Forging Queer Leaders with Bree Fram and Liz Cavallaro

Carolyn: Welcome to evolve a new era of leadership. I’m Carolyn Swora, your host. And today we are going to be speaking with the co authors of a recently published book called Forging Queer Leaders. How the LGBTQIA plus community creates impact from adversity. The first author of this great book is Brie Fram, and Brie is an author, podcast, keynote speaker, and active duty colonel and astronautical engineer in the United States Space Force.

Brie also co leads the Department of the Air Force LGBTQ team. Plus initiatives team dedicated to eliminating barriers to LGBTQ plus military service in the air and space force. Bree is currently stationed at the Pentagon to lead space acquisition policy development for the department of the air force.

Before that, she served 18 years in a wide variety of Air Force positions, including a research and development command position and an oversight role for all Air Force security cooperation activity with Iraq. Our other guest, the other co author of this book is Liz Caballero and Liz is an executive coach, adult development scholar, educator, and leader development practitioner.

Her research interests include a wide range of topics relevant to the development of leaders, including cognitive development, coaching, self awareness, organizational development, wellbeing, meaningful work. And edu ammonia. Dr. Cavallaro is currently a tenured associate professor and leader development at the U.

1. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Here, she conducts research, builds curriculum, and teaches courses. In the college of leadership and ethics, she works with mid and senior level Navy leaders to build self awareness and enhance cognitive capacity through assessment based and developmental coaching approaches.

I’m really excited to dig into this conversation. Had the honor of reading, not all of the book, but a good portion of the book. And I think this is going to be an incredible conversation.

Welcome evolve listeners. I’m Carolyn Swearer, your host, and I am so pleased today. We don’t have just one guest. We have two phenomenal guests joining us today. Brie Fram and Liz Cavallaro. Thank you so much for joining the show.

Bree: Thanks for having us.

Carolyn: Yeah. And it’s so much fun having two people to talk to.

So, you know, We’re going to hear from lots of voices today. And Brie and Liz, you wrote a book called Forged Queer Leaders. And I have not got through the whole book, but I can tell everyone listening. This is an absolute must read. It’s so practical. It’s so real.

There are some incredible stories. It gave me pause for thought. There’s so many academic references as well, which pleased my little academic heart, but research based. And so I’d love to start off with just hearing what is the birth story of this beautiful book baby that you put out to the world.

Liz: Sure. Thanks for asking that question. Thanks for having us today. So I tell this story through the perspective of How Bree and I first came together. So I teach at the U S naval war college, which many folks probably do not know what that is, and I can tell you, I didn’t know what that was before I started working there.

So most folks know that each of the military services has an undergraduate institution and folks start out when they’re first joining. They might be 18 to 20 years old. They go and get their four year undergrad degree, and then they come out on the other side for the military. Ready to serve in that particular service as an officer.

What many people do not know is that each military service also has what’s called a war college, which is a master’s degree granting institution that officers go to later in their career. Usually, when they’ve been in already for about 15 or 20 years, and they are about to enter into significantly more.

Senior leadership roles, these roles are characterized by the need to give advice on national security to the nation’s leaders and also to work jointly. across each of the different military services, as well as with civilian counterpart agencies. The key feature of the war college versus the other schools is that it is, in fact, joint.

The students in the classroom are from each of the different services and agencies, and they work together throughout the year as they earn their master’s. And so that focus is why I ended up being at the naval war college, but having the at the time, air force officer Brie when she entered in 2020 

After that made the switch to become a space force officer, but while she was there at the college, she was in a leadership and leader development focus program that I lead and part of what the students have to do is write a research paper on a topic related to leader development and they get to pick what that is.

So, When Brie was brainstorming her topic, she sent an email with the ideas to propose it to myself and the other program faculty, and they also need to have a paper advisor to work with them. I wrote back to her email and said, you know, if you want the person with the best subject matter expertise on this topic, it’s probably not me.

If you want the person who’s going to be the best guide at writing a really high quality scholarly rigorous research paper, that’s definitely not me. But if you want the person who has the most passion for this topic, that’s absolutely me. So please pick me and she did

Bree: And the great thing about that paper was that it was fascinating to have Liz join on the journey talking about how minority experiences in the military built them into the These incredible leaders

and how it was many of those discriminatory experiences that forged them into the people that they were and that mattered in the modern context. But as we wrap that up and we looked at it, like, there’s a lot more here. And I had the opportunity to ask Liz, Would you like to write a book about it?

