Unbound Leadership - GNC/NB Research Project
Unbound Leadership - GNC/NB Research Project
The final, final episode
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In which the actual theory begins to emerge.
Hi, and welcome to the GNC Research Project. I'm Michelle Hamilton Page, and the episodes to come are essentially my doctoral research in podcast format. I used Grounded Theory to talk to 25 emerging leaders about what it is to be visibly queer in the workplace today. We'll talk about contested terminology like gender nonconforming. We'll talk about what it is to be non-binary, lesbian, and queer in the workplace today. I look forward to your feedback and to continuing the discourse about what this reality is like and what we're learning about what it is to be a true leader that can hold paradoxes. So welcome back, CAF, right? Thank you for being part of the podcast and the conversation. And this is our last and final episode where we've just been talking about sort of summarizing the so the so what, what came out of the research, what came out of the findings. And so we've got a little bit of a constructed conversation where there are absolutely some things I want to make sure that I refer to and and take a look at what emerges. So let's let's do that. Let's have that conversation. Feel free to probe at any time. Um, beyond sort of how we've structured it, I'm I'm happy to riff on whatever it is where where this conversation takes us. I will probe away if you're not. Awesome. Um so just to just to recap, um, the gender non-conforming research project has now morphed to be the non-binary research project. And uh that comes out of the language that comes directly from participants and language that they are most comfortable with, language that I'm also very comfortable with. We've uh we've talked about the sort of why people got involved and how they identified. But one of the things that stands out for me is uh one of the research participants saying, we're the most visible of lesbians, but at the same time kind of invisible in the academic work. And uh and it stands out for me, right? And it absolutely is also my experience. And when you're an academic or you're trying to you're trying to find yourself or your experience in research in literature, it's one of the reasons that you know Bernie Brown's work out of granted theory really sort of resonates with me because while it feels a bit like it is self-help, it's trying to you know make the world a better place, it comes out of research, it comes from data. And um, yeah, so this is the same kind of uh trajectory for me is like how do we take this idea that we're so visible? We've talked about some of the ways that we are, and I would say to a listener, if this is your first podcast, please feel free to dip into the other ones about exactly what that visibility sounded like and looked like through those 25 conversations. Um yeah, so that that's that's where we are. Let's talk about the so what? What what came out of the what comes out of this research? What is it, where does it go from here? What what what are what's the theory? What emerges?
SPEAKER_01So can you recap on what are the gaps, what were the gaps in the research and the literature that you were looking to address?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So um within critical human resource development research, uh what I kept finding was um were studies that framed lesbian experience as a negotiation of choice to come out or to stay closeted. And whether or not to disclose sexual orientation in the workplace ended up coming up again and again. And what I'm looking at is for folks that don't have that option, that when they show up to an interview are signaling through non-binary gender identity and what that looks like combined with and entwined with, and how that signals sexual orientation, that we're out from the time that we make eye contact with, um, and we are uh either on Zoom or in an interview process. So I'm looking to uh fill that gap with the the 25 conversation and what comes out of here. I'm also looking to talk about an analysis of how non-binary lesbians navigate the workplace from that place of visibility. So not just the fact that it exists, but how does it work? What are the processes, what happens? Um, that was one of the pieces I wanted to look at. And then I'm also looking at human resource development research on sexual orientation and gender identity that's observable, that's intersectional, because we'll talk a bit more about each of these people identifying as a feminist, and that also sort of draws on critical theory.
