The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

Have you ever wondered why so many successful leaders—those who have achieved wealth, prestige, and accomplishment—still feel burned out, anxious, and disconnected? The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp explores that paradox and proposes a radical reframe: real success isn’t about working harder, winning more, or managing better—it’s about leading with presence and awareness. The authors argue that most leaders today operate on autopilot, driven by fear and external validation. They may look like high performers, but they are often leading unconsciously. Conscious leadership, they contend, offers not just higher performance but also joy, creativity, and sustainable well-being.

The authors begin with an uncomfortable observation: traditional models of leadership—those that emphasize control, competition, and external achievement—are failing on three levels. On the personal level, leaders suffer from burnout, workaholism, and emotional disconnection. On the organizational level, these models foster fear-based cultures where innovation withers and trust collapses. And on the planetary level, a scarcity-driven mindset of “win/lose” competition undermines collaboration and sustainability. Conscious leadership, by contrast, restores integrity, alignment, and purpose across all three levels.

Above the Line vs. Below the Line

At the heart of the book is a deceptively simple model: draw a horizontal line. Where you live in relation to that line determines your state of leadership. When you are above the line, you are open, curious, and committed to learning. When you are below the line, you are defensive, closed, and committed to being right. Every choice, reaction, and conversation flows from one of these two states. Rather than pretending to always be above the line—which is impossible—the conscious leader’s task is to recognize when they drift below it and consciously shift back up.

The authors use vivid contrasts to show this in action. Tim, a high-achieving but exhausted executive, lives below the line—running on adrenaline, caffeine, and fear of failure, blaming others when things go wrong. Sharon, a mindful CEO, leads from above the line—curious, relaxed, and creative, with time for reflection and real connection. Where Tim’s culture is toxic and driven by scarcity, Sharon’s is collaborative, joyful, and innovative. The gap between them illuminates the price of unconscious leadership and the possibility of transformative change.

From Unconscious to Conscious Leadership

The authors describe four states of consciousness from which leaders can operate: To Me (victimhood, where life happens to me), By Me (creator consciousness, where I take responsibility), Through Me (surrendered awareness, where life moves through me), and As Me (oneness, where separation dissolves). Most people, they note, spend their lives in the first—“To Me”—believing they are at the mercy of circumstances, other people, or luck. The shift to “By Me,” which is the focus of the book, begins with radical responsibility: the realization that you are the source of your experience, not its victim. As leaders adopt this stance, everything changes—how they think, listen, feel, and interact.

From there, the book unfolds fifteen commitments—each one representing a shift from unconscious, reactive patterns (below the line) to conscious, creative patterns (above the line). The commitments cover everything from curiosity, emotional intelligence, and candor to integrity, appreciation, and genius. Together, they form a roadmap for transforming not only leadership but also relationships, teams, and entire organizations.

Why Conscious Leadership Matters

The authors make a compelling case that conscious leadership is not a “nice-to-have” moral ideal—it’s a strategic advantage. Studies show that emotionally intelligent, self-aware leaders foster engagement, creativity, and better health outcomes. In contrast, fear-based systems drain energy and talent. The “conscious” organization attracts better people, adapts more resiliently, and sustains innovation over the long term. Companies like Athletico, Genentech, and others profiled in the book confirm this: by living the commitments, they create environments where everyone thrives.

Ultimately, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership invites you to lead—and live—from a deeper place of awareness. It challenges you to examine not only how you manage others, but how you manage yourself. As Jim Dethmer writes, the question is not “Are you above or below the line?” but “Can you tell the truth about where you are, and are you willing to shift?” That willingness, the authors promise, is the first step toward a life—and a leadership—that is both more effective and more alive.

The first and most foundational commitment is to take radical responsibility. This means moving from blame to ownership—from seeing life as happening “to me” to recognizing that I am always a participant and co-creator of my experiences. The authors portray this shift as the gateway to conscious leadership: until you stop blaming, you remain powerless to create change.

The Victim-Villain-Hero Triangle

When things go wrong, leaders usually fall into one of three roles: victim (“it’s happening to me”), villain (“it’s their fault”), or hero (“I’ll fix it, even if it kills me”). While this drama triangle feels familiar—it’s the emotional fuel of most workplaces—it is also exhausting. In the authors’ example from “Common Corp,” executives bickered over missed sales numbers, each blaming someone else: manufacturing, sales, vendors, or the economy. The result? Toxic fear and stagnation. Radical responsibility breaks this cycle by declaring: “I commit to taking full responsibility for my circumstances and supporting others to take full responsibility for theirs.”

