The REAL Model Of Inclusion: Reimagining LGBTQ+ Well-Being In The Workplace

Why belonging begins with honesty, energy, authenticity, and love

Creating a workplace that truly includes LGBTQ+ employees goes beyond policy updates and rainbow logos. It begins with understanding the human experience of adversity, resilience, and authenticity. LGBTQ+ professionals continue to face unique mental health stressors and workplace challenges. While many companies have made progress, inclusion is often inconsistent, and psychological safety remains fragile.

To foster authentic belonging, organizations can adopt principles from the REAL model introduced in Your REAL Life: Get Authentic, Be Resilient, Make it Count. This model offers a human-centered, trauma-aware framework for individual and collective resilience, especially for marginalized communities. REAL stands for:
 

• Reality: Facing the truth of a situation and taking ownership of your response to it.
• Energy: Managing physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual resources.
• Authenticity: Knowing, releasing, and loving your true self based on your core values, strengths and beliefs.
• Love: Choosing forgiveness, community, humor and joyful connection. 

When applied to the workplace, this model can help build environments where LGBTQ+ employees are empowered to live, work, and lead authentically.

Facing Reality: Addressing What’s Still Broken

In a 2022 global survey by Deloitte, nearly 42% of LGBTQ+ employees reported experiencing non-inclusive behaviors at work, and only 43% felt comfortable being out about their gender identity with all of their colleagues ^[1]. These realities suggest that performative progress often masks deeper systemic issues.

Mental health disparities in LGBTQ+ populations are well-documented. Recent findings from the Human Rights Campaign show that LGBTQ+ adults are over twice as likely as non-LGBTQ+ adults to be diagnosed with depression and nearly three times as likely to experience poor mental health in a given month ^[2]. Despite increasing public support, internal workplace culture often lags behind policy changes.

Facing reality means actively listening to LGBTQ+ voices within your organization. Conduct anonymous culture surveys. Host focus groups or listening sessions. Acknowledge pain points. Instead of assuming your workplace is inclusive, ask: "Who still feels unsafe being fully themselves here?" And more importantly, what structures are in place to respond when someone bravely speaks up?

Inclusion begins with acknowledging where trust has been broken and where harm has taken root. That honesty creates space for more authentic healing and change.

Managing Energy: Making Mental Health Real

Authentic inclusion supports well-being. It acknowledges that LGBTQ+ employees often perform invisible labor—codeswitching, navigating bias, or absorbing emotional stress in homogenous environments. These daily energy drains take a toll.

Support systems matter. Offer benefits like LGBTQ+-affirming therapy access, flexible scheduling for recovery, and ERG funding that supports genuine community building—not just event planning. Encourage breaks that protect energy and reinforce boundaries.

Your REAL Life also suggests that resilient people “consciously regulate energy use, choose where to spend it, and remember to save some for the learning that follows adversity.” ^[3]

Leaders can model this by respecting time boundaries, sharing their own wellness practices, and making clear that protecting energy is part of high performance—not in conflict with it.

Practicing Authenticity: From Lip Service to Lived Experience

McKinsey research shows that LGBTQ+ women and transgender employees are significantly underrepresented in leadership and face higher barriers to promotion ^[4]. These disparities reinforce the need for authenticity-driven systems that value difference as an asset, not a deviation.

Corporate messaging often encourages employees to "bring their whole selves to work." Yet, for LGBTQ+ individuals, doing so can mean navigating real risk. Authenticity only thrives when there is trust and safety.

Real inclusion means making room for difference, not requiring conformity. Normalize pronoun use. Offer training on identity-conscious leadership. Reevaluate promotion and feedback systems to ensure diverse leadership styles are not penalized. The REAL model advises, "Resilient people draw on their own authenticity often, using it to love themselves inside and out, outside and in." [3] This invitation to align with one’s truth helps both LGBTQ+ leaders and those who lead LGBTQ+ people embrace vulnerability, foster connection, and lead with greater emotional intelligence.