SPEAKER_01And um, can you just recap as well on top of that? Just why did you choose the research methodology that you did of constructed grounded theory?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so Kathy Charmaz is who I really look to in terms of the person who's who's done a lot of work and has written a fair bit both, you know, books about everything from thinking about the methodology to critique of the methodology to how to do it, um, to what then do you do with it, to articles that talk about how it fits within this critical human resource development or how it will fit within critical theory. And she says, and this is a quotation, and I'll I'll put a link up to all of the pieces that I'm that I'm referencing on my website and possibly also uh on this channel, depending on what what how folks access this, probably just on my website, which is nbresearch.com. So Charlotte says, quote, in its various forms, critical inquiry addresses power, inequality, and injustice, embedded in a transformative paradigm that seeks to expose, oppose, and redress forms of oppression, inequality, and injustice. And she says, she talks about it being best informed by critical race theory, queer theory, and feminism. Um, and in addition to linking critical inquiry to emancipation and transformation before the inquiry, we can also, so in that theorizing and that going back and looking at sort of the base of what we're how we're probing, what we're looking for, what's been written, um, how we want this to speak into those places and draw on that theory. So she says, in addition to linking critical inquiry to emancipation and transformation before inquiry, we can also emphasize developing it during the research process. And I've talked a couple of different times about how transformative the actual process of doing the interviews, conducting the interviews, constructing meaning with research participants has been. And this is exactly what she's talking about. And I love the concept of it being emancipatory and transformational before I had even approached the research, it was for me to do the reading. Also, really difficult, like difficult to read into just how hard it is for queers and with intersection intersectional identities or intersecting identities to be out in the workplace and what happens around harassment discrimination between 25 and 66 percent of people that have um who are LGBTQ reporting that they've been harassed and discriminated against in the workplace. She also talks about the fact that what we're we're trying to look at in our research is that notions of justice and injustice become enacted processes made real through actions performed again and again. And it's that that I'm trying to tease out with these conversations. How is that happening in the workplace? So, in terms of the process of constructed grounded theory and the resulting theory leading to emancipatory work or research or what I'm trying to do with the products of this of this doctoral portfolio, she says that constructed grounded theory probes how events, processes, and outcomes are constructed. It brings power and inequality into the center of discourse. It provides tools for studying power and inequality and being on the margins as well, right? So, what my work looks at is the individual within it, that hidden structure of binary expectations, that's what it's exposing, that's what it's centering. And then it's looking at how those expectations are enforced, how they're policed. Um, and she would say, and it also examines individual situations by connecting their experience with institutional policies and practices. So it's looking at how their experience is getting it enacted and how they're mitigating and how they're navigating in that space. Um, so those are the things that are emergent out of the theory. Um, yeah, so she basically talks about constructed grounded theory as a methodology that joins critical analysis with people's lives. And so that's why it's been so useful that the before the process was transformational for me, the process of the research was transformational within a community that I care very, very much about and that I'm a part of. And then beyond that, what what we want to see happen with the emergent theory that comes out looking at that hidden structure in this case, looking at how people, how these things are enacted, that centers inequality, that centers power, that talks about that in the discourse of what we've been doing in these podcasts, um, that that will be useful for people in their workplace and that will change uh critical human resource development theory.
SPEAKER_01And what is the theory that you're seeing that's emerging from the research that's addressing the gaps that you've identified?
SPEAKER_00So, this is the most exciting stuff for me. This is where I get like all jazzed up. And of course, I also have like a drawing of it, and then eventually I'm working with the graphic designer to turn that into a piece of art and hologram, um, with a holographer named Michael Page, who also happens to be my dad. Um, so the the exciting thing about this is is the theory, and there are lots and lots of critics of um or constructed grounded theory, and um so I understand that I I that some of this is going to is is going to be critiqued in ways that will be really interesting to sort of dig a little bit deeper and talk about, you know, is it in fact like what does the theory look like? Why haven't we seen it in workplace theory? Um so yeah, so the things that come out of it uh are uh sort of the the notions of justice and injustice of becoming enacted processes made real through the actions performed again and again. So the first thing is seeing that that hidden structure of binary expectations that I just mentioned, that 23 out of 25 people talked about the experience of forms of um harassment and discrimination and policing and enforcement within that hidden structure. And I'm using this thing with my hands, like I'm always like making structures or helixes, but um, this idea that within this workplace, if you can kind of imagine it as like this this hidden shell within it, and the way that I talked about it, it's it's a little bit like if you think of the individual who I'm working with in this research as in the center, they're sort of surrounded by like what I think of as Wonder Woman's plane. So this that you know that I don't remember if you remember that show or or even the comic book, that you can always see kind of the outline of the plane. It's there, you know the structure's there, but it's invisible.
