What Makes Your Leadership Queer?

Have you ever considered what makes your leadership queer?

I mean that with all seriousness. Whether you’re managing a team at work, running a nonprofit, showing up as a solo entrepreneur, or thinking about how you support the people you care about most — that’s all leadership. 

But what part of your queerness is actually on display when you guide and lead others?

Growing up, before I called myself a gay man, I was always “reading the room.” Without knowing it at the time, I was practicing a kind of performance — withholding the parts of myself I’d been taught to believe were unacceptable. The schoolyard bullies made sure I understood the consequences of being different and other. I learned to be silent, to hide in the shadows, and not draw attention to myself.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about that experience: it wasn’t just something to survive. It forced something upon me that most people never have to do. I had to actually account for and examine the values and ethics I’d been taught. Most people never do this because their identity isn’t a cause for concern. Instead, they grow up, happily unaware that their parents, teachers, and culture gave them a set of beliefs to support their choices and actions without ever questioning them. 

Even as adults, most people are never challenged to take a stand for their convictions, let alone explain why they believe what they think is true.

Being queer made that impossible for me. 

The values I’d inherited didn’t fully account for who I actually was. So I had to consciously examine my own, to peel back all the layers of the onion until I got to the core of what I believed to be true and representative of who I am and what I actually stand for. 

Unearthing the “true reasoning” for your convictions is a form of ethical intelligence — and it’s at the heart of everything I write about.

I wrote about this in Queering the Way: Navigating Leadership Ethics from the Margins, published earlier this year. 

The book argues that queer leadership isn’t a niche subject for queer audiences — it’s a living example of how to lead with conscience when the conditions are ambiguous, the stakes are personal, and no one is handing you a template.

The six principles at the heart of the book — FEEL, KNOW, THINK, VOICE, DREAM, and LEAD — aren’t a framework I invented so much as one I distilled. The principles are derived from my experience, from the queer leaders I’ve worked with, and from a philosophical tradition that has always understood that genuine leadership begins with knowing yourself. Each principle points to a different dimension of what it means to lead from integrity rather than from position, approval, or fear.

Here’s something I’ll be exploring in an upcoming conversation with Skip Sams of Gay Men of Integrity.

When Skip invited me to be part of the Gay Men of Integrity Masterclass Series, I said yes for a specific reason: this event is built around a question I think gay men don’t get asked nearly enough. Not “how do you succeed?” or “how do you lead?” but: Are you the same man in every room?

The language I have used for this question is, What do you stand for when no one is watching? That question doesn’t have a simple answer, but it’s one that worth having a conversation about. 

My session is called “Leading from Conviction: Six Principles for Gay Men of Integrity.”

It’s a prerecorded conversation where Skip and I go deeper into what integrity actually requires — not as an abstract virtue, but as a lived practice. We talk about what integrity has meant in my own life as a gay man, what the six principles from Queering the Way look like in the real world, and why the queer experience of building your own ethical foundation from scratch is a genuine leadership advantage.

The Masterclass Series runs from November 2–6, 2026.

It’s free and online — five days, five different conversations, each exploring what it means to live as a gay man of integrity across the different rooms of your life.

If you haven’t read Queering the Way yet, this series is a great entry point.

You can buy the book directly from me, which includes both the EPUB and PDF formats. Paperback and Kindle versions are also available on Amazon worldwide.