Thanks for the feedback

Thank you from the bottom of my heart

I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since I last saw you here. I’ve missed you! The team is back from Break Week, I’m back from my bachelorette party, and we are all feeling energized and ready to dive into the quarter ahead!

I’d like to jump right back into things by sharing some feedback we got about my Team Break Week post that really struck us (and broke our hearts a little). To sum it up, an amazing person wrote in to tell us that she’s been following us for a while, and overall, she finds our work inspiring and refreshing. But recently, my blog posts have made her feel anything but that. She said that as she read about Team Break Week in particular, she felt discouraged. She could never picture the small business where she works ever offering something like that to her and her team. At times, she said, it feels nearly impossible to imagine that there are other companies like ours out there with this kind of leadership. She told us she wanted to share this feedback not to make us feel bad, but to help us understand that for some, our reality may sound like a pipe dream. She asked us to consider applying our ideas to more common situations that leaders face.

Her response came in right before our quarterly review, which was our last team meeting before Break Week. I asked if we could create some space in our review to talk about it. At first, we got a bit defensive. We of course believe that organizations and leaders can do what we’ve done and they can change because we changed—our company hasn’t always operated the way it does now. As we talked about the past and how our culture used to be, it hit us like a ton of bricks . . . We feel that change is possible because we know exactly what it took to get here—but that doesn’t mean that everyone who reads about our team does. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked or written about how things used to be.

It felt like déjà vu and brought me right back to writing Permission to Screw Up. You may remember that the first draft of the book wasn’t the book you know today. That draft made it seem like our story was all rainbows and butterflies because I wrote only about the stuff we got right. I skipped over the hard parts, the growing parts, the parts that challenged us, and I left out the stories that didn’t paint me or our company in the best light. That draft felt empty. Meaningless. Untrue. Uninspiring. And so, as we unpacked this feedback from this courageous person, I had a moment where I thought, Oh no. I’m doing it again.

Sometimes I forget to share what we had to learn to get to where we are. I forget to go back to the parts where we screwed it all up and show exactly how we got from our old reality to the one we have now. Team Break Week is a great example of that. It isn’t something that just happened. We didn’t just wake up and decide to give everyone a paid, company-wide break because it felt like a nice thing to do. It’s taken 14 years of mess-ups and a culture of burnout to get to this place. And so, I’m going to tell you the part I left out last time. 

Let’s go back 14 years. 

In those days, the phrase “paid time off” was not in our vocabulary at Student Maid. There were no perks, aside from scheduling shifts around school schedules. I could only afford to pay people minimum wage, and I wasn’t taking a paycheck. I became obsessed with business growth. At that time, it was all about survival.

As the business grew and we had enough of a foundation to get us out of emergency mode, my obsession with business growth only increased. Part of it was because of the books I read. Part of it was because of the entrepreneurs I aspired to be like. I had serious trouble turning it off. I was glued to my phone and my computer. Never took vacations. Wasn’t present in my relationships. Kept the business open for cleaning services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Stayed open on holidays. Answered emails within 2 seconds. Worked late at night and early in the morning. Didn’t prioritize my health. Praised and promoted the people who never took time off. And during our busy season? Multiply all of that by a hundred.

For many, many years, this was the pace at which I operated. And because I wasn’t calm in my approach to leadership or business, that meant our company wasn’t calm. It meant that the leaders in our company felt pressure to emulate my behavior because of the example I was setting as a leader.

We could only keep up this pace for so long before someone hit their breaking point. And there were a lot of them: People who submitted their two weeks’ notice because of how demanding the job was and the feeling of never being able to turn it off. Leaders who told me they didn’t want to work in operations any longer because of the 24/7 stress, and that if I couldn’t create a new role for them, they’d be looking for another job. Sometimes people would be so burnt out, they’d just snap and quit right then and there, saying they couldn’t take it anymore. Sometimes they just wouldn’t show up for work and I’d never hear from them again. I remember during one move-out season, one of our leaders gave me feedback through tears, saying the job was giving her anxiety. These were not good times in our company.