And in doing so, we had the opportunity to both broaden and narrow the scope. So we broadened away from just the military to everyone, all organizations, different backgrounds and different individuals, but we narrowed it from all minority groups to just members of the LGBTQ community, because that’s the That’s kind of the area that we know in certain ways better have the network to reach into and make sure we were capturing as many different perspectives as possible. And there’s something unique about queer experiences that sits on top of other minority experiences that come with discrimination and stigmatization that are unique in this community, such as coming out and transition.

And we really wanted to explore the magic that was around those topics in leadership development.

Carolyn: I love the word that you just used there, magic. Because when I was reading it, first of all, I have to say, I said to my son, I’m like, this has to be a research paper somewhere. So the academic in me was really savoring. the commitment to being research based and evidence based and bringing in the stories and the real life experiences 

It made so much sense. And yet I hadn’t made that connection. So I want to thank you both for putting this into the world and let’s talk a little bit more about this magic that can make members of the LGBTQ plus community, such brilliant leaders in such challenging times.

Liz: Yeah, I think what you just observed is something that I’ve heard a lot and it almost feels like everyone who first gets exposed to this idea has that same reaction of. Once I think about it, and once I put these things together, it makes such perfect sense to me. It’s almost completely obvious, but I just hadn’t done a bit before.

And I think that’s been the exciting part about this journey is to have so many other people who probably already intuitively know this, or they’ve had experience with this. Either with themselves or other people that they’ve observed where they see this happening, but they don’t necessarily have the language around it.

And so what we did was, we kind of put a name to it by using some of those academic theories that look at how do people become. More advanced and sophisticated in their thinking and how they make sense of the world, how they navigate their experiences. What is it that happens for adults as they develop and grow and become more sophisticated and mature in that thinking cognitively and also emotionally.

And so we looked at what the theory in adult development told us about going through crucible experiences. What is it that happens when a person has to face something that really transforms them where on the other side of that experience? They have been. Altered and life is different now. And because of that alteration there is a journey of finding out, okay, who am I now on the other side of this thing?

How do I live now? How do I navigate the world today after going through this change? And so looking at crucible experiences, which there’s all sorts of different kinds that we all as adults can experience and do experience in our lives. But particularly those ones that are typified by the LGBTQ community, whether that be periods of time or events that occur that they go through things related, for example, to coming out or transition, or whether that be a lot of the adversity that they might face in the form of bias or marginalization or stigmatization.

What is it that going through those periods? Results in terms of their own development and growth, and then through that growth, because they become more sophisticated and how they can make sense of the world. There are a wide variety of specific leadership skills and capacities. We find that they develop and those skills and capacities happen to be incredibly well aligned to the kinds of complex environments and ambiguous challenges that leaders are facing today in the modern context.

Bree: there’s so much here that deals with reflection.

 It is really about answering the question of Who am I and what do I stand for? Particularly when who you are is not who society has told you are

for your entire life and either what identity is or who you should love, what those expectations of everyone around you are. And you have to be willing to say, no. I have done the self work to know myself to a level that I know those expectations are wrong. And that mere act of standing for yourself, understanding what you truly value, can be one of those transformative moments. And on the other side of that, whether that is merely coming out to yourself, coming out to others, or for trans people, the act of transition, your life is fundamentally different

And it starts with that core leadership lesson of know yourself before you’re able to really interact with others in meaningful ways.

Carolyn: Well, and I’m going to be the first to say, I did not know myself when I started my leadership journey and reading this book really gave me so much more reverence for the need to do this work and know ourselves so much earlier. And, the whole thesis of the book is because of the experience of getting to know yourself and having, as you said, Brie, to navigate through a world that doesn’t accept the identity of everybody.

Some people have to go through that journey to just survive. it was such an amazing message. um,

Bree: And saw over and over again through those experience is how they often feel really negative at the time someone is going through it, really stressful in terms of coming out or transition, and how you might think that what you’re going through is, It’s not building something in you, but it’s just awful and no one should have to experience these things, but later you’re able to kind of flip the coin and see what’s on the other side and realize, wow, I have this skill, this capacity that I never would have built in the way that I have. if I hadn’t gone through that.

And it’s not to say that other people can’t build those same skills through negative moments, but there’s a forcing function here for members of the queer community that you learn incredible things and are able to truly flourish afterwards when you realize Wow, that’s not just a bad thing that I was had to scan the environment to see if I was safe here.

But now I know how to scan the environment to see how I’m connecting with other people to see how we’re building those relationships that are critical to highly functioning teams. So it’s amazing how many of those experiences turn into positives upon that reflection.

