Kate Dethmer - Above The Line Leadership (Part 1)

The moment you snap, fix, control, or go quiet isn’t a “personality flaw” it’s often a nervous system response to a threat you didn’t even notice. Sara Best sits down with somatic leadership coach Kate Dethmer of the Conscious Leadership Group to unpack what conscious leadership looks like when it’s real: messy meetings, subtle fear, and the everyday triggers that pull us out of presence.

• Click HERE to read Kate's blog post
• Click HERE for Kate's LinkedIn profile
• Click HERE for a copy of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

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Transcript

Welcome To The Bosshole Chronicles

Sara Best 0:03

Hi everybody in The Boss hole Transformation Nation. Good to have you back. We have a good episode for you today. I am your host, Sara Best. I'm flying solo on this one. Our guest, uh an amazing coach, a senior level coach with the Conscious Leadership Group. Her name, friends, is Kate Dethmer. She's actually my coach. I've been working with Kate for the better part of the last year. She is a somatic leadership coach. She helps leaders work with the embodied experience of presence. We'll get to learn more about what that means. And actually, I might even have a little coaching going on here in this call. But if you are passionate about presence and full aliveness and actually living into your full potential as a leader, I think you'll get a lot out of this conversation with Kate. Let's dig in.

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The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Meet Kate Detmer And The Framework

Sara Best 1:24

Well, Kate Dethmer, what a joy and a privilege it is to have you today on The Bosshole Chronicles. Thank you for being here.

Kate Dethmer 1:32

Oh, thank you for having me.

Sara Best 1:34

This is a conversation I have very much been looking forward to. As a way of background for our listeners, we have featured Joyce Chen previously on the Boss Hole Chronicles. And at that time, I did not have the relationship to uh what we'll call the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. We'll talk about that in a minute, or to you that I have now. So I think this is a really beautiful conversation and expansion on some of the conversation we had with Joyce. I read the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, I don't maybe three years ago, two and a half years ago. It's been around since 2014. It happens to be written by Jim Detmer, who is your dad, uh, Diana Chapman, and Kaylee Clemp. Uh, I've never met Kaylee before, but I've certainly seen uh Diana in action and had the privilege of meeting your dad in person. But the 15 commitments of conscious leadership spoke to me really because in all the work I've done all these years on myself and trying to help other leaders, it seemed like this is the foundation. These 15 commitments, this way of being conscious and present and alive is so powerful. So, Kate, I want to just share with our listeners that I was introduced to you as I continued to pursue education around these 15 commitments. I read the book, then I got curious and went online. I went to the website, which is amazing, chock full of resources. And then I did an intro, which was a four-week little course, virtual course, was enthralled. Then I did a coach's circle because I do coaching. That's where I met you. And your facilitation of our understanding of the first six commitments of conscious leadership was just so helpful and simple yet challenging. And I knew I wanted to deepen my understanding of not only the commitments, but also this emotional part, which is where you enter the picture. You are a somatic expert. Uh, you can say more about what that means for our listeners. But after the coaching circle ended, I pursued individual coaching with you and have continued to do that since that time. So if you would, Kate, tell us about um your take on conscious leadership. Tell us about you and your somatic focus and really what that means. Happy to share all of that.

Kate Dethmer 4:07

And just as you're kind of walking me and the listeners through your history with us, I'm just feeling a little tenderness, uh kind of some wetness behind my eyes, a little scratchy throat, just appreciating, Sara, what I make up as your devotion to aliveness and some scenes of um, you know, bravery that I've seen you step into where it's not always easy. And so it's like one thing to say, yeah, I want to be a conscious leader, and I'm gonna read the book and I'm gonna go to a circle or do an intensive. It's a whole other thing to sit there and face and feel the places where we're stuck and we've been relying on, you know, different compulsive behaviors to keep us feeling safe.

Sara Best 4:51

And yeah.

Kate Dethmer 4:52

Yeah. So just appreciating getting to have this conversation with you and uh all the hours we've spent together in this dance of waking up to our patterns.

Sara Best 5:01

Oh, beautiful. Thank you.

Kate Dethmer 5:03

Yeah, and this is what I get to do for a living. My, like you said, my training is as a somatic therapist. I spent about a decade in private practice, primarily tuning in with my clients' nervous systems, just tracking what does activation look like? What does it mean to really collapse? How do we support them in regulating so that they can be present day to day in their experiences? And then about a decade ago, like you said, my dad and his colleagues wrote this book and uh we started talking about wouldn't it be fun if we could work together? And uh they started a year-long coaches training, and I did the program in 2017. And I didn't really think I'd join the team. It was more just like, hey, it'd be fun to hang out with my dad and his colleagues. And then in 2019, um, I got to join and have been a part of the conscious leadership group team since then. And uh I weave in quite a bit of the somatic work. Obviously, you know, it's uh there's a lot of overlap, but primarily now working with teams and organizations, uh executives and one-to-one coaching.

