Above the Line

Living and Leading with Heart

Stephen Klemich, Mara Klemich

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780062886835
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062886842
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

A leadership consultant and neuropsychologist identify the universal habits of the heart and mind—the keys to unlocking our true potential, creating our best selves and eliminating behavior patterns that hold us back. 
Why is it so hard for leaders to coach employees who are struggling? Why do we repeat the same mistakes and negative behaviors?

Common wisdom says you always have a choice in how you react or respond. But, as corporate consultant Stephen Klemich and clinical psychologist Mara Klemich contend, until you recognize why you make choices, and how the heart and the brain work together to shape your behavior, you can't change long-ingrained patterns and discover your best self.

The Klemichs have developed a model backed by extensive research and data, and paired it with character-led personal development, to help you answer the "Why?" and eliminate behavior that is "below the line."

In Above the Line, they argue that that the quality of your life flows from the attitudes of your heart. Offering wise, compassionate, and practical advice, this book explores the deep, fundamental drivers of human behavior that exist within your heart—the seat of your character. It reveals that all of these behaviors can be explained by four principles—humility, love, pride, and fear—which influence every facet of your life, for better or for worse.

We are all designed for greatness, but so often our best self is pitted against our worst. The pressures of life are pulling our character below the line while our authentic self is drawing us to live above the line. When you fully understand that the four principles are at the root of your behavior, you can begin the journey to become your best self and navigate life more effectively and successfully. Filled with proven strategies, Above the Line will create lasting changes in your behavior and improve your life personally and professionally—so you can make a positive impact on the world around you.

Part I

Why We Do the Things We Do

Chapter 1

The Four Universal Principles That Shape Your Life

As you begin this journey, is there a longing within you? “Yes!” you might think. “I want to hit my quarterly sales goal,” or “I want to lose ten pounds,” or “I want to stop arguing with my spouse about how to load the dishwasher.” Or maybe you pause, reach in a little deeper, and think, “I want to feel fulfilled,” or “I want my relationship with my partner to be better,” or “I want to raise happy kids,” or “I want to find my soul mate.” These thoughts, big and small, about our daily life and desires reflect a greater longing within all of us.

Deeper within, we are all seeking more fulfillment, purpose, confidence, contentment—ultimately, more love. In our pursuit of this, we live our lives in ways that we believe will bring us “more.” We try to understand why other people think and behave the way they do, and why we behave the way we do. We wonder why other people’s less-than-positive or helpful behaviors are so obvious to us, but not them. And we question why it is that we sometimes resort to our own less-than-positive behaviors, or how we can avoid taking the low road next time something presses all the wrong buttons.

In all of this, what we are really seeking is wisdom about what motivates people (ourselves included), so we can be the best versions of ourselves and achieve our personal best. What if we could find that wisdom—easily, without taking a vow of silence for a year or meditating on a mountaintop? (Which, depending on the season and the mountain, could actually be quite pleasant.) What if it was actually right there, in plain sight?

Well, it is: that wisdom really is right in front of us. It is unlocked when you recognize the line, what lies above it and below it, and when you understand the four universal principles of life. Together these insights can help you achieve the “more” you’ve been longing for, the “more” you are designed for. They can help you be your best self, most of the time. And they can help you successfully navigate all the glorious, sticky situations you encounter and build a happy, successful, fulfilling life.

Sarah was hoping for some of that wisdom as she sat in front of her boss’s desk, staring at the pattern in the carpet. Don’t just sit there—say something! her self-talk was shouting. But she couldn’t do it.

When she had left home early to catch the subway, she was feeling good about the coming workday. The feeling was crushed as soon as she walked into the office and her boss, the VP of product development, caught her in the hallway. “Can you come into my office?” His tone and those six words dragged Sarah’s happy attitude down into the doom zone.

Her heart rate was high as her boss questioned her about her current project, the biggest of her career. “The end of the quarter is a week away, Sarah! Why is this project dragging? It’s not like you have a lot of other things on your plate. Our revenue goal for the year depends on us releasing in the third quarter. Is there even a chance of that?”

