Above the Line, Below the Line (Part 1 of 2)

Management Associates Below the Line, Human Side of Leadership

For years our seminars included an exercise that asked participants to think of the best listener they had ever known and describe what made that person so special.

Most responses centered on techniques like maintaining eye contact, asking clarifying questions, and mirroring body language. But invariably someone would raise their hand and say that what really mattered was that the person “sincerely cared about me.”

This response and others like it, we realized, were qualitatively different from the rest. Genuinely caring about someone was not a skill to be practiced. Wanting the best for a friend or coworker was not a technique to be employed.

Answers such as these focused not on things that people did but rather things that they were—things that they stood for and believed in.

In conducting the exercise, we began separating the two sets of responses with a simple horizontal line. Above the line were the surface-level actions, skills, behaviors, policies, techniques, and procedures that came to participants’ minds first and fastest.

Below the line we noted the attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, paradigms, and values that were not so immediately obvious, but which constitute far more core elements of personal identity.

Over time, this simple delineation evolved into a model of human behavior that we and many of our clients have found both powerful and challenging.

“Above-the-line” is where the rubber meets the road, where action is taken and results begin to show. It is where the world is engaged.

“Below-the-line” is a sphere that is less visible but arguably more important, for it is from below the line that actions and behaviors receive their direction and impetus.

Put in organizational terms, above-the-line is what leaders do, below-the-line is why they do it. Both are important, and both must be addressed in authentic growth and development efforts. But even more critical is understanding the interaction between the two and the way each is influenced and shaped by the other.

The next post in this series will examine this relationship and it impacts leaders’ behaviors and the functioning of their organization.