Carolyn: Absolutely. And there’s such a strong connection here, and you did this brilliantly in the book as well, to vertical development. And maybe Liz, if I could invite you to just share a little bit about what vertical development is.

Liz: Sure, yeah we found that was the right theory to pair with these ideas because of this essence of transformation that we’ve talked a little bit about. Most of the time, when we think about the development that we get, especially professionally, so if you think career development or leader development, that’s done in some deliberate way to prepare someone to do a job or inhabit a role oftentimes we’re thinking about the teaching of skills or the providing of tools or knowledge or information that someone’s going to need to work in a given space.

And that’s very relevant. But in the field of adult development, we actually refer to that as work. Horizontal development, and so horizontal development, it just means filling someone’s toolkit, essentially filling it with skills, knowledge, tools, information and ideas. They’re basically. Could be categorized altogether as competencies, right?

We’re giving them the competencies. They need to work in a certain environment and that’s important and it’s relevant. And we all get a lot of that as we develop in our career or as we enter into learning something new, but what we also find people need is to develop in a slightly different way.

And so when we use the term vertical development versus horizontal, instead of talking about that informing, we’re talking about transforming. So instead of filling the cup with competencies, we’re expanding the size of the cup. And then that larger cup gives the person greater capacity for what they do with all of those tools and skills, how they utilize them, how they organize them, the way in which they can see multiple different options or possibilities for how to apply those tools to different kinds of scenarios.

As the environment we’re leading in becomes more complex and nuanced. We are then able to have a broader scope and perspective on what it is that we’re facing and how we might go about addressing it with whatever tools are in that toolkit. So vertical development is really about that expansion and it not only gives us more options for what we do.

It also allows us to be more resilient because the other thing about that toolkit constantly getting filled with new skills, that cup starts to churn like we’ve got so much in there and we’re just trying to manage it all and grapple with it and then face these really complex challenges.

We get some churn experience and it gets kind of messy in there. And so having this expansion also allows us to. To be more resilient, handle stress better, and then figure out how to do more with the tools that we have. And so we based the book around that theory, because we saw a way in which having to face these incredibly challenging experiences, oftentimes in a very negative way early on in a way that.

Was about not just getting through something, but even surviving something. Sometimes we’re even talking about physical harm or danger that folks are having to deal with or grapple with. And so the nature of that is inherently expansive. And so we found that some of the growth of specific skills and capacities that these leaders talked about.

Aligned really well with not just the horizontal development of gaining skill, but also the vertical development of expanding the capacity for what you do with them and how you wield these tools. 

Carolyn: vertical development is not related to age, correct?

Liz: That’s correct. It’s not a given. That’s kind of the most important thing about vertical development. On the one hand, as we age, we can generally expect that as we face more experiences in life and learn more things and go through different phases, we’re going to become more mature and presumably as we become more mature and we’ve seen more and done more, it should make our thinking a little bit more sophisticated.

But it’s not a given all adults don’t inherently develop and grow at that same pace. And we don’t necessarily experience that expansion just because we’re experiencing the other piece of it, the horizontal gaining of tools and skills and knowledge. And the reason for that is because vertical development requires some additional kind of.

Attributes of the learner themselves, we need to have a growth mindset where we actually believe that we can expand that. We actually believe that what we were born with isn’t all we’re going to get. And there’s a possibility to continue to develop and grow. There’s a need for humility, which is huge having the intellectual humility to say.

Whatever I am at right now in my life, whatever the things that I know, and the tools that I have, they may be good. They may be great. They may have helped me navigate my life, but it’s not necessarily everything I ever could know or be. . And so being open to that idea of more and having the humility to acknowledge that growth could and should occur. These attributes in particular were ones we also found that seemed to really characterize. A lot of the leaders that we spoke with, and for that reason as well, both the nature of the kind of experiences that they face that might be the catalyst or the prompts to vertical development, but then also internally, kind of a willingness and openness and vulnerability.

To be transformed and to accept that evolution as a part of their lives, because it has been a part of their lives. And therefore, they may be just a bit more oriented towards it a bit more kind of willing and able to take that on a bit more comfortable with the discomfort and the feelings of destabilization that this kind of development requires people to go through in order to get to the other side and have become expanded.

Carolyn: Yeah. Bri, I’m curious about your journey through vertical development. Any reflections that you want to share with us around your own journey?