Fifteen minutes later, when she walked out of the office, Sarah wasn’t sure how she had responded. All she seemed to hear was her blood rushing in her head. She had a vague memory of promises to get things back on track and a mumbled explanation of some of the unexpected hurdles the team had faced. She felt like breaking something.

As she slumped into her chair, her phone rang. It was Simon, her husband. “Honey,” he said as soon as she picked up, “I’m sorry, but I need you to come home right away. I locked myself out of the house while I was putting the garbage out, and I’m going to be late for work.”

On another day, Sarah might have been a little frustrated but laughed. On this day, though, it was the least funny thing imaginable. She felt a swell of anger, took a breath, and let Simon have it. She resorted to nasty language. She accused him of doing this type of thing all the time. “Why do I always have to clean up after you?!” Then she told Simon how his problem was going to impact the deadline she could see looming on the horizon—how his problem was going to ruin her month.

Simon’s silence stretched on and on. “You know,” he finally said, “you sound just like your father.”

Sarah almost threw her phone down. Instead she jabbed the “end call” button—twice.

Alice, her friend and counterpart in market analysis, arrived at her office just as she was stalking out. Studying Sarah’s grim expression, she asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, great. Why hasn’t your team given us the market report yet? You told me we’d have it last week. Are you trying to sink this project?” As the words came out, Alice literally took a step back, her eyes growing wider.

Sarah saw her response, but it was too late to change course. She felt the anger that had driven her to speak to Alice that way. A flood of regret and embarrassment filled the void—she didn’t know how to recover. “I’m sorry,” she blurted, “but we need the report now or I’m going to catch it from Bill.”

Alice’s face was blank as she explained the report would be ready by the end of the day, and then she left. Sarah thought about going after her to offer a real apology and tell her about the meeting with Bill, but her feet didn’t move. I have to get home, she thought.

On the subway, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about what Simon had said. You sound just like your father. She knew, in her heart, he was right. She had opened her mouth and her dad, with all his blame and bitterness, had poured out. But why? Why had she treated Simon and Alice, two people she cared about, the way she had? And why hadn’t she spoken up to Bill about the engineering team being pulled in too many directions—their biggest hurdle, and one Bill could help solve?

Every day, most of us have moments like this. Why did I say that? we think. Or, If I had just . . . We’re sharp with our kids or partners over small things. We criticize our teammate in front of the others. We agree to a deadline we know isn’t realistic. Or maybe the issues are bigger. Maybe we’ve lied about something important. Maybe we’ve taken an unethical shortcut, cheated or lied. These behaviors don’t make us bad; they simply make us human. They are the coping strategies we use to survive in life—and they’ve been with us a long time. Often they are grounded in good intentions that are turned upside down by our less-than-effective coping strategies—all because we have connected to fear. What?! You may well ask. It’s not because I’m afraid! But we all can be, and much of the time we don’t even realize what we’re doing, let alone why.

Here’s the good news: every day, we also make our best intentions a reality. Within ten minutes of wishing we could pull words back into our mouths or make a different choice, we can be supportive, focused, honest, patient, and committed. How quickly the heart can shift from selfish to selfless, from judging to compassionate, motivated to depressed, constructive to destructive, full of doubt to confident. We can be effective one minute and ineffective the next.

We are all an AND. Life is an AND. Ineffective, below the line behavior coexists with effective, above the line behavior, and we are all able to switch from one to the other and back again in the blink of an eye.

That AND is the essence of the line that exists within our heart, and the four universal principles of life* that drive our behavior. They are:

• Courageous HUMILITY—focusing on personal growth
• Growth-driven LOVE—focusing on growing others
• Ego-driven PRIDE—focusing on self-promoting
• Self-limiting FEAR—focusing on self-protecting

In its entirety, the model represents the circle of life, and on any given day, moment, or situation our heart can go around this circle—from fear to pride to humility to love. Around and around!

Our life is an outward manifestation of the reality of the heart.