SPEAKER_01And then you can see, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. And I can see Linda Carter sitting in like the seats not invisible. I don't know if you ever watch the TV show. When you're like the plane was invisible, but the seat she was on was not. Like it just, you know, you're like, wait a minute, wouldn't the whole thing anyway? Um so it's this idea of there being this structure that happens in the workplace. So we know that sometimes there's policies around homophobia and around gender identity. Um, and this is one that because it's entwined with the non-binary gender identity that has right adjacent to it, right next to it, and I would suggest entwined with it, um, as though they're strands of uh DNA or a helix sexual orientation, that it is a kind of binary enforcement that is also homophobic. Because the visible non-binary points to a sexual orientation that's queer, they are so adjacent to each other that one enacts the other. In fact, even when I ask questions about sexual orientation, gender identity often comes up. How comfortable are you being out? When did you come out? Those kinds of questions. People start talking about gender identity. I was a tomboy as a teenager, I came out when I was 19 in the workplace, I show up looking non-binary and signaling queer. Um, not that wasn't their words, but that that's the way the conversation formed and the way the theory has sort of uh evolved. So it's looking at what are those structures once that person shows up, but what is that Wonder Woman's plane? What is that hidden structure of the building of the workplace? So I see that it's things like um binary dress codes. So that there are dress codes in corporations. Um, people talked about going on trips and being asked because they're a woman at a formal event dress like this. If you're a man, you're dressing like this, and they were like, hey, hey, hey, hey, wait. Um, it looks like lack of mentoring. So uh four of the people that I that I interviewed talked about having been mentored somewhat informally, um, and very often in creative services or in education, where there was someone who was also queer that was that was doing the mentoring. In one case, it was someone that that wasn't that partway through their career as they became management, managed them at that point. And I would also suggest there was a pre-existing relationship there, too, that was also of respect for the work that individual had done. In all the cases, they were women mentoring women except for that one where it was a man mentoring. And one of the beautiful parts about that situation is the individual that um mentioned that they'd been mentored uh in this management position by this man. When I asked them if they'd been mentored uh by anyone that mapped onto their identity, they said me. And I and I was really moved by that. It is someone that I know and someone that I've worked with, and uh and it was pretty amazing to hear that uh in the course of also becoming management. So it was pretty awesome. So the lack of mentoring is absolutely one of the ways in which this hidden structure of binary enforcement and policing gets um gets enacted, right? So we know that mentoring happens in a homophilial fashion, men mentor men, women mentor women, and so there's very little cross that way either, men mentoring women and women mentoring men. Uh so again, you would be looking, it would follow that someone that looked like us did do the mentoring, and in fact, three of the four cases where that happened, that was the case. But generally, all of the questions about mentoring were met with no. So 21 of those people that were like, no, I've I've never been mentored by anyone. And we're talking about people in finance and education and healthcare, um, working in factories, working in create in arts and creativity, um, and on and on and on. And so these are that by and large is one of the things that I would say is a thing that stops us from being able to thrive, to to informally be mentored or formally be mentored, is to be shown the ropes, is to be brought inside, is to be part of a culture enculturated into the workplace and be shown that you fit and and and on and on. And there's great research about that. And I'll be writing a paper and talking a little bit more about uh pointing to some of the research around mentoring.
