We all know that being gay is awesome and we're great at most anything we put our minds to, so it should come as no surprise that we make some of the best bosses in the workforce according to a book profiled on Details.com. What gay men appear to do better than straight men in positions of authority is to actually respect subordinates as human beings with lives and problems and complications all their own and treat them with the level of compassion and understanding that they need to remain happy and effective, versus telling them to nut-up and get over it, whatever "it" may be.
The reason for this appears to stem from how most gay men grew up and subsequently came out. The constant navigation of social cues in high school to avoid or confront discrimination taught many how to adapt intuitively and be resilient, while the coming out process cemented the security one has in knowing one's self and thus largely don't feel the need to be the cliche asshole boss to assert dominance over others.
While it would seem like this is just masturbatory self-congratulation, there is research to give it credence. USC business-school professor Kirk Snyder spent five years studying American executives and wrote his findings in The G Quotient: Why Gay Executives Are Excelling as Leaders . . . and What Every Manager Needs to Know. What he found was that gay male bosses produce 35 to 60 percent higher levels of employee engagement, satisfaction, and morale than straight bosses. This is a huge deal given that the Saratoga Institute found that of 20,000 former workers who quit their jobs the behavior of their supervisors was the primary complaint.
