Why Hard Conversations Break Founders and How to Lead Above the Line

I’ve sat in too many leadership meetings that erupt into shouting matches.

Smart, capable founders interrupt, talk over, or tear each other down. Someone storms out. Someone else shuts down, a peacekeeper tries to smooth it all over. Everyone walks away convinced they were the reasonable one.

This is what unproductive conflict looks like in startups: raw emotion, high stakes, and zero recovery. It isn’t because people don’t care — it’s because communication is a learned skill, and most leaders were never actually taught it.

So they wing it. They fall back on instinct, intellect, and intensity — the very traits that helped them build their companies — and those same instincts undermine their ability to collaborate effectively with their co-founders and co-executives.

Over time, it’s not the strategy or market conditions that fracture a company — it’s the inability of leaders to stay connected when they disagree, to move between divergence and convergence without collapsing into reactivity.

Above the Line vs. Below the Line

Let’s peel back the layers to better understand what’s happening at the brain level. There’s a simple framework I use with leadership teams that cuts right to the heart of this: Above-the-Line vs. Below-the-Line Thinking.

Above-the-Line vs. Below-the-Line Thinking.

• Above the Line = open, curious, committed to learning. You’re engaging the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for empathy, reasoning, creativity, and impulse control. This state is reflective, curious, and deliberate.

• Below the Line = closed, defensive, committed to being right. Your brain is operating primarily from survival circuitry — the amygdala, limbic system, and lower parts of the midbrain. This state is reactive, fear-based, and fast.

While neither state is “good” or “bad,” because both are human, below-the-line leadership fuels reactivity, blame, and burnout; it’s what turns a tough conversation into an emotional street fight.

Leaders who let their passion and intensity take over spend too much time below the line. Their survival brain starts running the meeting. The prefrontal cortex — the part responsible for empathy and big-picture thinking — goes offline, and the amygdala takes over. In that state, strengths that usually serve us — drive, confidence, decisiveness — get overused. Under stress, those strengths turn into derailers: drive becomes control, confidence becomes defensiveness, and decisiveness becomes dominance.

Reactive patterns often start as strengths. High standards become perfectionism. Collaboration becomes people-pleasing. Objectivity becomes emotional distance. But under stress, these same strengths become armor — and armor doesn’t build trust.

How Reactivity Shows Up in Startups

Startups breed pressure. Funding rounds, burn rates, hiring decisions; every choice feels existential, and stress magnifies reactivity.

Here’s how I see it play out:

• The Controlling Founder: Steps in to fix everything. Their urgency and high standards leave no space for others to lead. Over time, the team stops taking initiative, waiting for direction instead of thinking for themselves.

• The Complying Founder: Prioritizes harmony over honesty. They smooth tension to “keep morale high,” but issues fester beneath the surface. Eventually, silence becomes the biggest source of conflict.

• The Protecting Founder: Deflects vulnerability with intellect. They stay cool and detached, using confidence or sarcasm as armor. Ideas that aren’t theirs get dismantled, and curiosity feels like weakness. The team stops challenging them, mistaking fear for alignment.

At first, these behaviors may look like leadership in action. In reality, they’re self- or team-protection strategies. When founders lead from fear — fear of losing control, approval, or credibility — the creative, big-picture parts of the brain shut down. They stop leading from curiosity (above the line) and default to controlling, complying, or protecting behaviors instead.

Why We’re So Bad at Disagreeing

It’s not your fault; it is your problem. Most founders were never taught how to disagree skillfully.

Early teams run on friendship, adrenaline, and shared purpose. Disagreement feels personal. Then the company scales, the stakes get higher, and a difference in opinion feels like a threat to identity or authority.

But disagreement isn’t dysfunction. It’s data. It’s the friction that sparks better thinking if leaders can stay above the line while navigating it.

The Hidden Structure of Productive Tension: Divergence and Convergence

Every leadership team has to navigate two essential phases of group thinking: divergence and convergence — concepts first articulated by Sam Kaner in his work on the Dynamics of Group Decision-Making.

• Divergence is the expansion phase — when teams explore ideas, surface tensions, and invite multiple perspectives. It’s messy by design; the goal is to stretch thinking, not agree.

• Convergence is the narrowing phase — when teams evaluate options, find patterns, and commit to action.

Both phases are necessary. But most teams struggle because they don’t realize they’re two different parts of the conversation that require different mindsets. They debate when they should be exploring and rush to decide before they’ve understood the problem.

When this happens, what could have been productive tension turns into defensiveness. People stop listening, good ideas die early, and decisions feel forced instead of shared.

A simple reset to leverage in these moments: “Are we trying to explore right now, or decide?”

Naming the phase keeps teams above the line. It reframes disagreement from personal to process-based, restoring curiosity and collaboration when things start to tighten.

How to Stay Above the Line When Things Get Hard

Staying above the line isn’t about pretending to be calm or “nice.” It’s about conscious choice in the moment.

A simple three-step practice:

1. Pause – Notice your body. Tension in your jaw? Shallow breathing? That’s your nervous system signaling threat.

2. Name it – Say (even quietly), “I’m below the line right now.” Awareness breaks reactivity.

3. Choose – Decide how you want to show up next. Curiosity and learning are always available options.

   
   

Some teams I coach create a shared language around this. During meetings, anyone can say, “Hey, I think we’ve dropped below the line,” without blame. It’s a pause button — a chance to reset.

When that happens, take a moment to breathe and clarify what the group needs most in that moment:

• Do we need to slow down and listen before responding?

• Do we need to clarify what problem we’re actually solving?

• Do we need to acknowledge tensions in the room before we move on?

Real-time resetting keeps the team from spiraling into reactivity. It also normalizes reflection as a collective skill rather than an individual one. Over time, those micro check-ins build the muscle memory for staying above the line when it matters most.

The Line That Runs Through Every Conversation

The ability to disagree while staying connected is the real marker of leadership maturity. It’s what separates teams that grow together from those that quietly fracture under pressure.

Staying above the line isn’t about staying impenetrably calm; it’s about staying present. When founders can hold tension without defensiveness, they make space for better thinking, deeper trust, and stronger alignment.

Every meeting, every disagreement, every decision is a test of that skill. The question is never just what you’re deciding, it’s how you’re relating while you explore and decide.

The future of your startup isn’t written in your strategy deck. It’s in the conversations you have when things get hard and whether you choose to cross the line toward curiosity, connection, and growth or get pulled under as the waves of reaction carry you out to sea.

About the Author: Rach SebellShavit is the founder of HELM365, a Boston-based Change Resilience™ coaching practice that helps leaders and teams navigate change with clarity and confidence. An ICF PCC coach and Certified Facilitator of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, she blends behavioral science, hands-on facilitation tools, and coaching best practices to turn confusion into clarity, misalignment into momentum, and ideas into action—so teams stay focused, collaborative, and ready to deliver results. Rach has delivered over 5,000 hours of coaching and training worldwide across the tech, nonprofit, and startup ecosystem—from seed-stage teams to Fortune 100 companies.