SPEAKER_01And can I just ask a question on the mentoring? Because is that um obviously I'm in the UK, so for you, for you in Canada or North America, is it a generally recognized practice that people would have mentors in the workplace? Because it isn't in the UK, it just wouldn't happen anyway.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not it's not always it, it has been so it in it has been a formalized process in some workplaces. So, for instance, there will be um like there are mentoring programs in like corporations and banks um and and places where they're like, we want to take someone under our wing and it's like succession planning, right? And and bring them into what we know. I know it happens in healthcare. It's happened in um it happened in uh Toronto Public Health, where you'd be attached to someone for three months and uh and they would show you the ropes. I was attached to uh when I worked there, I was attached to um a sexual health educator, a nurse who was amazing and a little bit old, like closer to retirement, but like had seen and done and known it all, and it was amazing. Like I was around for for three months and started doing training because I was doing uh sexual health education, doing training with her observing and then getting her feedback and whatever. So that there are there are certainly places where it's formalized, but most of the time it's informal. There was one individual who talked about um being in a in a financial institution um where there was some there was some informal mentoring that happened that was someone who was a butch dike, who had worked there and who encouraged them to come into that into that same workplace. And that was that's a fascinating case study, too, in that this person was very respected. People, this is one of the only incidents when there was someone that looked like um the same gender identity that had sort of informally and not not like they had some conversations that wasn't like a formal mentorship in in that way, but this person had paved the way, which is one of the things that kept coming back to participants, where I would say, okay, none of us have been mentored by someone who looks like us. So it's our job to like keep an eye out for people that do to say, um, you know, here's here's how here's what this organization is like in terms of gender identity and sexual orientation. Here's what we've done, here's how I'm looking to, we'll talk in a minute, about enacting, navigating, mitigating this hidden structure. What was interesting with everyone that I talked to about um not having been mentored or the level of comfort was that there was a precarity in how they felt about the workplace. Like I've figured out the workplace where I am, they know me. I've either appealed to policies or not appealed to policies or appealed to HR. Most people didn't if there was an issue. Um, but if I leave this job and I go to another one, I start from scratch again. And it's precarious. And so this came up again and again. Like I know this, there's maybe a better opportunity at this other agency for me or in this other job, but I will have to start again from ground zero because there isn't anyone that's mentoring, because there aren't people that that have been visibly queer that I can see or I can I know of in that in that organization. Um, or I'm afraid that even if there is, I could get I could get a frosty um um welcome, that it won't actually go well for me, which people did actually also talk about that that even if there was some mentoring, sometimes it turned on them when they became competition in the workplace. And there's only room enough for one of us that looks like this here. And these are things I would love to probe. Like they came up, but within an hour and seven questions of just looking at how comfortable are you, are there policies, have you ever appealed to the policies? Um, which is trying to get at sort of how well it's gone and walking them through, walking them through their sort of career trajectory around what it's been like to be out invisible. I wasn't able to probe as deeply with those things as I would like to. This is sort of scratching the surface, but this whole idea of um of the mentoring and the leadership and the kinds of things that are starting to come up that emerge out of this research is something I'd I'd love to do more about. So the other, in terms of the structure, binary dress code, lack of mentoring, enforcement of the binary, and what I would call uh a homophobic enforcement of that of that binary, including um enforcing gendered leadership styles and talking about gendered leadership styles and not making room for um leadership that's not um competitive and that doesn't map really nicely onto um or doesn't work with non-binary identities and looking at more of a collaborative style that people talk to again, something I'd love to probe more about. But this idea of this emergent leader that started to come up, which I'll mention in a minute, um, didn't nicely look binary either. And the feedback was that that's not the leadership style we support. You don't have what it takes. And then the last thing is the way that this hidden structure gets enforced is with harassment and discrimination. Um, so I'm gonna read you a couple of uh a couple of our definitions. If there's other sort of working understanding you have of this, I would love to know because I know we've talked about this a little bit broadly. And this is a Canadian perspective, and of course, I was talking with people that were global, so not it's gonna vary province to province, it's gonna vary country to country. People talked about being teachers and worrying about what state they worked in in the states because there were queer teachers that came out that had been fired. And so choosing where they were going to school for uh teacher education and then choosing where to work was impacted by the policy and geography and location came up quite a bit in my research about where people were choosing to work and um they talked about urban centers and they talked about looking for uh laws, right? And look protective laws around gender identity and sexual orientation. So within the province of BC, discrimination is defined this way: all employees have the right to work without discrimination. The prohibited grounds of discrimination in British Columbia human rights codes include race, color, ancestry, place of origin, religion, family status, marital status, physical disability, mental disability, sex, age, sexual orientation, political belief, or conviction of a criminal or summary conviction offense unrelated to their employment. Harassment is defined as under the British Columbia Human Rights Code here in Canada. It's included in collective agreements and the Human Rights Policy 11, da-da-da, in the workplace. Prohibited conduct may be