Somatic Leadership And The Nervous System

Sara Best 6:08

I can attest firsthand that as I have come to understand the commitments of conscious leadership, you know, feeling emotion bodily experience the experiencing the emotion has become critical and essential. And I didn't realize until recently how I ran full on the other way from that most of my life. And it's funny, a person who's schooled and studied up in emotional intelligence and talking and teaching others about the power of emotions, yet now having an expert guide in you, being able to be with emotions and being able to understand how they run the show. Um, and if we're not aware of them, if we're not present to them, then what results get produced are likely not the results we want for ourselves or for our people or for the bottom line or just for our lives. So, Kate, give us if you could just give us your primer on conscious leadership and the simple notion of being above the line or below the line.

What Above And Below The Line Means

Sara Best 7:14

I think our listeners can really get their heads around that.

Kate Dethmer 7:17

Sure. Well, what I love about the model is that it is really simple. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't take a lot to sort of grok what are we talking about here? And so our how we define conscious is being here now in this moment, present with whoever I'm with, doing whatever work I'm doing, in a non-triggered, non-reactive way. So I'm actually here now. Uh Gay Hendricks, who's one of our mentors and uh really mentored Jim and Diana, uh, he's known to say, most of us aren't here now, and we're not even here now enough to know we're not here now. Which I love because it's like we're in some past experience replaying yesterday's argument with my teenager. I'm anticipating some future presentation I'm gonna give tomorrow. I'm not actually here.

Sara Best 8:07

Yeah.

Kate Dethmer 8:08

And so all of these practices of conscious leadership are about are about getting here. And then once I'm here, conscious, then leadership to us is taking responsibility for our influence in the world. And it's not just, you know, I think it's one thing to say, I'm gonna take responsibility for how I think I'm influencing. A little bit of a radical shift that we stand for is I'm also gonna take responsibility for the feedback that's coming to me from the people in my life about how I'm influencing, whether it's positive or negative. Responsibility for the whole of it. And sometimes those pieces of feedback that aren't as positive are obviously a little trickier to take responsibility for. But um then in the beginning of the conversation about conscious leadership, we have this distinction between above and below the line. And you can kind of call it whatever you want. Uh, we call it above and below the line. And it's essentially when I'm below the line, I'm just in a scared place, either a little bit scared or a lot scared. And there's a threat out there to my usually ego's survival, typically not our physical survival. Sometimes, of course, it is. And I'm just ever so slightly contracted in that fear. You know, I don't have as much access to the frontal lobe that's creative and problem solving. I'm in a little bit of a mammalian, um, reptilian even reactive place. And then when I am above the line, I'm open, I'm curious, I'm feeling grounded in my body, but some effervescence or sympathetic awareness of what's occurring. And you say all of us are going above and below the line all day long. I've probably been above and below dozens of times today, and it's only 9 a.m. So sometimes clients will say, I've been above the line all week. And I'm like, probably not. Yeah.

Sara Best 10:03

Oh, wow.

A Pickleball Trigger In Real Time

Sara Best 10:04

I mean, I was thinking about a recent experience I had uh at pickleball. I think I talked to you about it yesterday, Kate, in one of our coaching sessions. Where because when you said, you know, we're afraid, so when we're below the line, we're scared. I felt a contraction on my own. Like I felt this squeezing in my belly area, like, oh yeah. And in that moment, I was unaware of the fear. But as I think back on the experience, what happened is there were people waiting to play on a court that we were playing on, and there was this pressure, and I was afraid essentially that they were gonna be mad at us or me for taking too long, or and and the upshot of this story is that in my unconscious state of fear of not looking good or maybe not being approved of or not having control of the situation, I marched my little self over to one of the players who was supposed to be on our court and like kind of ordered him back over. And like kind of in a command and control, I think I thought I was being nice, but I'm sure my voice didn't sound like that. And he was like, What is going on? So what a great real life example of you know, just something's at thread. And then this old habit kicks in of, I gotta fix this, I gotta take charge. Ew.

Kate Dethmer 11:30

Yeah, it's just so relatable, right? It's like we all have our pickleball from yesterday examples. It's like, yeah, I just got scared. And we don't, fortunately or unfortunately, we don't have an infinite number of patterns and ways that we respond when we get scared.

unknown 11:46

Right.

Kate Dethmer 11:46

And so part of what we're doing in our coaching and what we do in our uh facilitation with groups is just tracking individual patterns. What happens when I get scared? How do I respond? And if I can kind of get keen to my typical patterns, I might be able to shift them. Uh, we're not the the uh agenda is not to never get triggered again, of course. It's just can I have more awareness when I do and maybe shift a little quicker and not stay stuck for as long.