Fear, Blame, and the Power of Choice

Blame, guilt, and shame all spring from toxic fear—the fear that we are not enough, that we’ll lose control, or that something has gone wrong. Conscious leaders don’t suppress fear; they face it with curiosity. Instead of asking, “Who’s to blame?” they ask, “What can I learn from this?” This subtle shift—from reaction to learning—transforms fear into energy for growth. (This parallels Viktor Frankl’s idea in Man’s Search for Meaning that between stimulus and response lies the power to choose.)

Radical responsibility is not self-blame. It doesn’t mean you caused every circumstance; it means you take ownership of your response to it. The authors invite readers to a liberating thought experiment: “What if there is no way the world should be and no way it shouldn’t be? What if it’s exactly as it is for our learning?” Seen from that lens, everything becomes an opportunity for growth, not a reason for resentment.

Radical Responsibility in Action

The book’s case study of Athletico, a rehabilitation company, illustrates this commitment in action. CEO Mark Kaufman led his team in ending blame and cultivating curiosity. Instead of scapegoating departments, they learned to say things like, “Hmm, that’s interesting—what can we learn from this?” The result was higher morale, lower turnover, and remarkable growth. Radical responsibility became their competitive advantage.

The authors suggest a simple but powerful tool: the 100% Responsibility Worksheet. Start with any complaint—ham it up, feel the drama—and then move physically to another place in the room and declare, “I take 100% responsibility for this.” Answer reflection prompts like “What do I get out of keeping this issue going?” or “How am I creating this situation?” This embodied shift from victimhood to ownership can transform your energy instantly.

“What if curiosity and learning are really the big game, not being right about how things should be?”

—Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp

Living from radical responsibility takes practice, but it’s the foundation for every other commitment. Once you see that you create your experience, you stop waiting for others to change. You start leading from power, not fear, and that shift radiates through every team and relationship you touch.

If radical responsibility moves you beyond blame, the next step is to move beyond being right. The authors contend that the single biggest barrier to conscious leadership is the ego’s obsession with rightness. When you are certain you’re right, you close off possibility; when you are curious, learning becomes limitless.

Above and Below the Line Revisited

When you’re below the line, you’re committed to being right and defensive. When you’re above the line, you’re committed to learning. Most of us drift below the line many times a day—the authors note that “presence” lasts about four seconds before “something happens” and we react. Conscious leaders practice noticing when they drift and choosing to shift back through self-awareness and acceptance. The question that defines their growth is: “Where am I—above or below the line?”

The Drift-Shift Process

Shifting requires biological as well as mental change. When you’re triggered, your chemistry floods with adrenaline and cortisol. To interrupt this reaction, the authors teach two “shift moves”: take set of conscious breaths (deep, slow belly breathing) and radically shift your posture (literally uncrossing your arms or standing differently). Once your body calms, you can open back into curiosity instead of reactivity.

Then comes the magic move: wonder. Like a child exploring the world, wonder suspends the need to figure things out. Questions like “I wonder what I can learn here?” or “I wonder what would happen if…?” rewire your brain for growth. Einstein, famous for his experiments in curiosity, called this “living in the question.” (Compare this to Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, which similarly celebrates learning over rightness.)

The Practice of Feedback and Self-Awareness

The authors emphasize that conscious leaders cultivate feedback as a mirror for self-awareness. Feedback isn’t good or bad—it’s data about what’s working and what isn’t. The story of Sarah, a brilliant but defensive CEO, illustrates this vividly. When peers gave her feedback about her incongruence, she brushed it off as criticism. Her resistance consumed the group’s energy, until she was asked to leave. By contrast, when co-author Diana Chapman received harsh feedback (“You lack discipline around food”), she responded with curiosity: “What gift is she giving me?” This openness led to real transformation in her health and intuition.

Wonder Isn’t Weakness

“Effective leaders learn to get into a state of wonder on a consistent basis.” Wonder is not naive—it is courageous curiosity that dismantles ego and sparks insight.

Ultimately, this commitment asks you to trade defensiveness for discovery. Every interaction is an opportunity to learn—about yourself, about others, about life. The more curious you become, the faster you grow. In conscious leadership, learning isn’t a project; it’s a way of being.