verbal, nonverbal, physical, deliberate, or unintended, unsolicited or unwelcome, as determined by a reasonable person. It may be one incident or a series of incidents, depending on the context. Harassment refers to upsetting behavior or comments that ought to reasonably be known as offensive or unwelcome. And it includes, but it isn't limited to actions or comments that are directed at no person in particular, but that create an intimidating, demeaning, or offensive work environment. Any objectionable comment, act, or display that demeans, belittles, compromises, or causes personal humiliation or embarrassment, and any act of intimidation or threat and offensive behavior. So there's obviously a lot of room for interpretation. There are a lot of um, there were a lot of cases. So 23 out of 25 people talked about the fact that they had experienced harassment and intimidation or harassment and discrimination in the workplace around their sexual orientation and their gender identity specifically. And it took a lot of forms. Um and uh and they're not some of them are very difficult. And I've done a I've done A TED style talk that I will also link to, where I put slides up with people's wording and language and ask the viewer to just pause on it and read them because I think it's important to hear in people's own words what it is that that happened. But the harassment discrimination, some of the ways that it came up in our in my interviews in those conversations, were around misgendering, a refusal to use pronouns or actually address the gender that someone was saying was theirs by those use of pronouns. One participant said, When I tell you my pronouns, I'm not just telling you my pronouns, I'm telling you about my gender. So the the refusing to use the proper pronouns or the misgendering, homophobic remarks, sexual harassment or misogyny. Someone talked about being belittled and uh and and talked to in a demeaning fashion that totally constituted sexual uh harassment. They took it to a HR and they and they made the complaint and they made it really clear that this was an issue. Most of the people didn't take uh didn't make formal complaints. Some individuals, a few individuals, very few, talked to uh human resources and then tried to work it out with them. We'll talk a bit more on that in a bit. Other harassment and discrimination included things like heteronormative erasure, which is really interesting because on the back side of it, it's also part of an enforcement of gender identity norms that happen a lot of times in like awards or acknowledgments. So at conferences or at various events where uh they were handing out things that were a reflection of appreciation. So in the case that in a hyper-feminized workplace, um, it could be a scarf, it could be like uh, you know, something that's silky or whatever, and that just in no way maps onto that person's gender identity and sexual orientation. Other ways that uh it came up would be at places where there was like an informal kind of uh event or gathering that included things like dance and drinks and those kinds of things, where um there was just absolutely no room for it to be anything other than completely heteronormative, even with people there that were out and queer and had been employed there for a long time. Um, and so there is a kind of an erasure that happens in a heteronormative workplace that sets it up that one of my participants talked about why they came out and why they confirmed and used gender-specific wording around their wife or their partner, was because in a workplace, anyone should be able to talk, everyone talks about their partners. People talk about who they're dating or who they're married to, it trips off people's tongue. But when you do that and you're queer and you might be confirming for someone that you're queer, that's a moment of coming out when you use those pronouns and when you talk about it. So, this idea is that the discourse or the way, so coming back to what we're trying to expose with um constructive grounded theory is how discourse centers that norm and centers that heteronormativity and marginalizes other people. And this is what happens in the workplace. People talked about it happening in the lunchroom, um, people talked about it happening at those events, people talked about it happening at like awards places. Um, people also talked about awards ceremonies when they were students where they were given something that did map onto their gender that was in fact the tie, which was for them fantastic, and how seen they felt in that instance. So the opposite can be true as well, right? So, how do you what's an easy solution to changing a heteronormative workplace is that as an ally or as a colleague setting it up so that you're like checking in with the person before that awards thing, how comfortable are you that this happens? What would that look like for you? We're thinking about getting whatever, maybe we get water bottles this year. Maybe we maybe we try to make it not heteronormative in what way. So, other examples of harassment discrimination that came up in the research um were sexual assault. And and one of the ways the um person talked about that is that the the person who sexually assaulted them in the workplace was quote, testing where I was on the scale of sexuality, unquote. And they had been at the workplace with their girlfriend, they were um an out um butch deich, and uh and this and this happened. Um other examples are uh what we've talked about about binary homophobic policing in gendered spaces, including the bathroom. So talked about how the first reaction in a bathroom is around gender, but even if when that individual put that person at ease, that the response behind it was still discomfort and alarm, because that gender, even when you confirm you're a woman, you're in the right bathroom, it signals sexual orientation. And then the next, so that response is a combination, it's a great example of why these two things are combined. And then um harassment discrimination, where there is policy around gender identity and sexual orientation, or one or the other, but uh HR doesn't enforce it, is another way that the harassment discrimination happens. And uh so that is absolutely one of the things that has come up is that when people did talk to HR about it, um it was a it was a common experience that HR either said to them, um, you need to go along to get along, or you know, let's work on this together, but there wasn't a response that's like, wait, that's a problem. I'm sorry that that happened to you. Let's talk about like policy and how to how to use that. And so those that sort of generally speak to um that idea of the first part of the theory, which is this hidden structure of binary expectations, enforcement, and um policing, which I'm calling a homophobic binary enforcement and policing because it is both.