Bree: I have had several transformative moments in my life, and that growth mindset that Liz talked about, I think is absolutely critical to this process, and broadly speaking is really applicable to the LGBTQ community when you’re doing that work internally to say, I am not my best self, unless I am I reach for my best self and my authentic self. And so for me, I had that moment when I was trying to figure out who I was. And as I realized later into my life that who I am is part of my identity, not something that I like to do or something that I play at.

But this is who I am. And I had a moment where I was invited to a dinner and it was a formal dinner for a number of senior officers talking about a program that I was on. And I was getting ready and I looked in the mirror as I was pulling on a sport coat and I said, This is not me.

This is not the best version of myself. And from that moment on, my transition began in earnest because it was looking at myself and saying, if I don’t do anything, I am self limiting who I can be

and going through all the challenging moments thereafter and all the amazing learning experiences I had from it. made me a much better leader down the road. But it was taking that first step to say, I am not my best and

I can be better.

Carolyn: And how would you describe your leadership now?

Bree: It is much more open, much more connected

to many people, and I have a much better ability not only to connect, but to understand and to empathize with others and really treat them as the individuals that they are. And I think that’s a key component in a transformational leadership style, where if I have to treat you all the same, for some people, I might be demotivating them

because I don’t understand what it is that makes that person want to do more or be better.

Are they looking for a monetary reward, time off, public recognition, private recognition? And to do that, you have to be willing to ask those questions. Or in some cases, you’re able to observe if you’re looking closely to notice these things, it’s about building those bonds with people,

 where not only are they comfortable in telling you, Put the thought into actually asking those questions.

What matters to you? How do we build this team in a way that works for all of us and not constantly be trying to force those round pegs into the square holes? In many ways my leadership did transform in that I took my blinders off to some things that I had been blind to before I shared some of my vulnerability that allowed people around me to see me as human and as.

Someone that they might actually want to connect with

and bring their problems to and then just the empathy that it built in understanding others experiences in that many people are going through challenging things that I might not know well enough to relate to everything, but there’s something that I can share with them.

Maybe it’s my struggle, or maybe my challenge that allows them to open up to me and help us solve the problem together.

Carolyn: Thank you so much for sharing that there were so many stories in your book. It seemed like there was no shortage of people sharing. And I’m curious if there were any stories that in particular surprised you or that you found really moving.

Liz: Yeah I, I have to say, just in terms of the stories and the fact that there were no shortages, as you said, it made it both incredibly difficult and incredibly easy to write this book, because on the 1 hand, Brie and I had this kind of theory that we are building in our own minds of how this might play out in the lgbtq journey and how some of these things might result in enhanced leadership capacity.

And we had an idea of what some of those skills were. And we then undertook a journey of getting data. We did surveys and interviews and long form narratives and then dug through all of that. And what we found was, on the 1 hand, it really came to fruition. There was no shortage of amazing students.

Stories of these really special experiences that people had developed to become amazing leaders. And so it was easy in that way that we had plenty of stuff, but then for anyone who’s ever trying to write anything that has a word count or a page limit you’ll know that’s where it suddenly becomes really hard.

And so to be able to try to capture the essence of these experiences to provide enough detail to paint these really nuanced, fascinating pictures of people’s life stories and make sure that we honored the words of the people who shared them with us. We felt so privileged to have had these stories told to us.

And so obviously you want to honor that and get it right. So that’s where it became incredibly hard to do. One thing that stands out to me that really moved me Has to do with allyship and it is actually the epilogue to the book and we love this it was written by the contributor themself in a long form narrative format And we basically put it into the book almost verbatim because it was just one of those submissions that we got that was It was like, this captures it.

Exactly. The essence of the story is so beautiful. And then the way the person actually wove and wrote the story was just so exceptional. I won’t spoil the entire thing, but I will say that this person is able to speak about someone that was in their life. That was a supportive friend and ally that allowed them to get through some really challenging.

Parts of their journey and was sort of alongside them in their crucibles and some of the messages that this ally had conveyed to this person were really the messages that I think all members of the LGBTQ community need to hear, but really, in a way, we also all need to hear. Right? So just understanding, that you have something inside of yourself that fortifies you and allows you to move through these difficult periods and having a belief that you can actually get to the other side, even when you are amidst the darkest moments, where it probably doesn’t feel like you’re going to be able to and even an openness to the idea that there’s something better on the other side of that, and that you can grow and develop into it.

And I think of this story as a story of allyship and someone who companioned someone along their journey in a way that allowed them to not only move through it and have something positive on the other side, but then to capture it. In a narrative that was just so well worded. It’s very quotable this section of the book.

