Going global: being out in business around the world

No two ‘coming out’ stories are the same. Deciding whether or not to be openly LGBTQ+ in our personal lives is just that, a deeply personal decision. But then when it comes to work, things can be even more complicated – especially if you’re working for a global business, where awareness of LGBTQ+ issues can differ between locations.

As part of the most recent EUROUT conference, Global Masters in Management alumnus José Martin Quesada sat down with Bain & Company’s João Soares and Sonia D’Souza, of Goldman Sachs India (formerly) to discuss the challenges of being out at work around the world and how organisations can best serve international workforces. Since graduating from LBS, José has gone on to co-found the fitness start-up Krew.

Watch their full conversation here.

Coming out is different for everyone – no matter where you are

José

João, how were your experiences of coming out impacted by where you grew up?

João

I was born and raised and went to college in Portugal. I attended business school in France, at INSEAD, before joining a consulting firm in Portugal. Since then, I’ve worked in Spain, Australia and London, across various firms, so I’ve had the opportunity to grow and evolve in a number of different societies – not all of which were particularly supportive of LGBTQ+ people.

On one hand, I didn’t want to damage my career by coming out. On the other, I also didn’t want to be defined by my sexuality. Being LGBTQ+ isn’t my defining trait and so there was a balance I needed to strike in terms of how I approached my personal life at work. I waited until I felt comfortable and supported.

José

Do you feel like that was in one moment, or are you still coming out to people?

João

I’ve been coming out every single day for years now. I’m married, and my husband and I have two kids. I think once you have kids, it means you’ll forever be coming out, as they come up in conversation, or you meet new people when you are picking them up from school or visiting restaurants with them. The coming out never stops!

José

Sonia, what was it that drove you to become a vocal ally?

Sonia

As my career progressed, I started to think about the kind of leader I wanted to be. I had to ask myself if I knew enough to ensure I wasn’t accidentally giving off non-inclusive vibes because of my own lack of awareness. Or was I letting my Roman Catholic faith suggest to people that I might not be accepting? 

Growing up, I lived in Saudi Arabia as an ex-pat, before my family moved back to a small town in India. My parents were quite liberal when it came to choices about my education, career and friends, but we never really spoke about LGTBQ+ topics. Fast forward to when I was working at Goldman Sachs, and I was approached to co-lead the LGBTQ+ network, it took me a few weeks to reflect and eventually feel ready to accept the offer. When I decided to go for it, I called my parents and shared the news with them as this was truly a moment of pride for me. My religious 72-year-old father was pleased for me, but he confessed that he didn’t really understand the issues. He asked if I would educate him, this fuelled my journey a great deal.

José

I was raised Catholic, so I definitely understand that instinct to just not talk about things. I think the self-awareness you have is quite extraordinary. João, did your approach to coming out vary based on where you were in the world?

Differing attitudes can be a shock

João

I think the most important for being able to safely come out is having a network of people that you trust and who you know will love you, no matter what. People that want to make your life enjoyable and who want to see you thrive. This is much harder in some countries. There are still so many places where you can’t even hold hands with someone of the same gender in public – in parts of southern Europe, for example.

José

Yes – I’ve had people shout ‘fag’ at me from a moving car in the south of Spain.

João

When my husband and I got married, we were riding together in the back of a car there and the level of insults was so shocking. Especially for him, as he’s American. He couldn’t believe it. Knowing where you can be yourself and where you need to modify your behaviour to stay safe is important – but it’s also exhausting. It’s a constant stress in the back of your mind.

José

We hear this all the time, don’t we? People from minority backgrounds so often exist in constant state of hyper-alertness.

One dynamic I’m really interested in is the link between increased GDP and an improvement in attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people. For every $2000 increase in GDP, there’s something like a 6.1% improvement. However, that trend seems to be breaking down now. We’re seeing more countries rapidly increasing their living standards, without an improvement. You both work for large organisations with offices spread out across the world – what do you think organisations can do to help improve attitudes?