SPEAKER_01Um speaking to the participant, the research participants then, what um what did the research participants take to make meaning or to mitigate and navigate the structural homophobic binary?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so this is the helix part. So this is where I love like envisioning this is the this is the this is the Wonder Woman inside the plane. So this is the which I haven't ever said before, because you know, for reasons, lots of reasons. So I I envision when people talk about this intertwining um sexual orientation and gender identity, um, starting with that binary thing, I started to think about it as looking at that that hidden structure, the expectations, the policies, the practice, and how these folks that are non-binary started to work in that workplace to take up space, to be out and proud, to be resilient, to um uh challenge policy, to do it from a place of collaboration, to to mitigate and navigate, but from a place of feminist concern for how that woman actually feels in that bathroom. And looking at that idea of this identity being non-binary, that it that it holds this sort of paradox of this male and female thinking about that, what started to kind of emerge is this concept of what I'm thinking of as an unbound leader. So, to a person, when asked about leadership, and and when I probed for what are you doing in the workplace to navigate or mitigate? Have you challenged things? How out are you? How is it going? Their leadership started to absolutely become front and center. So it was one of the things after memos that I started to probe for. Do you consider yourself a leader? And to a person, they did. Um, and and that's because of this constant navigation and negotiation. So this idea of uh a paradoxical leader started to kind of take form in my head. And um I listened to a podcast of Brene Brown's and her dare to lead um work with Barack Obama, where they talked about this idea of holding a paradox. So holding the what they say is holding paradox is holding the tension of opposites, holding the discomfort of paradox is the most is the most transformative of leaders. It requires a level of comfort with ambiguity, holding the tension and duality. And like I I couldn't have said I couldn't have looked forth bound. As soon as I heard that, I was like, that's it. This is paradoxical leadership. This is this idea of being unbound, um, leads me to that. So if you can imagine the helix, and you can imagine that there's two outside strands that run up with the DNA, the strands of DNA. On one, I would say it's sexual orientation, it's queer, it has the word lesbian or dike, words that people use to identify their sexual orientation. On the other side is gender identity, it's non-binary, it's gender non-conforming, depending on what language they use. So this is the sort of intertwining helix. The way I'm envisioning the individual as helix is to think of the protein strands, if you will, in the middle of that helix that we're used to seeing with the kind of protein it has on it, but within that protein strand are the ways in which these individuals embody and mitigate and navigate within that hidden structure. So this helix is in the center of it. So when I look at that, I'm looking at people that are being able to hold that paradox, that are visibly queer, that are out and proud. Um, Breni Brown talks about it in terms of, and this is in her book, Dare to Lead, the Stockdale paradox. So it's this, it came out of this um Vietnam veteran who was in a prisoner of war camp, and he was asked by someone that that Brene is interviewing in her book, how is it that they the some of them made it out and some of them didn't? And what was the sort of feature that what was the characteristic of that individual that that was able to weather um the torture and the and the long time in a PW camp? And so what he said, and this is a quote, is you must never lose faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose that faith, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. You must never lose faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. So it's this idea of holding this paradox that I'm here, it's horrible, I have to have some faith, but this is also how horrible it is. So it's the the ability to hold both of those things at once. Um, and he said that it come in comparison, people that were like, we'll be out by Easter, we'll be out by Christmas, we'll be out whatever, whatever, and they would just lose hope. They would lose hope, they would lose hope. And so what he started to identify is this concept of holding this paradox. Um, and this is exactly what I see in this idea of being visibly queer, going through every time you know a public bathroom or new staff come on, or you're in a different workplace, or you're signing it, whatever, this process of again and again and again having to hold this paradox day to day, environment to environment, new environment to new environment, new client to new client, new manager to whatever it is that you're constantly going through this self-reflective practice of what it is to be visibly queer, what it is to be out in proud, what it is to navigate that in the workplace. Um the the interviews looking at sort of how this happened or what the actions were, what the people took, how they embodied this actual identity looked like being out at interviews, coming to interviews exactly as they were. There wasn't like I'm gonna dress more towards a feminine binary with a body that looks feminine, that is curvy, or that shows that potentially that I that I'm a woman when you look at me in terms of sex, but coming to interviews looking like they're non-binary, like refusing to hold one or the other, um, and then getting the job and then having a reveal of oops, that's not how I'm comfortable and that's not how I'm going to look. Um, it looks like uh in terms of that enactment piece that we're looking for in the face of that homophobia, homophobic and binary enforcement, doing education in the