Creating space for authenticity also requires interrogating what leadership looks like. If leadership continues to be defined by a single mold—cisgender, straight, extroverted—then authenticity becomes a liability, not a strength. Inclusion means updating those definitions.

One example comes from a global company where I led a workplace mental health and well-being strategy. We introduced individual well-being action plans for every employee. These plans allowed staff and their managers to co-create intentional ways to support mental and emotional wellness—whether that meant flexible hours, boundary agreements, or communication preferences. What emerged wasn’t a drop in productivity but a measurable increase in psychological safety and engagement. By naming and planning for real stressors, the organization was able to shift from avoidance to authentic connection and accountability.

Leading with Love: From Allyship to Action

Love is not a soft skill. It is the anchor of courage and clarity that transforms workplaces. As the final pillar of the REAL model, love invites us to lead with compassion and humility.

At work, this means building an authentic community and practicing radical empathy. Encourage leaders to model vulnerability, to stand up against bias, and to act when systems harm instead of heal.

Leaders can choose to love in policy—through equitable parental leave, transition-related healthcare, inclusive benefits, and representation in governance. They can choose to love in culture: celebrating LGBTQ+ joy, honoring LGBTQ+ grief, and defending dignity in the face of injustice.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) can be powerful agents of that love. In one organization, an LGBTQ+ ERG developed a reverse mentoring program where senior leaders were matched with LGBTQ+ employees for candid monthly conversations. The result was not just greater empathy—it changed hiring pipelines and leadership development outcomes.

Inspired by organizations that created reverse mentorship models, my organization invited two existing ERGs—one for LGBTQ+ employees and one for women—into a shared lived experience dialogue series. Exploring intersecting experiences and focusing on a session specifically around the mental health challenges faced by transgender employees proved beneficial for our organization. The collaboration built unexpected bridges between communities and sparked policy discussions and reviews around inclusive health benefits. Importantly, this work strengthened the organization’s collective capacity for empathy and action.

When love is a leadership principle, it enables workplaces to shift from performative gestures to meaningful change.

Conclusion: The ROI of Being REAL

Human experience excellence requires more than good intentions. It asks organizations to do the inner work: to reflect, listen, and lead differently. The REAL model is not a checklist. It is a mindset.

When LGBTQ+ employees are truly seen and supported, they bring their full brilliance to the table. Resilience grows. Innovation thrives. Culture deepens. And teams don’t just function—they flourish.

Being REAL means embracing the whole of who people are. Not just for Pride Month but every month. Not just in writing but in practice.

LGBTQ+ inclusion isn’t just about compliance—it elevates everyone. When inclusion is real, workplaces become more emotionally intelligent, more creative, and more human.

And that, truly, is what makes it (work) count.

Footnotes

• ^[1] Deloitte. (2022). LGBT+ Inclusion @ Work: A Global Outlook. 
• ^[2] Human Rights Campaign. (2022). Mental health resources in the LGBTQ+ community. 
• ^[3] Andres, N. (2023). Your REAL Life: Get Authentic, Be Resilient, Make it Count. Pages 18-20.
• ^[4] McKinsey & Company. (2020). How the LGBTQ+ Community Fares in the Workplace. 

Recommended Resources

• Out & Equal Workplace Advocates
• The Trevor Project
• American Psychology Association LGBTQ Resources 
• Your REAL Life: Get Authentic, Be Resilient, Make it Count by Nathan Andres

Suggested Reads

• Bidding Past Performative Pride: A 2SLGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion Game Plan
• Creating Authentic Inclusion: Encouraging Engagement And Supporting Your LGBTQ+ Employees
• Moving Past Pride Month Toward True LGBTQ+ Inclusion At Work

Nathan Andres is an out and proud LGBTQ+ leader, resilience coach, mental health advocate, and HR executive. He is also the Global Director People & Culture at B Lab. He authored Your REAL Life: Get Authentic, Be Resilient, Make it Count—a book for all readers, with special meaning for LGBTQ+ individuals who see it as a guide to well-being and identity.