In most corporate cultures, emotions are treated as threats to logic. But Dethmer, Chapman, and Klemp argue that emotional intelligence—the ability to feel fully and express appropriately—is essential to conscious leadership. Feelings are not weaknesses; they are energy and information. When you resist them, you lose access to wisdom. When you feel them through to completion, you free yourself and your organization from emotional backlog.

The Five Core Emotions

Conscious leaders practice emotional literacy—recognizing five core emotions in the body: anger, fear, sadness, joy, and sexual feelings. Each emotion, they explain, is “e-motion”—energy in motion. Anger signals that something no longer serves you or that a boundary must be set. Fear alerts you to pay attention or learn something new. Sadness helps you let go. Joy celebrates what’s life-giving. Sexual energy fuels creation and innovation. Repressing or recycling any of these blocks energy; feeling them releases it.

Locating and Releasing Emotion

To process emotions, first locate the sensation in your body (“Where is it? What are the bits doing?”). Then breathe into that area, allow or even appreciate the sensation, and match expression with experience. If anger feels like heat, you might pound a fist and growl; if sadness feels heavy, you might cry. Suppression freezes emotion, while matched expression moves it through. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte-Taylor confirms that emotions last about ninety seconds when felt fully. Anything longer is storytelling.

The Wisdom of Feelings in Leadership

Each feeling carries leadership intelligence. Anger clarifies purpose and power; fear awakens presence; sadness deepens connection; joy fosters appreciation; sexual energy births creativity. In one boardroom story, a CEO invited his team to identify their emotions about a tough cost-cutting decision. As people named and released anger and fear, creativity surged, and decisions became both humane and effective. The room literally felt lighter. The authors conclude: “Conscious leaders locate, name, and release their feelings. They know emotions are an essential ally to successful leadership.”

By integrating head, heart, and gut, you extend beyond rational intelligence to full-spectrum awareness. Emotional honesty reconnects teams to purpose and to each other. And as the authors note—you can measure it: engagement rises, turnover falls, and health care costs plummet when leaders feel and allow others to feel.

Candor, say the authors, is love in action. To “speak candidly” is to say what’s true for you and to make it safe for others to do the same. Without it, energy leaks out through secrecy, politics, and gossip. With it, energy flows freely through an organization. Conscious leadership cultures thrive on candor because candor builds trust, transparency, and real alignment.

Withholding vs. Revealing

Most leaders, even well-intentioned ones, withhold. They conceal facts, thoughts, feelings, or sensations to protect others or themselves. But withholding blocks connection and drains vitality. The authors summarize it in the Reveal or Conceal model: every time you withhold, you withdraw, then project judgment onto the other. For instance, if you think “My boss is disrespectful” and you don’t reveal it, you disconnect. You start collecting evidence that “he is disrespectful,” reinforcing your story. The antidote is to reveal—not to be right, but to be known.

The Three Circles of Candor

Candor has three overlapping circles: truthfulness (accuracy—what’s factual), openness (completeness—how much you reveal), and awareness (self-knowledge—how fully you see yourself). To grow in candor is to expand all three. The practice also involves speaking in what the authors call unarguable statements: reporting only what cannot be debated—a thought (“I’m having the thought that…”), a feeling (“I feel…”), or a body sensation (“I notice tightness in my chest”). Arguable claims fuel conflict; unarguable truths invite curiosity and connection.

Conscious Listening

Candor requires not just truthful speaking but also conscious listening. Most of us listen through filters—wanting to fix, diagnose, defend, or avoid conflict. Conscious listening drops those filters to hear with head, heart, and gut. You reflect back what you hear, empathize with the feelings beneath the words, and attune to the speaker’s deeper needs. This full-presence listening allows conversations to move from argument to awareness.

A striking example comes from Research Affiliates, where CIO Jason Hsu invited real-time feedback from his entire team, including criticism about his travel and favoritism. As he received feedback openly and curiously, trust exploded across the firm. Meetings became faster and more creative; the “glue” of gossip was replaced by the power of truth.

Candor, the authors write, is revealing rather than concealing. When you tell the unarguable truth lovingly, others can reveal themselves too. In that mutual transparency lies the foundation of conscious culture. As they put it: when you choose revealing, you’re choosing trust; when you choose concealing, you’re choosing control.