Leadership insights and guidance for LGBTQ+ change-makers who want to lead with clarity, conviction, and compassion by aligning their values, voice, and vision to create ethical, transformative impact. <br/><br/><a href="https://darrenstehle.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">darrenstehle.substack.com</a>
Queer Integrity Dispatch Podcast
Claim This Podcastby 🏳️🌈 Darren Stehle
37 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview
Leadership insights and guidance for LGBTQ+ change-makers who want to lead with clarity, conviction, and compassion by aligning their values, voice, and vision to create ethical, transformative impact. <br/><br/><a href="https://darrenstehle.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">darrenstehle.substack.com</a>
Language
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Publishing Since
12/4/2024
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Recent Episodes
June 4, 2026
Nearly a Decade in the Making — “Queering the Way” Is Published Today
<p>The book is live. You might not be able see me, but I am doing my happy dance! :-)</p><p>Queering the Way: Navigating Leadership Ethics from the Margins is available for purchase today — June 4th, 2026.</p><p>There are three things I’d ask of you today, if you’re willing to support my book on its journey.</p><p>#1 — Buy the book on Amazon first</p><p>Coordinated purchases in the first few days help with author ranking — which creates visibility beyond my immediate network.</p><p>I’m in the “LGBTQ+ Studies” and “Leadership” categories. Getting into the top 10 in the first week would matter, not just for the credential, but for the reach it creates. So yes, in all honest, this is a huge deal! :-)</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0H2SMRLFV/">Order on Amazon (Canada) — $6.99 CAD</a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/Queering-Way-Navigating-Leadership-Margins-ebook/dp/B0H2SMRLFV">Order on Amazon (USA) — $4.99 USD</a></p><p>Note that the ebook is available worldwide, so simply search for my name in you’re in a different country.</p><p>#2 — Leave an honest review</p><p>Once you’ve read your copy, please leave an honest review on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be lengthy. It just needs to be genuine. Even a short review can take less than three minutes, but it makes a huge difference to how well the book is received.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.ca/review/create-review?asin=B0H2SMRLFV">Leave a review →</a></p><p>#3 — Or buy directly from me</p><p>If you'd prefer to purchase directly — and receive the EPUB edition with a PDF available on request — the book is $4.99 CAD through June 11th.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://checkout.mailerlite.com/checkout/19642">Get the book — CA$4.99 →</a></p><p>Optional — Tell one person</p><p>Do you know someone who is doing the work this book is about, someone who would genuinely benefit from reading it? A personal recommendation from someone they trust is worth more than any marketing I could do.</p><p>That’s everything. No elaborate ask. No manufactured excitement.</p><p>This is a book I’ve been working on for almost a decade. I’m so pleased to finally have it in the world — and with a genuine invitation for you to read it.</p><p>With gratitude,</p><p>— Darren</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://darrenstehle.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">darrenstehle.substack.com</a>
June 2, 2026
The Most Dangerous Leader Is the One Who Has Never Questioned Their Own Beliefs
<p>We live in a moment when knowing — in the sense of facts, of truth, of what can actually be trusted — has never felt more precarious. </p><p>Information is everywhere. So is its opposite. The challenge isn’t access to knowledge. It’s discernment: being able to separate what is actually true from what has been distorted, weaponised, or simply repeated so often it feels true.</p><p>But that’s the external version of the problem. The KNOW principle in my book, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.darrenstehle.com/queering-the-way/">Queering the Way: Navigating Leadership Ethics from the Margins</a>, is about something more interior.</p><p>KNOW is an acronym: <strong>K</strong>ey <strong>N</strong>otions <strong>O</strong>f <strong>W</strong>orth. </p><p>Your values, your beliefs, your roles in life — the things that ground who you are as a leader so that others can trust you. Not because you project certainty, but because you are a person of known character, and because you have an ethical code of conduct that others can read, rely on, and be inspired by.</p><p>The question at the heart of this principle is deceptively simple: What do you know for certain? And have you ever had a moment where everything you thought to be true — you questioned?</p><p>There’s a chapter in the KNOW section called “The Candle and the Courtyard.” It’s about something that happened when I was sixteen.