Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, United States
Contemporary organizations must be ready to change to ensure their survival, and leaders are crucial in driving this transformation. Yet, for leaders with stigmatized identities, there is limited understanding as to how their identities shape their management of organizational change. While the literature describes creative strategies stigmatized individuals use to control their self-image, whether they transfer insights from their stigma experiences into domains beyond stigma-related challenges remains unexplored. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 LGBTQ+ women leaders, we develop a theoretical model illustrating three distinct pathways through which stigmatized leaders transform their experiences with stigma into a norm toolkit they then employ in advancing organizational change. Specifically, these leaders develop skills shaped by their experiences of managing stigma—the ability to attend to the social environment, separate norms from the self, and understand the mutability of norms. This norm toolkit supports leaders’ change efforts as they seek to manage and overcome adherence to current organizational norms that resist transformation. Our research highlights how leaders’ experiences of managing their stigmatized identities—namely, the skills they develop by negotiating and influencing how others perceive them—can be a unique source of strength leveraged to drive change within their organizations.