• When the heart is operating out of self-limiting fear, it displays self-protecting thoughts and behaviors and it limits us with behaviors like passivity, dependence, and the need to please.
• When our heart is operating out of ego-driven pride, it displays self-promoting thoughts and behaviors. Through behaviors like aggressiveness, superiority, perfectionism, and winning at all costs, it blocks us from really connecting with others. Certainly there is a positive pride that is an expression of love—the delight we take in people, our personal achievements, and things we are pleased or thrilled by—but negative pride places importance on our ego: proving, performing, power, or control.
• When our heart is operating out of courageous humility, it displays thoughts and behaviors of personal growth through behaviors like authenticity, diligence, vulnerability, and achievement.
• And when it’s operating out of growth-driven love, it displays thoughts and behaviors of growing with others through respect, loyalty, honor, and compassion.

The four universal principles explain what drives the incredible range of human behavior we manifest around that circle of life. We can watch the same behaviors play out around the planet, and repeat throughout history, in people with completely different backgrounds and life experiences and in entirely different situations. We see these behaviors daily in how we work, how we play sports and games, how we parent, and how we build (or can damage) relationships. They turn up in the movies we make and the books we write and the art we create. They shape our families, communities, teams, and organizations.

Some aspects of humility are:

Some expressions of love are:

You may attribute the way you behave to emotional patterns such as anger, envy, guilt, compassion, kindness, or generosity. Yet in our eighteen-year journey of research to understand why we do the things we do, spending more time with statistical modeling than any reasonable person might choose, what we found was that all these different motivators can be traced back to just four original sources. Courageous humility. Growth-driven love. Ego-driven pride. Self-limiting fear.

It is these four universal principles that explain why the best aspects of your character are sometimes pushed to the background—by self-limiting fear and ego-driven pride—and why your great inner strengths of character are released—by courageous humility and growth-driven love—so that your best self wins out.

Our character is not our personality. Character is the inner strength to live out of values such as humility and love especially when under adverse situations, to keep calm command in stressful situations, and to remain positive when everything else around you is negative. Character is also the courage to think and behave above the line when everyone and everything else is below the line.

The important thing to know is that every one of us is at times operating out of fear or pride, reverting to coping strategies when we perceive any form of threat to our security emotionally or physically. That may be when we lose our job, get rejected by someone, offend someone, or experience a negative impact on a relationship. Anything we do when driven by fear or pride won’t be fully effective, but it’s a normal way to react. It might deliver some short-term results, it might even feel good in the moment, but it won’t actually help us grow our character. It can be hard to see this happening in our lives, though, because fear drives pride, and pride drives denial. And when you’re in denial, you’re blind to what has brought you there.

While we universally value humility and love, and all the inner and outer benefits they bring, not one of us is always driven by them. There is no such perfect person. That does not mean that we have to live our lives below the line, though. We don’t have to be trapped in the fortress of fear and the prison of pride. We can shift above the line.

The month before Sarah’s less-than-best self morning, she had been part of a workshop we were facilitating for leaders in her organization, where we explored the four principles. As she sat on the subway, she recognized the below the line principles that were operating in her life—the pride that had led her to blast Alice and Simon, but most specifically, the fear she had felt in Bill’s office that was driving her behavior. She wanted to move away from that feeling of fear, and so she focused on shifting her heart, her thinking, and her behavior. By the time she got home, love had risen above the fear. She immediately apologized to Simon and told him she loved him and that he hadn’t deserved to be treated that way. And she told him about her morning meeting. Simon apologized for adding stress to an already difficult day. She left the house feeling more peaceful and connected, and ready to get back to work, apologize to Alice, and achieve what she needed to for the day.

We have all been where Sarah was that morning, but we don’t have to be ruled by our fears and ego-driven pride the next time. The first step in understanding why we do the things we do is to understand the power of these four principles in our lives, and how they form the root of our behavior—and that of others. When we do, we become more self-aware, more powerful through our positive choices, and our best self more of the time as a partner, parent, professional, leader, and friend.

The Heart of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I: Why We Do the Things We Do
• Part II: Shifting Above the Line
• Conclusion: Living Above the Line
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix
• Notes
• Index
• About the Authors
• Copyright
• About the Publisher