Conscious leadership, our negative nature, and the shining light
I was recently involved in a leadership training at my workplace focused on a book called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. The book is about above the line (conscious) vs. below the line leadership. The goal of course to be above the line the majority of the time (everyone has their below the line moments..we’re all human). You need to read the book to see the 15 commitments, but that is not necessary prior to reading this post (I haven’t read the book either). However, to provide some context, here are examples of above the line and below the line behaviors.
Above: I commit to communicating what is true for me. I commit to being a person to whom others can express themselves with candor.
Below: I commit to withholding my truths (facts, feelings, things I imagine) and speaking in a way that allows me to try to manipulate an outcome. I commit to not listening to the other person.
Above: I commit to living in appreciation, fully opening to both receiving and giving appreciation.
Below: I commit to feeling entitled to “what’s mine,” resenting when it’s not acknowledged in the way I want.
Above: I commit to creating win for allsolutions (win for me, win for the other person, win for the organization, and win for the whole) for whatever issues, problems, concerns, or opportunities life gives me.
Below: I commit to seeing life as a zerosum game, creating win/lose solutions for whatever issues, problems, concerns, or opportunities life gives me.
Throughout the discussion of above vs. below the line, I kept thinking about a natural human tendency that seems to align with below the line (unconscious) behaviors:
the negativity bias.
We can’t help it…humans are naturally negative (sad trombone). While our society is relatively safe and filled with abundance (especially in the US), our brains have not caught up. There is still a bias towards scarcity. Resources are no longer scarce, they’re (mostly) abundant. However, we find the negative outcome and convince ourselves that it will happen (and it rarely does). The end result is below the line behavior. It’s how we have prevailed as a race for 200,000 years.
The shining light? Here it goes…
We are intelligent. We have the knowledge and tools to change the way we think. It starts out conscious and takes effort, but in time, becomes a habit. You can rewire your brain for happiness and experience life’s full mosaic (the positive and negative). The reward? Strong relationships, longer lives, success….list goes on.
While the cavemen and cavewomen of the paleo era had to assume a negative outcome to avoid being eaten by a lion or starving, there is one thing they did that we can’t forget: they leveraged each other to get ahead and survive (we’re still here). A lone human typically didn’t survive. We need each other. And this still holds true today.