Patterns, Feedback, And Radical Responsibility

Sara Best 12:17

Right. Yeah, I love that. But I'm thinking about uh, what about those of us who might say something like, I'm not scared. I don't feel scared. Yeah. I hear that a lot. What what say you to that?

Kate Dethmer 12:32

Yeah, I think it's a really common sort of belief. At least a lot of leaders that I coach, there's an element we've sort of trained ourselves out of being scared. Like it's not, it's not successful people don't get scared. Or at some point along the way, maybe even all the way back in childhood, I learned it doesn't benefit me to show my fear. And so I don't tend to like to argue with people about that. I just like to do a little more getting to know them. And maybe what they, what I might label as scared or reactive, they're seeing as just an irritated or, you know, I got a little um upset about something. Um, so I'm just looking for what is their version of if I just think about it as either I'm expanding or I'm contracting, what is what are their language of what contraction feels like and letting them come to whatever it is for themselves. And I'm always giving examples of my own experience. And and you know, at some point, if a client really isn't wanting to own that there's some contraction, then I imagine at some point they're not really a great fit for us. There's plenty of other models out there that might agree with that. But we're sort of the most foundational element of our model is this uh we get we get triggered.

Sara Best 13:52

We do get triggered.

unknown 13:54

Yeah.

Sara Best 13:54

And if I tie that back to what you shared in the beginning, the little twist on responsibility, it's radical responsibility. It's not just, hey, I'm taking responsibility for what I'm doing, but I'm taking responsibility for how other people are experiencing me.

unknown 14:10

Right.

Sara Best 14:11

Uh certainly in how I'm experiencing them. But if if I focus on that and I recognize this tendency to have fear and below the liness, how can we connect those? Share more about that.

Kate Dethmer 14:25

So there's the how am I seeing the world, which is my own lens and biases and blind spots. And then there's the how are the people who are in my life, my employees, my board of directors, my children, my in-laws, how are they seeing me? And we are uh committed to creating feedback-rich environments in the organizations that we work with. And so a leader is going to see the way the world that they see it, but then are they willing to take in the feedback about how other people are seeing and experiencing them? And again, there's typically patterns to that, you know, the feedback that they get from their sister-in-law can often be similar to the feedback that they get from the uh chief revenue officer. So we're we're looking for are you open to hearing the feedback that's coming your way and looking for how it's true? And sometimes when we're in that exploration, that can be kind of scary because we don't want to see ourselves a certain way. It's a blind spot for a reason.

Sara Best 15:27

Yeah. Well, and I'm just struck with uh the the deepness of this work and yet the simplicity of it at the same time that it, you know, as we consider our listeners just recognizing that attention on our above the line or below the linenness is an access to something maybe we haven't noticed or been able to leverage or use before. There's power in that. But you're right, it is, it's intimidating. I I've certainly been in meetings or in rooms with leaders where one or another will say, you know, I we don't do the emotion thing in our company. Like we we forego that it's not necessary. I never had to do that as a kid. Yet at the same time, you know, their patterns are evident to everyone.

unknown 16:13

Yeah.

Sara Best 16:13

Like the emperor with no clothes, like we can see it. It's just that you can't see it. So one of the things that I was profoundly impacted by, because I think you and the others uh on the team at the conscious leadership group helped model this and draw this out, is is what I'll call allowance or maybe even loving allowance for our below the liness, for what happens when we're scared, what happens naturally to us. It's that fight or flight. Could you help our listeners understand why that happens, how normal and natural it is, and what allowance for that, loving allowance for that in ourselves could make possible?

Kate Dethmer 16:57

Yeah.

Loving Allowance For Fear Responses

Kate Dethmer 16:58

So if the first question of conscious leadership is locating ourselves, where am I? Am I above the line in a state of trust, open, curious, not seeing any problems out there, not from naivety, just I'm I'm willing to see everything that's occurring as here for my learning and growth.

unknown 17:16

Yeah.

