Identifying ‘Above The Line’ and ‘Below The Line’ Thinking and Behaviours
Whether your team is already high performing or is under performing in certain areas, there are always opportunities for improvement, starting with understanding you and your team members behaviours. When you have an opportunity to implement a framework to assess whether behaviours are Above the Line or Below the Line, your teams gain the opportunity to consistently perform at it’s best.
One of your first opportunities is to consider the behaviour and language used by your team when interacting, perhaps in relation to meetings and when sending emails for example. It very quickly becomes clear that there may be some norms within the group that are not particularly healthy.
Interestingly a team’s performance can still be good, the question is at what cost is this being achieved? People can be working harder but as a result become more siloed. An air of command and control from a leader can occur because workloads are so high. Or, leadership may not be direct and the team can be left to solve problems on their own. These sorts of negative behaviours can creep into a team environment.
When you've got a hierarchy where senior leaders get paid more and have more freedom, they tend to be more engaged in the process and expect everyone else to be just as engaged. But a senior leader, needs to manage their expectations of people in their team.
Creating new norms
Helping a team to unpack what it means to think ‘above the line’ and ‘below the line’, is essential to assist and support a team create a baseline of current thinking and behaviour. The goal is to then assist the team create new behavioural norms, but you first need to identify what needs to change.
For example, does your team spend a lot of time in meetings or presenting? Could your team work on better communication or more respect? Identify a couple of issues within your team and use them to outline above and below the line thinking and behaviours.
Individuals within the team can look at what respecting yourself looks like, what showing respect to others looks like, and can highlight some positive and negative behaviours. This can include identifying some of the phrases people have heard that show disrespect, and other more positive phrases used when things go well.
During this process, teams can also identify issues with psychological safety (wellbeing), which is a common theme among teams that often drops by the wayside.
But how do you successfully bake above-the-line thinking into the system? Perhaps the easiest and most impactful way is by making it a habit to reflect on the framework at the beginning and end of meetings. And when it comes to ensuring psychological safety and wellbeing, you could make it a habit to discuss it in your one-to-one meetings.
Research shows that any training in psychological safety does not work unless processes and systems support it. So, by having check-ins, and making sure to be inclusive in meetings, it ensures each member of your team has the opportunity to share insights, while using the framework at the beginning and end of meetings reminds everyone to think about their actions and language and gives them feedback to work from to improve for next time.
Nurturing your relationships
Aside from making it a habit to reflect on at the beginning and end of meetings, it’s all about focussing on your relationships.
So often we think that our work in teams is about getting a particular task done or delivering a project, but what people tend to forget is that it can’t be done alone. We need people, we need a team. That's why team development, the people and the relationship we foster are as important as the task.
We see many people focus solely on the task and forget about the people and relationships. When that happens, it shows and it doesn’t work over time unless you’re extremely lucky. You need to invest time, energy, effort, and resources into team development.
Remember that as a leader, you are a role model. You have a leadership shadow wherever you go, so it is incumbent for you to create an environment of psychological safety and to nurture your relationships.
So, how can you do that? By being open and vulnerable with your team. For example, admitting a mistake in front of them. Be real and let your team know you are also facing challenges, tough days and setbacks. Schedule it in and chat to them about it fortnightly or once a month.
It’s just as important to focus on feedback, too. Being aware of and creating behaviours around that will take you far.
But what does ‘above the line’ and ‘below the line’ look like for giving and receiving feedback?
Below-the-line behaviour might be giving somebody unsolicited feedback that focuses on their weaknesses, while above-the-line behaviour is actually proactively asking for feedback. That's a whole cultural change for all teams and organisations – shifting to this notion of asking for feedback instead of waiting for it, or expecting your manager or colleague to give it to you. High-achievers ask for specific feedback. Remember, the more specific you are when asking for feedback, the better the quality of feedback you’ll receive.
You can use the Above the Line framework in so many ways to address:
· Enhancing accountability and responsibility
· Asking for proactive feedback
· Developing a growth mindset
· Creating an above the line mindset
· Enhancing communication and relationships
· Enhance wellbeing and work life balance
· Asking above the line questions to promote curiosity
The power of simplicity
One thing that’s clear about the Above-the-Line concept is that it’s not a difficult concept to get. It’s incredibly simple but incredibly powerful.
How could you encourage leaders in your organisation to introduce it to their teams?
Want to enhance introduce the “above the line” framework into your workplace? Get in contact with Michelle Bakjac via email at michelle@bakjacconsulting.com to enquire about coaching and training to develop your workplace strategies.
Michelle Bakjac is an experienced Psychologist, Organisational Consultant, Coach, Speaker and Facilitator. As Director of Bakjac Consulting, she is a credentialed Coach with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a member of Mental Toughness Partners and an MTQ Plus accredited Mental Toughness practitioner. Michelle assists individuals, teams and organisations to develop and improve performance, leadership, behaviour, resilience and wellbeing. You can find her at www.bakjacconsulting.com
