"Pride Leadership: Strategies for the LGBTQ+ Leader to be the King or Queen of their Jungle"

Chapter One: Let’s Get This Pride Leadership Party Started!

Why the Topic of Leadership Anyway?

Before you start … did you skip the Preface, especially the part where I talked about why I use LGBTQ+? If so, git on’ back there, matey … that’s some important stuff. Go ahead … I’ll wait.

OK, back to it. As I shared in the beginning, I’ve been in the leadership development space for most of my career and even pursued some schoolin’ on the topic. When I set out to write a book on leadership two questions popped up in my little noggin:

• What is leadership and how’s it different than management?
• Leadership is a really broad term. Which leadership concepts should I focus on?

To understand what leadership means to me, let’s start with why we say leadership versus management. Just to be crystal clear: management and leadership are both essential to the success of anyone within the workplace jungle, and honestly, these two terms/concepts are strongly connected and cannot be separated. We are not talking about two people here: you have to be both—a good manager and a good leader—to be successful. It’s not enough just to manage your department, team, or area, to make decisions and to develop good plans and scenarios. You have to implement these decisions and plans (that’s all management stuff). And, as you implement these plans you will interact with your co-workers, team members, bosses, and customers. You have to convince them that your plans are the right path; you have to convince them to cooperate and to strive for a common goal (that’s the leadershippy stuff).

In short: management is more concerned with systems, processes, and tasks while leadership is always about the people.

Think about your work jungle. Chances are you became a leader in your workplace because you had a certain subject matter expertise. Let’s say I’m an accountant (trust me I’m not; but go with me for a sec). I have a degree in accounting. After graduation I got a job as an accountant, and I get so good at playing with my debits and credits that they promote me to Head of Accountants. I was promoted to leadership because I’m such a rock star accountant; I’m great at the task of accounting.

But now my focus shifts: I’m in charge of the accounting people now. But there’s a really good chance that I didn’t necessarily study leading people at university; I focused my energies on accounting and the numbers. And now I’m out of my comfort zone of accounting. I’m now dealing with people, their problems, and their pesky emotions on a daily level. “I didn’t sign up for this! I’m a numbers person!”

This is a lot of the leaders I’ve worked with over the years: SMEs (subject matter experts—or pronounced smees) who are so good at their respective areas of expertise that they get promoted into leadership, and they’re not sure how to deal with the people factor in their roles. What can happen at this point is frustrating for the new leader. They may revert to what they know (the task) and potentially fall into micromanaging their people because that’s what they know. No bueno.

Drone Perspective

The good news is that you’re already on the path to avoid this scenario by picking up this book. And that self-awareness is what will separate you from others within your workplace jungle: the desire to not only see there’s room to grow, but taking the steps to do something about that. Bravo!

One of the best strategies leaders can leverage is having that self-awareness. In my leadership workshops we do a lot of self-reflection on our own leadership behavior as it relates to the topic at hand. For example, when discussing “sharing effective feedback” we go into reflecting on how we currently give feedback to others (if at all!) and ask ourselves if it’s the right way to do that. That self-reflection muscle isn’t always flexed in our 21st-century workplace jungle, and taking the time to stop, breathe, and have a think about what we did—and how we can do it better—is key to your growth as an LGBTQ+ Leader.

For some of us, it’s hard to “get out of our own head” and objectively look at our behavior. One strategy is through being mindful. Mindfulness is “the act of deliberately noticing new things, being present, and considering new perspectives” (Newlon, 2016, para. 4). This is not some “granola crunchy” yogi term, but the idea that through the practice of mindfulness and self-reflection we become more aware of what we are doing, saying, feeling, and acting in any given situation. Mindfulness has been proven to not just help you identify your own actions (especially those related to your unconscious biases and actions), but also to help increase productivity, increase morale, and provide overall health benefits (we’ll dive deeper into mindfulness and some good strategies to help with it a later in our convo).

Some folks refer to this as having a helicopter perspective, like you’re getting into a helicopter, zooming up, and seeing above the situation on how you’re behaving, acting, etc. Frankly, I find that a little old school, so I use the term drone perspective because it’s the same deal but: (1) drones are cooler and (2) drones are accessible and you can use cameras to see the high-level perspective.

With a drone, you’re able to hover above the situation and see the real-time footage through your phone or an app. Self-reflection and mindfulness is like suddenly seeing through the drone what’s happening around you; or what you are doing, how you are acting, and how others in the situation are reacting, too. Good, effective LGBTQ+ Leaders can get out of their heads and into that drone to get a read on the situation, learn from that data, and continue or adjust their actions and words to create a more effective situation.

Why are LGBTQ+ Folks “Good” at Leadership?

