Coming out at work: How the full expression of self might create more whole-system resilience

There is a phrase that has been ringing in my head for years -- queer leadership. I’ve continually wondered what it would mean to embrace queerness, as a part of my leadership style. Of course, the reality is that being pansexual (or omnisexual)* is part of how I show up in the world. For me, it’s difficult to articulate the impact and importance of being out in my business and work life (or really, just in all aspects of life).

First, I feel the need to say that as I’m exploring the ways in which we might ‘come out’ at work, that to me it’s beyond just queerness or orientation. It’s about all of the parts of ourselves that we can (and do) hide. In the future, perhaps I’ll write more about my experiences with chronic pain, mental health or burnout. Speaking about all of these experiences are ways that we can come out, towards more full self-expression which I believe ultimately improves our organizations (I’ll get to this). I also feel it is important to point out that talking about ‘coming out’ indicates the invisibility (usually things we can conceal, e.g. mental health). In addition, we also need to have important conversations about how visible diversity (usually things we can’t conceal, e.g. race) can also be embraced to develop resilience within our organizational and social systems. And, of course, not everything fits neatly into two categories.

As I was saying, I believe that the more fully ourselves we are, the better that is for the whole system - society, family systems & organizations. I talk a lot about resilience, regeneration and anti-fragility** in the work that I do. I’m not just focused on individual resilience, I think a lot about how we can develop anti-fragility in our human systems as a whole. That way we and future generations can thrive in connection with each other grounded in belonging to an ecosystem.

We’re now at a place in our society where we are realizing the complexity of the problems we face. The best systems thinking for decades has been saying that we live, work and organize in complex living systems, not mechanical systems (for more on this see our blog on Regenerative Leadership and Paradigms). Yet our minds have been oriented towards standardization, control and centralization. This approach has had benefits, but it’s limitations are catching up to us. Within this model, people who look and think differently, who are considered outside the norm, are othered and marginalized (in any of the ways I previously mentioned, and beyond). Often, we try to blend in. This can be a truly terrible experience, always being on-guard, on the defensive, and believing that parts of us are not acceptable so they must be hidden. 

Hiding parts of ourselves, to me, seems quite common - and can often feel so stifling. We might do quite well according to the standards of society, but when we hide these things we are cutting ourselves off from a core experience of aliveness. The diversity of thought in organizations is constrained, due to the false framework we’ve adopted around order. We’re denying the full expression of our humanity in each other, just to prop up that lie. 

As more people come out, speak up and share their unique perspectives, we are learning so much more about the vast human diversity that lay beneath the surface covered over with a veneer of standardization. This is good news for all of us, because that diversity of thought might be just what we need!

In permaculture, we say that the problem is the solution. That means, the thing that was seen as the issue, can actually be leveraged as an opportunity. I think this idea can be applied to our social and organizational systems as well.

“The problem is the solution; everything works both ways. It is only how we see things that makes them advantageous or not.” - Bill Mollison

In order to solve complex problems and thrive in our organizational systems we actually require a broad diversity of thought. We need people to come out, or rather, we need all people to be more fully self-expressed in order to access and integrate (i.e. bring together, makes sense of, interconnect) diverse thinking. Organizations that create the conditions, including physiological safety, for people to bring their full selves to work will benefit from this emerging opportunity. These efforts are grounded in an understanding that true inclusion (diverse interconnections) benefits everyone. It moves us closer to having the needed spectrum of thought, coming together in a meaningful way, to access wisdom on the complexity of problems we now face.

“Diversity of itself is now not seen as a resource, but a diversity of functional connections certainly is a resource. Complexity, in the sense of some powerful interconnections between species, is what we are really seeking in food systems.” - Bill Mollison

My friend Alla (Meaningful Work Project) shared this quote with me, which really lined up with what I’ve been stewing on.

“All societies develop a circumscribed territory of what is articulated. As socialized citizens, we live within this territory. We agree to talk about certain things and to not talk about other things. Or we agree to talk about certain things only in a certain way. These agreements create a social story. Social story stresses how we belong and who belongs. Because the desire to fit in is a universal human trait, someone who breaks the trance of social story does so at great risk, and sometimes, great reward. We call this leadership.” - Christina Baldwin

These days I’m returning to a lot of things I felt I knew at a very young age (about power, ownership, expression, belonging and ecosystems). Somewhere in my childhood I decided to ignore what I knew in favor of blending in (our systems did their job in attempting to instill in me the norms of things like binary thinking, rational orientation, status quo, hierarchy). Interestingly, coming out as queer has deeply supported the re-emergence of things I’ve known for a long time. This is truly a gift to experience and actually makes me want everyone to experience their own version of coming out.