Workplace culture
Dana Gambrill on Why Authenticity at Work Makes People More Effective
A year after coming out at work, Dana Gambrill explains why removing the effort of hiding brought her more clarity, and what employers can learn from it.
Video from Dana Gambrill.
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Why does bringing your authentic self to work make people more effective?
Dana Gambrill argues that hiding who you are creates constant background noise that drains clarity and effectiveness. After coming out at work, she found she was far more effective in her job and in her personal life. Her advice is that everyone should be able to bring their authentic self to work, and that employers should actively support it.
A year after coming out at work, Dana Gambrill stood in front of the colleagues who had watched her transition and told them what it had really been like. Her talk, framed around the old Mars and Venus book on the differences between men and women, was funny, frank and practical, and it carried a clear message for any workplace: people do better work when they can stop hiding.
Dana Gambrill had planned her coming out carefully. She thought about leaving the company, transitioning somewhere else and then returning, because she could not predict how people would react. Instead she started with HR, found there was no guiding process to follow, and agreed with her colleagues that they would have to make it up as they went.
What she describes since then is less a story about gender than a story about effectiveness. Removing the effort of hiding gave her more clarity at work and at home, and she argues that every company should make room for people to bring their whole selves through the office door.
Key takeaways
- Fear of other people's reactions is usually far worse in our own heads than in reality.
- Hiding part of yourself creates background noise that drains clarity and effectiveness at work.
- Good workplace support plans for the people absent on the day, not only those in the room.
- Real change is possible when you define your what, understand your why and commit to action.
1. Fear is bigger in your head than in the room
Dana Gambrill is candid about how frightened she was. She has survived heart attacks and open-heart surgery, been trapped underwater and caught on a reef, yet she says she was never more scared than on the morning she walked into her workplace in a dress. The plan was simple: a morning tea run with the pride employee resource group, a short video, and a few words from her.
The reaction was warmer than she expected. A smiling face near the door and a colleague's hand on her shoulder settled her nerves, the video played, and the room clapped. Looking back, her conclusion is that people make it much worse in their own heads than the reality turns out to be, and that the fear she carried beforehand was far larger than anything that happened.
That lesson applies well beyond gender transition. Anyone carrying something heavy into the office, whether a health scare, a family crisis or a part of themselves they have kept private, tends to rehearse the worst possible reaction. Dana Gambrill's experience suggests that one trusted conversation, as hers with HR was, is often what turns a private plan into something real.
2. Plan for the people who were not in the room
The careful planning covered how to come out at work and how to make it safe for everybody else. What it missed were the people who were not there on the day. A colleague returning to the office did a double take, and a visitor from another city was so stunned by the change that he could not answer her greeting. She went back later and talked it through with him.
Small systems mattered too. Her legal name change took one government form, and within a single day her licence, bank details and Medicare records were updated. Changing every internal work system took far longer, and her old name stayed on her desk telephone until a colleague stepped in to fix it. Details like these are where an employer's support becomes visible to the person who needs it.
She also noticed how relationships shifted. Unconscious bias, she says, is very real, and she felt it the first time a man she respected told her not to worry her pretty face about something. At the same time, old friends and colleagues began to treat her differently in a way that felt natural, and she thanks them for it because it makes a huge difference to her.
3. Authenticity is a performance issue
The biggest surprise for Dana Gambrill was how much she herself changed. Looking back, she describes carrying a kind of veil around all the time and dealing with constant noise in the background. With that removed, she has far more clarity and is, by her own account, way more effective in her personal life and in the workplace, which is why she believes every company should support authenticity.
The hardest parts have not gone away. The mismatch between her voice and her appearance still causes moments of dysphoria, as when a new client apologised for referring to her as he in internal emails. Her extended family is still working through a sense of loss, and she feels guilt about removing the masculine from her role as a parent. She names these openly rather than pretending they are solved.
Her lessons are meant for business as much as personal life. Real change is possible: define your what, understand your why, commit to action, and the how will present itself. Create your own normal instead of living for what others think. Put love and respect at the centre of your dealings with clients, family and friends, and look for the gift in everything that happens, even the hard things.