I’ve been leadershippin’ (consulting in the leadership development and executive coaching space) for a heap of years (read: I’m old), and I have noticed certain trends over time on what makes a leader, well, awesome. Things like being authentic, having empathy for those who they work with, being courageous in tackling the tough situations, effectively communicating, etc. are all topics that—over the course of twenty-five-ish years—keep surfacing as the “must haves” for leaders to be successful at leading (and—coincidentally—those are topics in this book, but more on that in a few).

And, I’ve understood that I was a gay dude since about the same time as I entered into my communications profession. I’ve also noticed—in general terms—there’s certain traits that LGBTQ+ people tend to be pretty good at* (*not stereotyping but a trend I observed). So, I theorized (or, as Carrie Bradshaw would say, “I couldn’t help but wonder …”): …are LGBTQ+ people really, really good at certain leadership traits?”

After picking around the interwebs, I came across an awesome book, The G Quotient by Kirk Snyder. We’ll go deep-diving into Kirk’s book in a bit (Chapter 2), but overall his research supported my theory that, yes, peeps in our Community have been shown to be good at certain leadership areas. WOOHOO!

But WHY are LGBTQ+ “good” at these certain leadership competencies or skills? I think it has to do with our collective experience as “the other.” Whether we’re out or not, we have known—consciously or unconsciously—that we’re different than the majority (and of course in the most fabulous way). But that feeling of being an outsider—and often an invisible minority—leads one to manage various social situations and interactions differently than an “out” or more obvious minority.

So, over time, I believe our conscious and/or unconscious selves start to understand how to maneuver these interactions: looking at others’ level of empathy and following suit, gauging someone’s “realness” or authenticity and deciding if we should match it. Through years of social engagement, we’ve been able to flex these human interaction muscles to help us fit in (and frankly—on an unconscious level—be safe in the group with which we’re engaging). So, as an LGBTQ+ person, we’ve had a lot of practice at understanding how to best engage with other humans, communicate with them, and understand how they’re feeling on an emotional level. Generally, that just so happens to be how awesome leaders are, well, awesome. Oh, and doesn’t that skill describe our definition of leadership?

Why These Specific Leadership Topics?

As noted earlier, leadership is a really broad topic; so how did I narrow it down to six specific leadership competencies which we’ll focus on in this book? In my experience and what I’ve observed in the 21st-century workplace jungle is that—while so many different leadership competencies can contribute to overall leadership effectiveness—the six I picked here really keep bubbling up as the crème-de-la-crème competencies that lead to success:

• Having Authenticity
• Leadership Courage
• Leveraging Empathy
• Effective Communication
• Building Relationships
• Shaping Culture

I initially came up with about twenty-six different leadership competency areas. And—venturing a guess—assumed most busy professionals wouldn’t have months on end to dredge through my leadership tomb (and nor did I have seven years to write it!). So, with the help of an awesome friend/thinking partner who’s also a professional in the leadership and organizational space, we put each of these twenty-six competencies on Post-Its® and took a look. And through some analysis, reflecting on our respective experience, thinking about what our clients have said and seen in the workplace, and looking at the latest books on various leadership topics, we narrowed it all down to six key areas (thanks, Wes!).

What’s interesting about the six competency areas we’ll be discussing is that they are really intertwined. For example: the thread of “understanding our own emotions and that of others” is woven throughout our conversation. Likewise, managing our own conscious and unconscious biases is, too, a common thread that can impact our own leadership success. So, while we’re tackling these six leadership competencies chapter by chapter, they really wonderfully interconnect to make up the whole leadership you.

I’ll be frank (even though my name is Steve). It was tough to decide which concepts went where, and so you’ll see me take a nod to previous or upcoming topics. For example: having courage is a topic unto itself (it has its own chapter for Pete’s sake … wait: who’s Pete? I thought we were taking about Frank? Ahh, I digress). But when we have the conversation about building relationships (Chapter 8) we also touch upon having the courage to step out of our own comfort zone to meet strangers and/or others who may not be like ourselves. So, we’re not repeating repeating ourselves ourselves, but again it’s how these topics are awesomely intertwined with one another.

While we’ll be focusing on each of these concepts as one part, they really make up the whole PRIDE success for you as an LGBTQ+ Leader.

Howsthatnow? How Adults Learn

As noted earlier, as we keep that drone perspective in mind, let’s fly up to take a bigger picture and talk about how adults (really humans overall) learn stuff. One of the best leadership skills—aside from what we share in this book—is the ability to self-diagnose how we’re doing in any one area or competency. Part of your challenge in reading this book is to get out of your own space and get into that drone perspective. One of the analytical tools or strategies is to understand how adults learn.