Kate Dethmer 17:16

Or am I below the line? So we're for that's the first question, getting really good at knowing where I am, seeing myself clearly. And then often what happens, I think it's just natural or innate to being human or something. It's like, of course, we want to be above the line. Of course it sounds better up there, like uh it's a preferred state. Yeah. Yeah. And instead, it's like, okay, what if the game we're playing is not getting above the line and staying above the line? The game that we're playing is accurately locating ourselves. And then when we are below the line, slowing down enough to be kind to ourselves there. This is the acceptance piece that you're talking about. It's like we don't, at least my experience is that most adults we don't do a great job of like being gentle, generous, kind with ooh, I got scared there. And I think that that keeps us in the pattern of reactivity, because then we're just resisting being scared. Right. Right, I shouldn't be scared, I should know better. I've given this presentation dozens of times. What's wrong with me? Instead of just, whoa, I felt some fluttering in my chest, a little squeezing in my throat or swirling in my belly. Got scared. Can I we say accept myself for being scared? Of course, it's not like I'm saying accept what's happening. You know, you could be frustrated or want your kid to be acting differently. It's I'm accepting the part of me who's reactive. And that once you accept it, there's a level of, I think the nervous system sort of calms a bit. Sometimes people describe it as like softening, a little melting, so that I might be able to come at the situation in a different way, not quite as uh below the line.

Sara Best 19:06

It does make so much sense. I feel a softening as I just listen to how that can be possible. But isn't it safe to say that our hard wiring, like our brain survival functioning, is always looking for a threat, always scanning. And when there's a threat to the ego, especially approval, security, or control, naturally we're gonna contract and go, oh crap. And then we default. This is the some of the best learning that I've had in relationship to my own patterns, that we default to these ways of being below the line. And sometimes they get results, maybe not the best results, but it's easy uh in in in the speak of uh the 15 commitments of conscious leadership, it's the drama triangle. And we villain, victim, and hero ourselves, or we villain, victim and hero other people. But we we take on these personas. I remember you once uh in one of our sessions, uh courses describing it as like a persona's like a sweater, you know, our favorite sweater that we we just have it on and it's comfortable. And it might not be the best sweater, but we just have worn it for so long, we don't even realize it's on. You know, I'm a perfectionist or I'm a warrior or I'm a hero. I have to fix everything. I just automatically put myself in the middle and take more than my share of the responsibility. Yeah, I don't know if there's any question in here, but what thoughts do you have in response?

Drama Triangle Personas That Run Work

Kate Dethmer 20:36

Yeah, you're kind of walking through our typical coaching session or when we're facilitating a group. It's like first locate yourself, then can you accept yourself? And in between those, there's the drama triangle. And we say when we're in the drama triangle or when we're below the line, it's a one-to-one correlation that we're in this drama triangle. And these bases are villain, victim, and hero. And you'll start to see it when you get aware of what the drama triangle is everywhere. And there are certain bases that we're all a little more comfortable on. And the personas come from the drama triangle. So we have different personas that emerge as children that protect us or move us toward safety or love or away from pain, that are kind of still alive and well as adults. And if uh we don't wake up to them, they can sort of unconsciously run our lives. Like a dictator persona at work uh can really cause some damage. And if you're not aware of it or playing with it, uh that can uh cause ruptures in relationships that don't repair.

Sara Best 21:43

As I think about the the intensity of that or the challenge of that, I'm also quick to think about what's possible. Like, what if we didn't have to fear that? What if we didn't have to or um didn't behave in ways that cultivated that? I you know, we the the the podcast itself is called the boss hole chronicles, but the notion behind this idea of

Range, Repair, And Part Two Tease

Sara Best 22:08

a boss hole is that it's somebody who either cannot or they don't know how to, and in some cases maybe they won't, uh, be willing to develop their self-awareness and self-knowledge, spend some time getting more practiced and and more savvy at identifying and and shifting those patterns, or just being more responsive to the feedback. But we believe that no one's born that way. Like nobody comes into the office going, you know, today I'm gonna be a hard ass and I'm gonna just, you know, command and control everything. And no, generally these are people who are scared, they're unaware that they're scared. So this is why I think conscious leadership is such an antidote to um this epidemic notion, the story that we all have in our heads that bosses are horrible and uh they make or break our success. Um, I think that's really, really powerful.

Kate Dethmer 23:02

Yeah.

Sara Best 23:03

Anything you want to say about that?

Kate Dethmer 23:05

Well, just that a boss hole comes is there for a reason. Like, you know, they're there's something that they've achieved because of it. And so, right. And I wake up to maybe some impact of how I'm showing up and uh expand my capacity to maybe have some range. So range. Love that word. No, that that persona doesn't always have to come forward that I could expand so I can have a little bit maybe a softer uh availability to something sometimes.

Sara Best 23:36

Yeah. So in that notion, we don't want people to change who they are. We're not saying something's wrong or broken, but I love this idea of expansion or range or ability to move within. And I think that's more freeing, it's more opening, it's more inviting, perhaps. Yeah, exactly.

Kate Dethmer 23:55

I think it's a lot of what we're doing, is we're supporting clients and uh okay, this is the comfortable side of the range for you. And what would it be like to move a little bit in this direction and expand it?

Sara Best 24:11

I hope you enjoyed part one of my discussion with Kate Dethmer. Tune in next week for part two when we explore more of her work.