And yet, it didn’t change. It’s not that I liked working like I was or liked that our team felt this way . . . I just didn’t know there was another way. I’d look at companies that had great cultures, and I’d get discouraged because they weren’t cleaning companies. I just accepted that I would never be able to apply what they were doing to Student Maid because of the nature of our business. I accepted that maybe not everyone was cut out for this job. I accepted that this was going to be the pace of my life. I accepted that this is what it felt like to be a small business.

Until I couldn’t accept it anymore.

People kept quitting. People continued to speak up. And every time that happened, I started to see a little more clearly. I think it all really changed when I hit my breaking point. When I hit burnout far too many times. When I realized I couldn’t live like that anymore. When I couldn’t keep relationships because of how un-present I was. When I got kidney infections and realized my lifestyle was affecting my health. When I realized that my job was the greatest source of my stress and unhappiness. When I finally realized . . . if I felt this way . . . how might others feel? Getting to this rock-bottom place was where the real journey to change began for me and for our company.

I took baby steps. At first, it looked like not working so late in the evenings. And taking the weekends off. And going on vacation here and there. And not being glued to my phone and email.

Those small steps led to larger steps: Not being open 24 hours a day. Reducing our volume during our busy season. Closing on holidays. Giving the option for team members to split semester breaks so that everyone could have some time off. Taking our leadership team away for mini retreats.

Those larger steps led to even bigger ones: Taking our leadership team out of the country so we could really disconnect. Praising and encouraging time off. Soliciting feedback about our culture and how we could be better. Giving people the freedom to work from coffee shops so that they didn’t feel like they needed to be glued to their desks. Committing to my health. I began to notice financial growth in the business because of these changes.

And those bigger steps led to the next big steps: Paid time off. The commitment to be a calm company. Reading books to understand what that commitment means. Regular personal and team reflection to evaluate our pace and our culture. Encouraging our team to find the pace that helps them be at their best, even if it's not a traditional Monday through Friday, 9-to-5.

And now, we are here—nearly 14 years after the days we were open 24/7/365—having just completed a Break Week for myself, which inspired a Break Week for our team, only after realizing that even with unlimited paid time off, we are still pretty bad at taking breaks.

There wasn’t a significant moment that changed our culture or got us here. The little moments added up to big ones. And the thing is, we couldn’t be where we are today without every single one of them: When people had the courage to leave. When people kept speaking up, even when I wasn’t receptive to their feedback. When I hit burnout far too many times. When I started to notice that the more breaks I took, the better I was at my job. When I noticed that the more breaks our team took, the better they were at their jobs. The calmer our company, the happier we were, and the better our results. 

Wow, just writing all that makes me realize how much I left out of my last post. I’m sorry I gave you the unicorn version. The last thing I ever want to do is discourage you or make you feel like the world I envision will never be a reality for you. I also want to make sure we don’t come across as the perfect team or the perfect company. We are far from it. We are still screwing up on the regular, thank goodness. The moment you stop screwing up is the moment you stop growing.

And most importantly, to the person who so courageously shared this feedback with our team: Thank you. I appreciate you. We appreciate you. You are amazing and brave, and you have reminded us that the most important parts of the story are the hard parts. The real parts. I promise to talk about them more.

So many leaders and organizations are stuck in patterns—like I was—that they perpetuate simply because that's the way it's always been or because they don’t know another way. Change can start with small moments. So speak up. Share your feedback. Set a boundary. Make a decision to live today differently than yesterday. Remember that you deserve to be valued for more than your output, and if you don’t feel that you are, sometimes the best decision is to leave. 

Perhaps your moment could play a part in changing the pattern. Every step is a part of the journey. 

Hugs through the screen,

Kristen

PS: Only a few weeks to go before we welcome 200 leaders from around the world to our next Human Leadership Program! This program will be extra special because we have reserved a percentage of our seats for rising student leaders so that we can introduce them to the concepts of human leadership early on in their journeys. Join us to elevate your authenticity and humanity as a leader and to explore the future of leadership. We’ve only got a few seats left! Save $100 on the price of your ticket here!

PPS: I hope you’ll join us for REAL TALK tomorrow, Wednesday, at 11 a.m. ET! I’ll be interviewing a special guest about leadership. Join by registering here:  https://bit.ly/3kWe2kT