Think about a blank page with four boxes: one at 12 on the clock, one at 3:00, one at 6:00, and one at 9:00. Now think about a skill you know inside and out. Let’s say it’s driving a car (assuming that you do indeed drive a car). As a toddler, you may have sat in the driver’s seat and pretended to drive, sounded the horn, and turned the wheel or used a toy like ones for toddlers that you sit on your lap that looks like a dashboard. You had no idea how to drive and didn’t know what you didn’t know. That’s the stage learning professionals would classify your skill of driving a car as unconscious incompetence … you don’t know how to do the skill (incompetence) and you really don’t know what it takes to even begin to do it anyway (unconscious) (Curtiss & Warren, 1973). These words—unconscious/incompetence—would be written in the 12:00 box.

Flash forward a few years … that toddler with the lap dashboard is now maybe nine or ten. We can assume they (you) had been in a car and maybe driven some sort of vehicle like a toy car or even a tractor; something with wheels, a motor, brakes, and a steering wheel. This child has a clue as to what it takes to drive a vehicle, but if I took that kid, plopped them into my car, and said (in true Californian speak), “Take the 101 to the 405, Segundo Boulevard, past Oxnard, through Ventura, and stop at this address, pick up a package for me, and then take Sepulveda to the 405 down to Ventura*” do you think they could do that? Very highly unlikely. (*LA friends: don’t make fun of me as I’m sure none of those roads connect … but you get the idea). So, while the child may understand what it generally takes to drive a car successfully, they really can’t perform that skill. Our psychologist friends would classify the skill of driving a car for this ten-year-old as conscious/incompetence, they’re aware of what it takes to drive but still can’t do it. We’d write this in our 3:00 box.

Time marches on for the kid, and they’re maybe sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen. They are now a newly minted driver, they have taken their first driving lessons, they’re very aware of the pedals, the gear lever, indicators, brake, clutch, accelerator, watching out for the other traffic, and all having to go in the right order (all while texting! Just kidding). They may bunny hop, stall, crunch the gears. Suddenly, they’re keenly aware of what they don’t know about driving a car. We’d classify their skill of driving as having conscious/competence, they can do it (drive) but really have to think about it. These are the words—conscious/competence—we’d write in our 6:00 box.

Now let’s talk about you and your skill of driving a car (again assuming you do drive). It’s Friday; you’ve had a wicked long work week. You make your way to your car, get in, fiddle with the radio, start the ignition, and all of the sudden you’re in your driveway or garage and you ask yourself, “How the heck did I get here? I don’t really remember driving home!” You have no real memory of actually driving to get home, nor did you really have to think about driving and adjusting the radio, or the temperature, or any other moves you did on the way home. This is where we’d say your skill of driving a car is in the unconscious/competence arena: you can do the task without thinking about it. It’s automatic (no car pun intended). This would be in our 9:00 box.

Can you go from our 9:00 unconscious/competence to 12:00 unconscious/incompetence? Sure. Every time I get in a rental car, I’m back to our 12:00 box. Why? Because I don’t sit around thinking what it’s like to drive a Hyundai Sonata rental car; but when I get into one, the knobs and control items are in different spots than I’m used to with my car at home. But, by the time I leave the parking garage, I’m back to that unconscious/competence level of driving. Going through the Development Cycle (as this is known) doesn’t have to take a lifetime, especially when we base the skills off of something we already know (existing schema, as our psychology friends call it).

Next, let’s draw a diagonal line up the clock so that 12:00 and 9:00 are on one side of the diagonal line and 3:00 and 6:00 are on the other. Indulge me for a second: grab a piece of paper and a writing implement of your choice. Now, on said paper sign your name. How did that feel? You’d probably think of words like, easy, automatic, and/or fast. Your skill of signing your name is in that 9:00 part: it’s part of who you are.

Please switch hands and sign your name with your nondominant hand on that same piece of paper. How did that feel? You’re probably thinking things like it was slow, awkward, clumsy, and/or I really had to think about it. Exactly: this is the 3:00 and 6:00 spot, and it’s what we in the human development world call the Learning Zone. When skills aren’t automatic, it might be slow and awkward to do them; that just means you’re working to improve until the skill is so ingrained in you that it moves beyond your diagonal line to the automatic area.

Now let’s apply this idea to your leadership competence. As we go through our concepts in this book, I’ll challenge you to get into that drone perspective and see—in relationship to the topic—where are you on our four-squared Development Cycle? Conscious/competence (you have to think about it)? Unconscious/competence, (oh, Steve, I got this! It’s automatic!)? Starting here will help you begin to not only be self-reflective and aware of your own leadership behavior, but it will also let you start to see where you can focus your energy to make improvements in your LGBTQ+ leadership self.

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