Above the Line Thinking: A Simple Tool for Growth

By Abigail Heley of Athena Evolve

Above the Line: The Tiny Tool That Turns Growth into Curiosity, Not Obligation

One simple model, five seconds to learn….

Here’s an honest-answer-required question: when did you last learn something new on purpose?

Not a scroll-past document or LinkedIn post, not a podcast half-listened to on your journey to work, but something you actually sat with, tried out, and let change how you show up in both work and life. If you’re struggling to answer this then you’re in good company. Most of us stop “developing” the moment training budgets get squeezed or diaries get full, and yet the businesses that quietly outperform everyone else tend to be the ones where nobody ever really stops learning.

At Athena Evolve, that’s the whole philosophy behind what we do. Training on its own is a nice day out. Training paired with coaching, with the follow-up, the reflection, the “how’s it actually going/what have you applied/what’s working and what isn’t?” conversations, is what makes it stick. Because development isn’t a course you complete and file away. It’s a habit. A muscle. Something you keep flexing, in work and in life, long after the workshop slides, discussions and activities have been forgotten.

So today, rather than talk in the abstract about “the importance of L&D” (yawn), I want to give you one tiny tool from our own Effective Management course that you can start using in the next five minutes. It costs nothing, takes seconds, and once you’ve heard it, you genuinely cannot unhear it.

It’s called ‘Above the Line Thinking’

Picture a horizontal line. Above it sits Ownership, Accountability, and Responsibility, for example, the “what did I do to contribute to this, and what will I try differently” mindset. Below it sits Blame, Excuses, and Denial. For example, the “they’re wrong”, “I had no time”, “it’s not my fault” territory. (Refer to the image with this article).

That’s it. That’s the whole model. Deceptively simple, which is exactly why it works.

The moment you hear someone (or yourself) say something like “well, they should have told me”, or “it wasn’t my job to check”, that’s below the line. And the moment you catch it, you have a choice: stay there or ask the question that pulls you back up. Questions like:

• What did I do to contribute to this?
• What else might have been going on that I wasn’t aware of?
• What will I do differently next time?

Above the line = personal power, and things get done.
Below the line = a mental block that quietly sets you back, even when it feels justified in the moment.

Try this: listen out for it today

Now the fun/useful bit. Once you know this model exists, you start hearing it everywhere: in team meetings, in your WhatsApp groups, in your own internal monologue at 11pm when you’re replaying a conversation that didn’t go well, during coffee breaks, conversations with your children (and friends). You’ll be amazed how much of everyday chat is quietly below the line and how easy it becomes to nudge things back up once you’ve got the language for it.

For managers, this is gold! Instead of getting drawn into a “them vs us” story with a team member who’s stuck in blame mode, you can gently hold up the mirror. For example, “Interesting. Where do you think you had some influence here?” It’s non-confrontational, it’s coaching rather than telling and it puts ownership back where it belongs, i.e. with the person who can actually do something about it (accountability, ownership, responsibility).

But don’t just save it for other people. Start using it on yourself. ‘Above the Line Thinking’ is as much a personal development check-in as it is a management tool. A moment of “am I actually taking responsibility here, or am I making excuses that feel very reasonable right now?”

Why this matters more than ever?

We talk a lot about sustainability in business: sustainable growth, sustainable practices, etc, but rarely about sustainable learning. Yet it’s exactly the same principle. A single training day is a sugar rush. Real development, the kind that changes behaviour and builds genuinely resilient teams, needs reinforcement, coaching, and small consistent nudges over time. Simple models like ‘Above the Line Thinking’ is one easy-to-apply tool that you can keep coming back to, long after the certificate’s been filed away.

That “little and often” approach to development is also, frankly, more enjoyable. It turns growth into curiosity rather than obligation. Instead of dreading ‘that’ training day that takes you away from your long list of to-do’s, you start noticing your own thinking patterns in real time, catching yourself, and finding it genuinely satisfying when you do.

Where do we (Athena Evolve) come in?

‘Above the Line Thinking’ is just one small piece of what we cover in our CPD-accredited Effective Management Course. It’s a proven course built entirely around this idea that lasting change needs both training and coaching working together. We cover team dynamics, coaching models that can be applied and practiced from the get-go, active listening and questioning techniques, values-based motivation, goal setting, challenging conversations, and more, but always with that same thread running through it: practical tools you can apply on Monday morning, reinforced through ongoing coaching support so the learning doesn’t just evaporate the moment the workshop ends.

We deliver it flexibly, shaped around what your business and your managers actually need because one-size-fits-all training is exactly the kind of “sugar rush” learning we’re trying to move away from.

If you fancy finding out more about how we help managers build these habits, in themselves and their teams, I would love to hear from you (and find out more about you – watch out for my many questions! I’m naturally curious).

Abi

Abigail Heley, Athena Evolve, www.athenaevolve.com |