity or image. And the ego firmly believes that if it is not “right,” it will not survive. Being wrong equates to being dead.
For this reason, we say that knowing when you are below the line is more important than being below the line. Leaders are in real trouble when they are below the line (closed, defensive, and committed to being right and keeping their ego alive) and think they are above it. This leadership blindness is rampant in the corporate world.
Shifting is moving from closed to open, from defensive to curious, from wanting to be right to wanting to learn, and from fighting for the survival of the individual ego to leading from a place of security and trust.
creativity, innovation, and collaboration (all keys to high-level problem solving) occur best when we operate above the line.
In fact, they don’t occur at all below the line, where it is necessary to be if your physical well-being is threatened and you need to fight, flee, freeze, or faint.
Commitment is a statement of what is. From our perspective, you can know your commitments by your results, not by what you say your commitments are. We are all committed. We are all producing results. Conscious leaders own their commitments by owning their results.
THE FOUR WAYS OF LEADING
Unlike unconscious leaders who do not see, hear, or feel authentically and accurately, conscious leaders experience what is here now and respond in the moment. They are not trapped in old patterns. They are free to lead and serve others, their organization, the world, and themselves.
conscious leaders are rare. Most people live life largely unconsciously in the habitual trance of their personality, their regret and anger about the past, and their hope, fear, and greed about the future.
FOUR WAYS OF LEADING IN THE WORLD
The To Me state of consciousness is synonymous with being below the line.
If I am in the To Me consciousness, I see myself “at the effect of,” meaning that the cause of my condition is outside me. It is happening To Me.
they are pinning the cause of their well-being on external factors.
We call this To Me mindset “victim consciousness”.
Victim consciousness is a choice.
most people choose to live this way.
The gateway for moving from To Me to By Me is responsibility…
When leaders shift from below the line to above it, they move from the To Me to the By Me state—from living in victim consciousness to living in creator consciousness and from being “at the effect of” to “consciously creating with.” Instead of believing that the cause of their experience is outside themselves, they believe that they are the cause of their experience.
The By Me leader chooses to see that everything in the world is unfolding perfectly for their learning and development. Nothing has to be different. They see that what is happening is for them.
To do the latter, a leader chooses curiosity and learning over defensiveness and being right (two cornerstones of the To Me consciousness). Instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?” the By Me leader asks questions like, “What can I learn from this?” “How is this situation ‘for me’?” “How am I creating this and keeping this going?”
In the Through Me state of leadership, the “me” starts to open to another.
The key to Through Me is that leaders begin to notice something beyond themselves.
To Me leaders rarely have a clearly aligned purpose or vision for themselves or their organization.
They might have gone though an HR exercise and created a purpose, mission, and vision, but in their daily experience, they are ...
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When leaders move through the gateway of responsibility into the consciousness of By Me, they become very committed and aligned with their purpose.
They come to their purpose by asking the question, “What do I want?” Often we coach them to ask the second, deeper question, “What do I really want?” By Me leaders sit with this question until they have an answer, and then they align themselves with this purpose.
As leaders open up to Through Me, their purpose question changes. They ask, “What is life’s highest idea of itself that wants to manifest in and through me?”
Just as responsibility is the gateway to move from To Me to By Me, surrender, or letting go, is the gateway to move from By Me to Through Me. For most leaders, this means letting go of control.
As Me consciousness has two aspects. The first is oneness. Most of the great religions, philosophies, and spiritual teachings have an understanding of oneness, the experience that there is no separation—there is only one reality and it is not divided. Sometimes, this is called non-duality, which simply means “not two.”
As Me leaders realize this oneness.
The second aspect of As Me is the absence of a personal “me.” Not only is everyone and everything one—there is no separation—and also no personal center.
