When Professional Behavior and Personal Safety Do Not Fully Align
/When I Questioned How Valued and Safe I Was at Work
I have personally worked in environments where nothing unsafe was happening directly to me, and yet I was aware of behavior and affiliations that made me question how valued and safe I was and would be if circumstances changed. That awareness changed how I showed up. How much I trusted. How much of myself I brought to the role.
These experiences happened across many years of my career. They looked different on the surface. But looking back, they share something in common. They were all related to my being gay.
Early in my career, one of my roles required high-level security clearances. I worried that background checks might expose that I was gay and disqualify me from the work. I had no one to talk to about that fear. It lived quietly in the background as I did my job.
At another point, I found myself in a professional setting where clients were taken to a straight strip club to celebrate a large deal. I was still coming to terms with being gay and afraid to be out at work. I did not know how I was expected to behave. I felt like a stranger in a space that was not built for me.
For a time, my partner and I worked for the same company in different divisions. He experienced anti-homosexual bias in his group despite company policy forbidding it. He chose to keep a low profile. I wanted to be more open at work and in my life. Instead, I lowered my visibility to respect his needs.
In another situation, I became aware that a senior leader was strongly associated with organizations opposed to LGBTQIA+ equality. That leader behaved professionally with me. At the same time, I heard credible accounts from others about abusive behavior elsewhere. I could not ignore what I was learning.
At one company, I became friends with another gay leader. When we were assigned to the same project, people outside the team began gossiping that we were having a relationship. We were not. The rumor still circulated.
At the time, I experienced each of these situations as isolated moments. I handled them as best I could and kept moving forward.
Only much later did I begin to see them differently.
Questions I Did Not Yet Know to Ask
When I look back now, what stands out is not only the situations themselves, but the questions I did not yet know to ask.
Was I adjusting to ordinary workplace complexity, or was I protecting myself?
Was the professionalism I experienced day to day a reliable signal of safety, or just one layer of a more complicated environment?
How much energy was I spending assessing whether I was valued and safe, and how did that affect my performance
What did it mean for my leadership presence that part of my attention stayed alert?
Was I adapting because the situation required it, or because I had learned early that adaptation was safer or simply the only choice?
Was the environment asking me to grow, or asking me to shrink?
At the time, I was not asking these questions. I was focused on doing good work and building a career.
But the questions were there.
What I Would Do Differently
The situations I described were real. My reactions to them were also real. They reflected the experiences, assumptions, and awareness I carried at the time.
Looking back now, I realize I was then and am still learning about myself and my place in the world, and that I always will be. That awareness helps me accept that I was doing the best I could with what I understood then, rather than being self-critical.
What I see more clearly now is that greater awareness and experience create more choices.
When I notice that I am reacting to conditions or circumstances that make me uncertain about whether I am valued and safe, I can treat that moment as a signal to pause. Even noticing that reaction is something I have had to learn over time. It is often the beginning of real and more self-understanding.
From there, I can try to recognize the responses I have already made. Adaptation. Silence. Caution. Focusing intensely on performance. These responses are understandable, but they are still choices, even when they do not feel that way in the moment.
As my awareness and experience grow, I can also see the cost of those choices. When part of my attention is always scanning for safety, that attention is not fully available for other parts of leadership, including creativity, long-term thinking, and building trust.
When I step back and look at the broader pattern, additional conscious choices can begin to appear. For example:
I can discern whether the environment supports the kind of leadership presence I want to bring.
I can explore different responses to the conditions and circumstances I face.
I can separate what might be possible to influence from what may not change.
I can decide what I am willing to accept as it is and what I may want to challenge.
I can choose where I want to invest my leadership energy.
I can decide how fully I want to bring myself into the role.
I can decide how openly I want to bring my identity and perspective into the room.
These are practices I try to turn to. None of these choices are perfect, and none of them are final.
Others will likely find their own ways of thinking about these choices. Every situation is different, and each of us continues learning through experience.
Awareness does not dictate our choices. It simply allows us to make them more consciously.
Epilogue
Sometimes I wonder how some of those earlier situations might have unfolded if I had known then what I know now.
Perhaps I would have asked different questions. Perhaps I would have recognized sooner when an environment was not steady for me. Perhaps I would have brought more of myself into some rooms, and stepped away from others sooner.
Or perhaps many things would have unfolded in much the same way.
What I know for certain is that the experiences themselves were not wasted. They helped me develop the awareness I rely on today.
And that awareness continues to grow, shaping how I recognize where I am valued and safe, and how I choose to lead.
“Mindfulness and awareness is the bridge between reaction and conscious choice.”
– Hal Tipper