And so that, for me, was the 1 that most moved me because it was about acknowledging the support and love and companionship that I think we all need. But that some of the members of the community who shared their leadership journeys with us clearly benefited from and were able to thrive as a result of those relationships.

Bree: I’ll give you two examples about people kind of navigating their environments. And in the first, it really speaks to the depths that some people go to protect their identity. That thing that a lot of us experience when we have a different work self from who we are authentically. And the energy it takes to present this. Persona into the environment and one of our contributors Sabrina Bruce who is in the book frequently because she’s a great storyteller, talks about a point in her life where she was still in the closet about being a trans person and she refused to pick up ever a trans pink or a purple pen because just the act of holding that pen

might give her away and might give people reason to think about her in a different light and question who she was. So when given that choice, she always had to look around and find the blue or the black pen

to write with because she was that in deep about protecting her identity from the people around her. one of our other contributors Dr. Rodriguez, who has all sorts of intersectional identities. And she had to figure out as she was working in a hospital, why this person hates her or really dislikes her for some reason.

Is it because I’m a woman? Is it because I’m Puerto Rican? Is it because I’m left handed, which some surgeons don’t like?

Or is it because I’m gay? Among other things. And to try and work through that in terms of navigating the world, that’s really hard. And she found out it was because she was a woman but in that case, you’re trying to figure out what is it, why can’t I have a good relationship with this person and to work through some of those things and understand the challenges that we go through in regards to intersectional identities, or when a certain identity of ours is at the forefront, why that might matter to the relationships we’re building.

Carolyn: Wow. it was very powerful just to read the number of stories and I want to come back to something I can’t remember if you said it Brie or Liz, but the joy that I sensed in these stories and felt from it was really heartwarming to read this type of work in that way.

Because often and I want to bridge into inclusivity, diversity and equity in our workplaces. There seems to be a different just going to say energy around that, right? Sometimes it can be divisive for people and the sense from reading your book, your work was just pure joy.

So I’m curious how does what you wanted to do with this book intersect with the concept of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and belonging in our workplaces?

Liz: Yeah, thank you for touching on that. that was something that was very important to us to make sure that we were also making that bridge. I mean, the crux of the book and the concept that it arose out of initially was, if we can get these amazing stories from these incredible leaders, we can make the connection to help people understand not just that, They develop these incredible skills and capacities that make them effective in today’s leadership environments and that we need them.

But also why and how and that, goes back to the theory piece to see that this is not just a 1 off. This isn’t a coincidence. This is real. And there’s a reason why they’ve been able to develop these things. And so we felt it was really important for folks to understand that. And that became kind of the 1st, part of the book of helping.

People see the history of queer leadership, helping people understand some of these theories that we were building it around and what it is to go through crucible experiences or face adversity and come out the other side stronger or forged if you will. And then the 2nd piece became, let’s tell all of these stories and get as much of that amazing narrative in there as we can.

We wanted to cover as many different industries and sectors and kinds of organizations or types of leaders and leadership. Roles. But the third and final piece that we also really felt was important to, for this work, to have meaning as well as some practical application and provide some guidance and ideas for people to do something, was to make sure that we could help people become champions.

That we could help people think about their own teams. Organizations, even industries, and the way work gets done the way personnel are treated the way systems and processes and structures inside of organizations are set up that either do or do not enable people to be there as most authentic and effective selves.

What is it about the organization that either does or does not allow me to bring my whole self to work and really flourish and thrive and give it my all. looking at those things that might be in place in an organization that could put barriers or obstacles in front of someone from being able to do that was really important.

And so we asked a lot of our contributors to share their experiences of where. Somewhere they worked or someone they worked with had done that well and also experiences where they had not. we tried to capture enough of those, and then turn them into practical, actionable tips and strategies that leaders or other people inside of organizations can engage in, whether that be structural and process kind of things to try to make the organization a better place, whether that be more climate and culture kinds of things to Help others create the inclusivity and belonging kinds of environments that people in minority or marginalized communities need in order to flourish.

Or even whether that’s simply on an individual level, helping people understand how they can be better allies and provide better support to those folks. And that’s essentially the 3rd part of the book, which is what is it that you can do to be a champion and create these inclusive environments?

Carolyn: Yeah.

Bree: Yeah, among the many things we think people might take away from the book, there are kind of two that are really easy to stand out and one is how it can be inspirational to members of the queer community and our allies. And then the other is, as Liz kind of talked about, is for people who work with or have queer folks that work with them.

What do you get out of this and or how can you help them thrive?

