Chapter 11: Trans Formational: LMX, Cisgenderism, and Building Inclusive Workplaces

Conversations about gender identity and expression have become complex, thought-provoking, and prevalent dialogues in contemporary organizational dialogues. Partly responses to legal challenges and partly policy change to improve inclusivity, gender nonconformity have become a central issue in dialogues about and responses regarding corporate diversity. While there should be no doubt that transgender individuals experience the fiercest brunt from violations of cisnormativity, other individuals whose sexual anatomy or gender expression transgress the binary essentialist paradigm experience marginalization as well. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the ways in which the workplace—as both a social and physical environment—is designed to maintain gender essentialism, reinforcing stereotypical representations that restrain gender identity and expression. The chapter first reviews some of the terminology around gender identity and expression focusing predominantly on transgender issues in the workplace. The chapter next describes how the organizational environment aligns to favor cisnormativity and marginalizes those with nonbinary gender or expression by reviewing the current state of empirical and theoretical work on the topic. The chapter then explores the role of leader–member relationships as both a reinforcement of and ultimately a mechanism for dismantling the coded privilege within the workplace and thus promoting inclusivity. Finally, the chapter concludes with recommendations and considerations for organizations and leaders to address workplace cisnormativity.