workplace, working with people to understand their pronouns, talking with managers and other people about look, I'm thinking about putting this in my email signature is one of the examples. And that right away signals to people that um this is who I am, this is what my pronouns are, and it starts a conversation about other people. Do you have your pronouns in your signature? Is it okay if I do that? It's going out to clients. It's gonna look like the company does this or the organization does this. So it's having those conversations that move thinking forward that that where they're standing up and they're saying, This is who I am, this is this is how we're gonna reflect that in the workplace and asking the workplace to do that and doing the education and working with people to do their own introspection, then that that triggers around gender identity and the non-binary as well. And then also to confront the sort of the most brutal of those environments where they're working in homophobic workplaces and trying to figure out how to navigate that, whether it's engaging with HR, whether it's working individually with people to understand who they are. Um, and then that self-reflective practice that we heard hear about from people that there's one person who said they got an email that said, I don't want you talking to me, I'm uncomfortable unless you absolutely have to, please don't talk to me. And part of their process was to wonder if they if they had done something wrong and what they might have done differently in that case, um, as part of a reflective practice. So one participant said, I still float in a very complex situation where I'm also black, like still female-bodied, still like all these other things, and you become this quadruple minority within a very broad and massive industry, and you're still just trying to figure out how do I slide and navigate into this space. And the way they talked about doing that is that they're going to become the person that produces the art that reflects who they are, that reflects who other non-binary people are. It's not happening around them, they're trying to navigate it from these places, and so they're going to be the person that produces work that creates this space for this uh intersexual um identity. A couple more, are you good? Yes.
SPEAKER_01Okay, sorry, you need to edit that, but I I wasn't sure where you were at. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, no, I don't want to edit that, but I just check it in. I'm talking a lot, and it's a podcast, it's not just me as a talking. Oh, okay. Sorry. You weren't frozen, I was just asking. Um, so other ways that that that I see people's identity and their embodiment and and how they mitigate and work through um you know being non-binary in these uh in this place of enforcement is around their own resilience and resourcefulness. And that's some of the problem solving that Bronny Brown also talks about in terms of the a daring leader. Um so when asked about uh workplace and and whether or not people had appealed to policy, someone said, the HR department, I knew that they had not been super supportive with some other nurses in relation to management already and ongoing concerns that existed with this particular manager. So I was hesitant to contact HR because I didn't really feel they'd be supportive of me. So I contacted a clinical ethicist in the hospital actually and said, I want to run this by you. This is a situation I'm in. This is what I think is happening. Can you help me out? What do I need to know? How do I approach this? So, this idea of like creative problem solving being part of this resilience, this ability, even while it's happening, even they're talking about addressing an instance of homophobia, but they're like, how can I creatively um work within this organization to come up with solutions that will address it, that will move this issue forward? Um, so again, we've talked about mitigating by being feminist and having a feminist analysis that when people go into the bathroom and their identity is an issue that they're able to look at and be concerned about that experience of that other woman who might feel unsafe. We've talked about people with an intersectional understanding of identity, theirs and others. So I would probe for is there anything that I've left out that I haven't asked, or there are parts of your identity that that we may not have talked about, that we want to talk about, and I've talked about intersexual identities. And each and every one of them had an understanding of what that was and whether where their privileges was enacted or where it wasn't enacted, or where there were other systems of oppression that were working within their identity in that in that workplace to sometimes create these situations that we've talked about. People, we've talked about managing the binary enforcement, that's one of the other protein strands that I see, managing people all over the workplace in the boardroom and also in the bathroom. And then the the one of the last pieces is that idea of mentoring and advocating for other 2S LGBTQ plus people. Um, time and again, that was why they went with the process of going to a manager and saying, I want to put my pronouns on an email. Um, when uh things came up that were homophobic in the workplace that they experienced, uh, putting together trainings, um, advocating for people within that were service users within whatever their work was, who are also to ask LGBTQ, to make their experience more holistic, to do education with the the and consciousness raising with the people in their organizations about how they might be missing the mark in terms of how they're serving this community. So all of these are the ways that people mitigate and navigate and move with this identity within this hidden structure to change it, to become leaders in it, to trying to shift the bar and move the binary expectations and the policing and the enforcement and question it and challenge it from a place of like incredible integrity.