But to the first point about the inspiration, there’s Something we asked just about every person who contributed, and that was why did you contribute to this project as we work through it? And though I don’t normally do it, I’m actually going to read one paragraph

And this again goes back to Sabrina, who I told you was incredible. And she beautifully captured the hopes and the excitement we share. She said, cultural stigmatization exists within Stories about LGBTQ people. So by sharing stories of leadership, it helps adjust the narrative and normalize our experiences. She also described why she wanted to contribute. This is a book about leadership. She said, I’m excited to put it down on paper and get it out there for people to see, because we don’t have enough LGBT superheroes. Maybe someone who needs this can read it. And that’s, what’s really amazing to see how these people may have gone through some of these. terrifying moments

and come out of it as superheroes. They have the skills and the capacities to lead in ways that matter, not just for themselves, but for all of us. And that’s one of the most amazing things I think we’ve found in this is how these negative potential experiences Turn people into such outward focused leaders that it’s about the team. It’s not about them and what they may want out of it, but it’s about how do we all succeed together?

Carolyn: Yeah. I mean, Lord knows we need superheroes to get us through our workplaces. And I don’t even want to call them superheroes to be honest. We need real people. We need the authenticity because that is what is going to get us through the chaos and the silliness. It’s the only word I can really use of what’s happening out there.

I’m curious to hear what might be some subtle cues that you both could share with us to help allies, to help people understand that maybe their team might not be as inclusive as they think.

Bree: So there’s a concept I’ve been talking about recently that I call moments that matter. And those moments occur when something is said and You feel all of a sudden anxious or nervous about should I correct that person? Because it’s a microaggression of some point, or it’s a slur. It’s just something that you feel was wrong, but you’re also worried of, should I speak up?

Is it okay? And those are the moments for leaders or allies that truly make a difference in the culture of your team because it is the people that are able to be. Comfortable with that discomfort and speak up that make a difference

that say, Hey, I think that was wrong. Or maybe you didn’t use that term in the right way, because when you are able to correct in that moment, there are people around you. and listening and absorbing. And if they see someone who corrects that in the moment, they may think, Oh, it is safe to be me here. I can be out and open about who I am. And you know what? I might want to stick with this organization

or they may see no one say anything. And they may have that decision right there that This is not for me.

It is time for me to go. So not only does taking advantage of that discomfort and taking advantage of that moment that matter mean something for an individual, it means something for the team and

you are going to get stronger and better performance out of it if you as an ally or as a leader, as a champion, take advantage of that moment.

Carolyn: And Brie, is it safe to say that like pronouns could be an example of that?

Bree: Absolutely. Using someone’s pronouns, using someone’s chosen name That matters.

Being respectful has to be the absolute minimum of how we work. I hear lots of leaders in these spaces talk about giving people dignity and respect, like it’s some sort of, Aspirational goal that we need to reach for when that has to be the absolute floor

of where we start from and then add on inclusive behaviors from there, do those things to understand the people that we work with and make sure we’re treating them as best we can the way they want to be treated, upgrade the golden rule to the platinum and you’re going to get much better performance out of your teams.

Carolyn: Yeah. Liz, what about you? Thanks, Brie.

Liz: Yeah, so in addition to those sort of acute events where speaking up and sending the message that there’s something that needs to be addressed, there’s also just the day to day as you sit in your environment and you scan and look around in terms of whose voices and perspectives are at the table and is there a community.

That is not represented. Is there someone that’s going to either be involved or impacted by decisions that are getting made or processes that are underway whose voice is not being represented it either because they’re not at the table at all. And is there a way to rectify that? Can we invite them to the table?

Do we need to throw out the table and create a different structure to make sure that. It’s accessible to those voices. Have we asked those voices? Where their perspective may be helpful. And then in addition to that, even when folks are at the table, who’s not talking and why, right?

Being. Intellectually curious about people’s internal experiences in the workplace, and what it is that’s going on for them that either does, or does not enable them or welcome them to speak up even when they’re at the table. So figuring that out, and then finding a way to create that space. 

To get really tactical about it, there’s a practice that’s called a warm call. And so it’s as opposed to a cold call. So, A cold call would be simply Caroline. What do you think about this? Right? And I’m expecting you to tell me the answer right now.

Carolyn: Yep.

Liz: But if it’s someone who it’s not easy for them to speak up in an environment, or there’s some kind of obstacle that they’re facing.

Either real or perceived that makes it harder for their voice to be heard, then that’s going to be really challenging. So a warm call is kind of laying out in advance, either saying yes, I see Bob and Steve had their hands up again. And I’m going to ask them to share their insights. And then after that Carolyn, I’m going to come to you, right?

