Despite the ubiquity of invisible disabilities (IDs), workplace discrimination towards employees who have them remains pervasive. Consequently, the act of disclosing these stigmatized disabilities is often fraught with professional risk. This research investigates the disclosure strategies that employees with IDs tend to adopt and whether they actually mitigate bias and maximize managerial support. Drawing from stigma theory and signaling theory, I propose two dimensions of invisible disability disclosure strategies: transparency (the amount of information provided); and activeness (the extent of accommodations requested). I theorize a critical disconnect between the disclosure strategies that employees tend to use and those which foster positive managerial reactions. Six studies employing correlational and experimental designs with diverse online and field samples investigate this asymmetry between employees and managers, and its critical implications for employees with IDs. The results demonstrate that to avoid stigma, employees tend not to provide details nor to request accommodations, when in fact strategies that are both transparent and actively request accommodations counteract stereotypes and enhance managerial support. Counterintuitively, by ‘owning’ their stigmatized identities and requesting clear solutions, employees with IDs can increase managerial perceptions of ability and the likelihood of receiving accommodations following disclosure.