SPEAKER_01So brings us to um what's next? What are you gonna do with the research um that you've produced? Where's it gonna go with the audiences? What's the hopes for it?
SPEAKER_00So the hope is that it speaks into that gap, right? That this that these podcasts and that the TED style talk and and even the art piece and a and I'm gonna produce an article, um, that they can be used to further the conversation about that gap in the research. What is it like? That these 25 conversations um can talk about what it's like to be um visibly queer, to be non-binary and visibly queer in the workplace, um, what's happening with that. And then look at how, whether it's a manager or human resource professional, an employee, an ally, leadership. Um, we've talked about you know the issues that have come up with with gay male colleagues that are still policing leadership style or policing dress code or policing gender identity of their queer colleagues that are visibly queer. How can they do their own work around complex identities? And how can they make change and blow open this binary and blow open the binary expectations and address the homophobia, not just for these workers, these 25 individuals and this identity, of which, of course, I am also one of this community, um, but also because, as one participant said, the binary is not working for anyone. They presented at a business forum and they talked about, you know, I don't think this binary thing is working very well, and the room burst into applause. Um, so that's business people, right, being like, yeah, this isn't this isn't working. So, how do allies, how do colleagues, how do bystanders um work with that? So the hope is that there are different audiences that might be drawn to these conversations and that there'll be some consciousness raising that um employee resource groups that didn't see that this was an identity or an issue that they needed to get behind or support, that they understand that that they're missing the mark if this is if this is not being addressed, if this is not something that they're taking on in terms of looking at dress code policies and all the other things that we've talked about in terms of mentorship, in terms of leadership, in terms of who is actually leading those employer resource groups, how are they acknowledging that this is this is some of what's going on? Um, that they'll be able to take this and they'll be able to speak to how to make the workplace a more diverse, inclusive, and accessible workplace, um, not just for people whose identity is you know being non-binary and queer, but for everyone as a result of that. So that's the hope. I'm looking forward to to feedback and um I've appreciated having the conversations with you about it. Thank you for for asking me the questions and thank you for thinking about.
SPEAKER_01I presume you'd welcome uh people to send more feedback and to identify and pass that on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I would love that. So there's um there are opportunities to get involved, obviously, in the in in the comments of um wherever people get the podcast. Um certainly uh on my on my website at nb research project. Um there's a blog there too where I'll be talking about you know this going out and what that looks like. Um but also just reaching out to me too um over email at nbresearchproject at gmail.com. Um yeah, it'd be great to to hear from people. Um my other hope is that uh that a postdoc will come out of that. This research will keep going, and I'll be able to talk about it in relation to non-binary um and queer leadership, uh, that we can sort of tease some of that out, look at leadership literature, talk more about um this idea of an emergent um leader that is unbound, um, that is paradoxical, and what that looks like. So, yeah, that's the that's the hope.
SPEAKER_01Well, thanks for letting me um be a small part of it as well. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00You've been a big part. I appreciate your help, and I'm gonna take the last word. Thanks, Kath. To be continued. Thank you, my friend.