Or in the next meeting, I really want to make sure we get the perspectives from the marketing team, because we didn’t get them this time. Right? Whatever it might be. But just putting that out there, kind of creating a structure of dialogue that’s going to happen. And the leader, of course, can do this and should do this, right?

If you’re the person with the power influence in the setting to say, here’s how we’re going to bring more voices into the conversation. Great. But really, anyone can do this. Anyone who has the privilege to be in the room can say. It occurs to me that we haven’t gotten X perspective yet, or we haven’t heard from this voice.

And I’m wondering, whether there’s some insight or information they might have that we need to move through this process more effectively or make this decision in a way that is better.

Carolyn: Yeah. Helpful. Both very helpful. To close off, and I hate to close off this conversation, I’d love to talk more what haven’t we talked about yet that you think is helpful for people to know? 

Bree: difficult question because there’s so much to this topic. But I think you, we touched on it briefly about joy. There is so much out there about the trauma and the challenge of LGBTQ experiences. And we really did want to reframe that conversation about. the joy that is out there with people as their authentic selves. And we understand there are some people that, for reasons of safety, can’t be. But how do we continue to shift the narrative and change the culture so that everyone has that opportunity to be safe? to be their joyful, authentic self. How do we create the psychological safety in organizations and take advantage of those moments that matter that I talked about and that larger cultural stuff that Liz talked about so that everyone feels safe and in whatever organization they’re in, even better, they feel like they’re home there and they can be their authentic self. How do we make sure the conversation stays in talking about? Joy rather than trauma, or if someone is going through trauma, how do we help them through that so they can find the joy that’s waiting on the other side?

Carolyn: So beautiful, Bri. Thank you.

Liz: Yeah, I would say that the joy of authenticity is one of the many specific lessons and pieces of inspiration that we can all draw from hearing these stories and it’s just one of many different themes that exist throughout these narratives that everyone can benefit from. I have learned so much about myself.

I have learned so much about other people and leadership and organizations that drew directly from these stories, despite the fact that I’m not a member of the community. For people that are allies for people who Don’t have this experience for themselves. There are so many key themes and connections and similarities across these journeys that are just human journeys.

They’re adult development journeys. And so reading these stories, you can draw so much, so many. Ideas, insights, inspiration things that you can borrow from these amazing leaders for yourself, regardless of whether you’re a member of the community or not. And so that’s just one thing that I like to share with folks to encourage them to learn about this.

Carolyn: Now, speaking of which, where can we find this book? Where can we find more information about your organization?

Bree: You can find out plenty more about us at forgedinfire. org. The book is available anywhere books are sold online. You can get it at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any of those. And we encourage people to check that out as well as our podcast where we continue talking about leader development.

Once again, that’s also at the website. Yeah, please come check out Forging Queer Leaders.

Carolyn: Love it. We’ll make sure to put those links in the show notes as well. 

Now to close off, I ask our guests three questions. Are you both good with that? Can we ask the three evolved questions?

Bree: Absolutely.

Carolyn: so I’ll ask question, then I’ll just ask each of you to share your response to it.

And these 3 questions revolve around my leadership model evolve and really with that book, I was inviting leaders to. Realize that leadership can be so much more than what we might think that it is. So self awareness is the first component. And I’d love for you to share an anecdote, a story, a lesson, something that you learned that elevated your self awareness.

Bree: For me, elevating myself awareness was through the act of transition and realizing how I was perceived in the world. Prior to transition, I was often thought of, despite my intention or my knowledge that I was perceived as almost invincible or that I was carrying a shield in front of me at all times.

through transition. I realized that and all of a sudden was presenting a much more open face to the world, a face of humanity, of vulnerability, of willingness to connect with others on a much deeper level. And that was truly transformative in my journey.

Carolyn: Yeah. Thank you, 

Liz: Realized about myself, the importance of trusting my instincts in the work that I engage in. This was such an important journey for me in doing this project because when I reached out to Bree and said I wanted to work with her on her paper, that was me going on instinct of knowing that I care deeply about this issue that.

I am prepared to enter into a space of allyship and advocacy. And what I didn’t know was that I would find such a clear connection between my professional area of expertise and the research that I had done in adult development and cognitive development with advocacy for the LGBTQ community. 

The awareness of just trusting my instincts and acknowledging that having the genuine, authentic care and concern for the community and wanting to genuinely help and support in some way was enough to get me started. 

