How can managers create workplace environments where people feel comfortable being themselves? Research has shown that hiding our true identities can cripple professional performance. For instance, closeted LGBT employees feel much more isolated at work than their openly gay peers, and 52% of closeted employees feel their careers have stagnated, compared to just over a third of their out colleagues. “This appears to be the case largely because closeted workers suffer anxiety about how colleagues and managers might judge them,” write study authors Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Karen Sumberg, “and expend enormous effort concealing their orientation, which leaves them less energy for actual work.”