If you volunteer to participate, we will schedule a 90-minute Zoom interview. During our time together we will engage in a drawing exercise that will help illustrate the different aspects yourself that you feel are important or connected, or removed or irrelevant from your leadership. As a creative process, drawing can provide us with insight and prompt reflection into the complexities of our lived experience.

I will also ask you to bring a photo that best shows how you present as a leader to the initial interview. Photos as a form data can open a window into the often overlooked and ignored embodied aspects of leadership, sexual identity and other intersecting identities.

 

The interview will be conversational and interactional in nature. Your drawing and photo will guide and inspire our discussion and ultimately you and your reflections, thoughts, emotions, and experiences will lead the direction of our conversation. As a co-collaborator in this research, I may also share my own experiences, drawings, and photo with you to facilitate discussion.

 

I do not have a pre-set list of questions, however, below are some examples that I have in mind that I may or may not ask, depending on the direction of our conversation:

• What aspects of yourself show up, are absent, overlap, or contradict in your drawing and/or photo?

• How is your photo connected or disconnected from your drawing?

• How did you come out at work?

• What prompted your decision to disclose your sexual identity at work?

• Do you make your bisexuality visible at work?

• How has disclosing your sexual identity impacted you at work?

• What influence does your sexual identity have on you as a leader?

 

Within a month of our initial interview, I will provide you with a copy of the transcript and a summary of the emergent themes for you to review and confirm that they are accurate and representative of you. While not mandatory, you will be invited for a follow up discussion to provide feedback, make changes or deletions from the research transcripts and the emergent themes, or share any new information, insights, or learnings. Upon completion of this research project, I will send you summary report of the research findings and a link to my PhD dissertation.