Sonia

Goldman Sachs India a global organisation, so being able to attract diverse pools of talent is critical. Rather than having different policies across our various locations, we maintain one principle of being inclusive and treating everybody equally. The customization across locations would be done in terms of how we lay out our employee engagement plans and how we interact with communities in this space all guided by the common principle of being diverse and inclusive. Across all Goldman Sachs offices, we encourage employees to come to work as their authentic selves..

Even a decade before gay relations were decriminalised in India, we had an LGBTQ+ network set up in the organisation. Sometimes it’s about carving out a space in which you can create an open dialogue –a space to enable learning, awareness and growth . 

José

I think it’s also important that we remind ourselves that not everybody shares our views. I’ve been lucky to work for an extremely supportive employer. So supportive, that I would sometimes look around at our annual LGBTQ+ retreat and wonder to what extend we’re simply preaching to the choir. I said this out loud one day, and a colleague from Russia shared with me things they’ve heard their colleagues say – awful stuff about how gay people shouldn’t exist, or that we should be burned alive. For me, that really brought home the fact that we can’t take acceptance for granted.

Sonia

Absolutely. I am always touched when people come to me in the office and say they would consider sharing their true selves and identity at work but need support in doing the same in their personal lives as Indian communities are tightknit. This, for me, is a measure of success for the work we are doing through the Network.

João

One thing we are very careful to do is ensure that nobody is ever required to work in or travel to a location where they don’t feel safe. Our staff can confidentially blacklist any location at any time. It takes a lot of work to ensure everyone can thrive in such a global business. We would never, ever want someone to feel pressured into coming out. Even once they have, we acknowledge and support different levels of comfort. Someone who’s a level one would be happy being out to everybody – colleagues, clients, whoever. But a level three might only be out to team leaders or coordinators. We do this so even people who don’t want to fully come out are able to access support if they need it.

The reality is that we do have offices in some locations where people tend to hold more retrograde views. In these cases, it’s completely up to our staff how they want to proceed and it’s up to Bain to support them both professionally and personally. Our aim is always to make sure our staff feel connected to other people within the firm who they know will support them. When it works, this can have a huge impact on how ready someone feels to come out. I came out to my firm before I even came out to my parents – that was how safe I felt there.

Organisations need to support grassroots movements

José

You’ve both shared some great examples of a successful top-down approach for supporting staff. But I think there’s a lot to be said for bottom-up initiatives too. I find Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) fascinating, because they’re a true reflection of the things staff actually care about.

Sonia

ERGs, in any country or environment, represent the soul of an organisation. They not only help specific groups of employees to come together, but also create widespread awareness. Through this, they influence the entire ecosystem in an organisation where each individual begins to reflect and progress their own inclusion journey.

At Goldman Sachs, the LGBTQ+ Network has a two-fold purpose. It exists partly to ensure LGBTQ+ employees feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work and are valued for their skillsets. But we also lead on training and education. It can be as simple as helping people to feel confident using inclusive language or as crucial as training our senior leadership members to lead and build organisations in a safe and inclusive way.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that most people are very keen to be allies. The important thing is that we don’t let allyship become simply a badge, it needs to be an active and involved process. That means educating yourself about your environment, understanding the legal framework in this space and being aware of the nuances across the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

José

Is there anything you're especially proud of in terms of the training and resources you’ve been able to offer?

Sonia

Last year, around Transgender Day of Remembrance in November, we launched a whole set of ally toolkits. These toolkits covered a whole range of information and resources including those for employees who are in the process of transitioning, as well as for their managers. We wanted to ensure we were equipping our employees with opportunities to upskill, so they could really live out our principles of inclusion.

João

We notice a similar pattern at Bain. Initiatives around equality always do better a local level, because they’re fully customised to what each group naturally wants to focus on – whether that’s fighting for marriage equality in India or tackling social issues in Italy to America. It’s our job as an organisation to support our people to pursue the causes that most energise them.

When that’s done right, the result is global change. All these complimentary local activities come together to make an international impact.