Carolyn: That’s beautiful. Thank you. I just want to take a minute to take that both in from both of you. My second question and level of inquiry is around self regulation. And so I always like to ask what’s a ritual something that you do, maybe a routine that helps you find emotional regulation, maybe a place of calm, something where you can connect to your true self.

Bree: For me, it is mountaintops. It is hiking in the summer or skiing in the winter, but it is that moment at the peak where you just take that deep breath, look at the beautiful majesty of the world around you, and for me, that recharges my batteries in a heartbeat.

And I just, sigh. And then amazing things happen

from there.

So really it is that moment at the top and just taking it all in.

Carolyn: And do you get to these mountaintops often?

Bree: I do and when I had to move away from Colorado about a decade ago, I cried when the Rockies disappeared in my rearview mirror.

But now it means I travel back in the summer to hike and in the winter to

Carolyn: Hmm.

Nice. Thanks, Bri. Liz. Are

Liz: able to be creative and use my hands to develop something new. The room that I’m sitting in doing this podcast, this side of it is the room that we do our podcast on, And if you could see the side of it that I’m looking at, it’s just craft chaos.

It’s bins and containers of glue and glitter and stickers and every other craft supply you could possibly imagine. So if I’m. In that space, I am recentering and resetting. 

Carolyn: Any creations you want to share with us?

Liz: all of them would be far too large because I create entire household and yard wide holiday displays.

Carolyn: Oh, wow. Wow. Cool. All right. Now our last question has to do with co regulation or really kind of connecting into the greater the great, well, connecting into the greater collective. And so is there a song or a genre of music that helps you feel connected to something bigger than yourself?

Bree: Wow, that’s a challenging one. I am not a huge music person but there are a couple queer songs that really kind of make a difference.

Lady Gaga’s Born this way.

and This Is Me from The Greatest Showman.

And that one in particular, when I first saw that in the movie, I was crying.

And I was like, Wow. The power of what we talk about in Finding Your Authentic Self set to music was magical. It

truly was. 

Carolyn: there’s a YouTube video of when they were getting the green light to get that movie produced They recorded the demo and watching her go from this sort of quiet, sunken in. You could see the body language.

And by the end of the song, the entire room was moving and dancing and singing. And you literally saw her open up and find herself. And that wasn’t even with the character. So if you haven’t seen that’s another incredible moment of just reveling and finding your own self in amidst everything. Liz, what about you?

Liz: So I would say all music by the Dave Matthews band and in particular, the song, When the world ends is a really beautiful one that always kind of gets to me and the connection is kind of like a community of people who love that music. I’ve been to many of the concerts cause it’s my husband’s favorite band.

And some of their conference concerts are like multi day camping sort of things and these beautiful scenarios. And for me, it feels like as close as I’ll ever know what it felt to be like at the Woodstock festival. So it’s really cool experience of connection.

Carolyn: Oh, cool. Well, again, Brie and Liz, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for putting this piece of work into the world and really grateful that you came onto the show today.

Bree: Thank you for having us. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

Liz: Thank you so much, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Oh, I’m on so many things from that conversation with Brie and Liz. I’m going to share two 

specifically. The first one is authenticity. In 2016, when I started my master’s in industrial and organizational psychology, I chose to write my research paper on authentic leadership theory. Now, at the time, my connection to self and who I was was pretty narrow.

And if I were to go back and read that paper now, I’m sure that my connection to self would be very much evident through how I wrote that paper. This conversation with Brie and Liz, I think really helped. points to the importance of knowing self, if we are going to be strong leaders and those in the queer community have been through life experiences that have often caused them to get much more connected to that sense of self simply to survive.

So that’s one takeaway. And I’m really grateful for getting more connected to myself and who I am. And this work again, broadens my perspective and makes me realize I am one little piece of self amongst many other selves. The second thing that I’m taking from this conversation is joy. and finding joy amongst the adversity.

And I hope that through your own life experiences, through your own adversity, you’re able to find your way through them with community, with connection to yourself and others, because joy really is an incredible Emotion. It’s a vulnerable emotion and it can lead us to find solutions and to find ways of being with each other that creates so much more connection.

Really encourage you to check out the work of Brie and Liz at their website, forgedinfire. org. You can find information about their podcast and their book there. In the podcast, you heard us talk about vertical development. I have written a blog about that. So I’d invite you to go check out my website.

Carolyn’s for a. com in the blog section. And while you’re there, feel free to join my weekly newsletter, where I am giving practical insights about how we can thrive, how we can succeed in a leadership environment. That seems. Wild and out of control. Thanks very much for tuning in. Really grateful you’re here.

We’ll see you next time.