Guest writer Shannon O'Rourke breaks down the findings of her PhD research into the leadership experiences of Queer people and how 'authenticity' can manifest at work.
My PhD research explores the leadership experiences of people who identify as LGBQ in the UK (primary study) and Italy (secondary study). While the focus of the research is on sexual minorities, it is inclusive of transgender and non-binary people who identify as LGBQ. This project includes a cross-cultural comparison between the UK, where there is greater support/protection for LGBQ people in the workplace and Italy, where workplace protections are more limited.
My fieldwork consisted of 30 interviews with cisgender, trans, and non-binary people who identify as LGBQ in the UK and 9 interviews in Italy. Participants held leadership roles in a wide range of sectors (public and private), such as government, higher education, finance, medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, HR, communications, tech, and the prison services. I’ve explored how other identities/circumstances (gender identity, age, ethnicity, geographic location, among others) intersect with sexual identity and impact leadership experiences.
How do you view coming out relating to authenticity and being a leader?
In the literature on LGBQ workplace and leadership experiences, authenticity is often linked with being visible and there is a notion that ideally, an LGBQ person will be very open about their sexuality, and that this may make them a better leader (see Lindsey et al., 2019; Mohr et al., 2019; Sawyer et al., 2017). Often, my research participants assessed their workplace environments and made pragmatic decisions about how and whether to be open about their sexualities. While all participants felt that it was important not to hide who they are, the degree to which people wanted to be open about their sexualities in their leadership roles varied greatly. Levels of openness were also shaped, and sometimes constrained, by the workplace context.
WCS Glossary | Masking Masking in psychology and sociology is the process in which an individual "masks" or camouflages their natural personality or behaviour to conform to social pressures, abuse or harassment.
When I started this project, I had my own tensions around what it meant to be visible and authentic. In the early days of the research, I felt an imperative to come out whenever possible. Coming out as bisexual often felt like a confession, as I had some hang ups around not being “queer enough” to be doing this research. This need to make people aware of my identity and my sense of privilege was driven by impostor syndrome, a sense of not quite fitting.
Over time, I started to feel more agency around how and when I would speak about my own sexual identity when discussing this research. I began to feel less compelled to define myself for others. I’ve learned the importance of taking ownership over how, when, and where I choose to speak about my sexuality. Interestingly, after nearly four years of being immersed in a study about LGBQ experiences, I feel less defined by being bisexual. It’s a part of me that I will always want to be free to share when I choose to, but I don’t need this to be the first thing that people know about me. I don’t need everyone to see it, because in the spaces where it matters most, I feel seen.
What challenges did you encounter around defining authenticity in the context of LGBQ leadership?
The participants in my research shared a wide range of views on what it meant for them to be authentic in their leadership roles. Describing what authenticity feels like, one participant said, “it honestly feels like I was holding my breath for a really long time, and now I can just breathe normally.”
Individual definitions of authenticity had a lot to do with participants’ feelings around the personal/professional divide. Several wanted to feel like they were the same person in their personal lives and their professional lives; these people often spoke more openly about their sexualities and felt that being LGBQ had a significant impact on their leadership. However, many participants preferred to have more of a divide between their personal and professional worlds. While almost all these participants were open about their sexualities in their leadership roles to some degree, they did not want it to be a major point of focus. Some expressed frustrations that being openly LGBQ led to an emphasis on this aspect of who they are in their leadership roles.
With these experiences in mind, I find it important to resist any overarching definition of what it means to be authentic in the context of LGBQ leadership. Everyone has the right to decide what being authentic means for them.
What is the invisible labour of authenticity for LGBQ leaders?
Participants articulated how being authentic involved a process of navigating how much of themselves they can bring into their leadership roles. Several described some degree of self-editing, and one participant described this as “being gay for a straight audience”. For many, being authentic is not simply about “being your true self”; it is also about the dilemma of whether, when, and how to refute notions of who people assume you truly are or should be.
Several ethnic minority leaders in the UK emphasised how their ethnicity increased this gap between how they identify and how others perceive them. For example, a Chinese-British leader in her early sixties described challenges of being visible as a lesbian in her leadership role when people often assume that Chinese women are straight. Many others described such challenges to be authentic when heteronormative assumptions are part of their workplace contexts.
WCS Glossary | Minority Stress
Minority stress describes high levels of stress faced by members of stigmatised minority or marginalised groups. It may be caused by a number of factors, including poor social support, low socioeconomic status, social stigma, prejudice and discrimination.
What complexities did your research capture in the relationship between LGBQ leaders and organisational DEI functions?
We need to question what we are asking of people when we ask them to be authentic, particularly people who are coming from socio-demographic disadvantage and underrepresented social categories. Many participants in my research were asked, or even expected to be involved in diversity groups and initiatives at their organisations. While some were willing to contribute to these efforts, several criticised DEI initiatives as they can feel “tokenistic”, and resisted the idea that their sexuality should mark them as “other”.
Several participants described how after coming out in their leadership roles, they faced expectations to speak for their sexualities, placing an obligation on them to speak on behalf of other people and explain others’ identities and experiences by standing on the ground of their own.
A lesbian woman in her late fifties emphasised this point as she said, “I would be viewed as some kind of expert, you know, and my experience is specific to my own multifaceted identity. I can't claim to speak for gay men or bisexuals or trans women or trans men.”
Promoting corporate diversity can create an obligation for individuals with minority characteristics to both reveal their own struggles and speak for others’ experiences. Expectations to “be authentic” can become coercive by compelling people to speak about matters that they would prefer to keep private. Authenticity should be approached as something that is often complex and unique to everyone rather than an imperative for LGBQ people.
Conclusion
Conducting this research has led me to take a more critical approach to the idea that authenticity is synonymous with visibility. There needs to be greater acknowledgment of how LGBQ people navigate complexities around coming out at work. What it means to be authentic may vary greatly from one person to the next, and therefore it’s important to avoid imposing some norm of authenticity. I believe that focusing on psychological safety, which is broadly defined as a climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves, can shift the focus from the role of the individual to the role of the organisation (see Edmonson 2018). An organisational commitment to psychological safety can create the conditions that allow for people to express themselves authentically, on their own terms.
References
Edmondson, A.C. 2018. The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons.
Lindsey, A., King, E., Gilmer, D., Sabat, I. and Ahmad, A., 2019. The Benefits of Identity Integration across Life Domains. Journal of Homosexuality, 67(8), pp.1164-1172.
Mohr, J., Markell, H., King, E., Jones, K., Peddie, C. and Kendra, M., 2019. Affective antecedents and consequences of revealing and concealing a lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(10), pp.1266-1282.
Sawyer, K., Thoroughgood, C. and Ladge, J., 2017. Invisible families, invisible conflicts: Examining the added layer of work-family conflict for employees with LGB families. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 103, pp.23-39.
Shannon O’Rourke (she/her)
Shannon O'Rourke is a PhD candidate in Social Psychology. She’s been working in qualitative social research in the areas of maternal and child health, women’s health, HIV prevention, and LGBTQ issues for ten years. After living in the USA, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and Germany, she came to the UK in early 2021 to pursue her PhD.
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