</p><p>I was raised Catholic. Devout, even — altar boy, usher, lector. I was seriously considering the priesthood. Far be it for a gay man not to consider becoming a priest… but I digress.</p><p>At sixteen, I was attending my sixth and final COR retreat — Christ and Others Retreat. I was one of the support volunteers, not in the front with the participants. At the time, I was quietly coming to terms with being gay — convincing myself I might be bisexual, the way you do when you’re not quite ready to say the thing out loud. I was never bisexual.</p><p>In the middle of that weekend, I did what you were supposed to do when you were having a crisis of faith. I reached out to the people in charge and asked for help.</p><p>That’s not what I got.</p><p>I was told, essentially, to stop asking questions. You’re here to serve God. You’re here to serve the people experiencing this weekend. If you can’t do that, leave.</p><p>No compassion. No understanding. No attempt to meet me where I was.</p><p>That is not leadership.</p><p>I don’t want to give away what happened next — there’s a moment in that chapter I’m keeping for the book. But I want to share what I wrote about it:</p><p>“What I did not know then, and could not have articulated at sixteen, was that I had just made my first consciously ethical decision. Not a moral one in the religious sense — not a calculation about right and wrong as the Church defined those terms — but an ethical one in the deepest sense: a decision about who I was and what I was willing to accept as true about myself and about the institutions that claimed authority over my life.</p><p>The Church had been telling me, without quite saying it, that there was something wrong with me. That who I was, and who I was only beginning to understand myself to be, was incompatible with belonging.”</p><p>That theme — belonging, dignity, and the right of every person to occupy space as fully themselves — runs throughout the book. </p><p>Human-hearted leadership doesn’t require us to agree with everyone or like everyone. It does require us to know when our values are compromising someone else’s freedom to exist. And none of us has the right to decide who belongs and who doesn’t.</p><p>So here’s what I’d invite you to contemplate today:</p><p>* What do you know to be true? Where did you learn your beliefs?</p><p>* Who taught you your values? </p><p>* Have you ever stepped back to ask, why is this value important to me and is it still serving me as a leader?</p><p>Queering the Way: Navigating Leadership Ethics from the Margins launches Thursday, June 4th. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0H2SMRLFV/">Pre-order on Amazon</a> or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.darrenstehle.com/queering-the-way/">purchase from me directly</a>.</p><p><p>Thanks for reading Queering The Way! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://darrenstehle.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">darrenstehle.substack.com</a>
May 26, 2026
My Book Pre-order Is Live — and a Word About Voice
<p>Scooby and I took a break in the shade along the Lachine Canal today and I recorded this short video to share some news and a thought.</p><p>Queering the Way: Navigating Leadership Ethics from the Margins is now available for pre-order on Amazon, ahead of its June 4th release.</p><p>It is a personal book. A personal philosophy of queer leadership rooted in the Tao Te Ching — built around how you feel, what you know, how you think, how you use your voice, what you dream, and how you lead. It’s for the change-makers who are looking for someone with whom they can connect and say: I get this. This is the way I haven’t considered for how I can lead from my convictions with full integrity.</p><p>I was editing the VOICE principle when I recorded this, and I want to say something about what voice actually means in this context. Not just how you speak or communicate, but the different ways in which you do that, and most importantly, how your message is understood by others so that you have genuine influence. Not power over, rather the kind of conviction that others feel and want to follow.</p><p>Audre Lorde wrote: </p><p>“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”</p><p>Sometimes we have to be disruptive. Sometimes we have to ruffle feathers. That doesn’t mean we have to be disrespectful, though it may feel that way to some people. When you call out the truth for what it is and force people to see a perspective they’re not quite aware of — the things they are standing for that are harming others — you are standing up for the dignity of everyone.</p><p>That is the essence of what this book is about.</p><p>June 4th. Nine days away.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://darrenstehle.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">darrenstehle.substack.com</a>
37 total episodes available
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