The cost of authenticity
Before we get to this week’s blog post, I want to say thank you:
Thank you for all of the encouraging emails, texts, calls, social media comments, and more. You have showered our team with love and support for our big announcement, and it has made this transition feel fun, exciting, and a lot less scary. We know how much work we have ahead of us, and we know we will fall down along the way, but it makes it a lot easier to move forward when you know that you will be met with the kind of encouragement that you have shown us. We have screenshotted every message and have put them on an internal Slack channel so that on hard days, we can scroll through and instantly be reminded of the incredible community cheering us on. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You will be the reason we don’t give up on hard days.
Now let’s talk about what’s happening over here.
The biggest update is that everyone knows our news! Our students, our clients, our families and friends, our landlord, our competitors, our rep at the vacuum store, you, and every person we are lucky to call internal and external stakeholders. I have to say, it feels good. It feels good because everyone knows everything, and that means there’s nothing to hide…
…which brings me to what is on my heart this week: The cost of authenticity, and the even bigger cost of being inauthentic.
There’s something you should know about me, if you don’t know it already: Authenticity is my most deep-rooted personal value. I strive to embody it every day, and it’s become one of our unofficially official core values as a team. My least favorite place to be in the world is where I know something big but cannot share it. With that in mind, you can probably imagine that the last few weeks have felt icky to me because I couldn’t tell everyone everything I knew about our transition, and it was eating away at me.
All in all, there was less than one month from the time I had my big ah-ha to the time we decided to tell our team, clients, and the world. And there were carefully considered reasons for that timeline: Instead of telling our students in December when I first had the big vision and shared it with our leadership team, we decided to give ourselves time to sit with it to make sure we were certain. Instead of telling new clients when we booked them that we were considering a different path that didn’t involve cleaning, we held on to that information because we just didn’t know if that path was certain. Instead of writing all that was on my heart in my first blog post of 2021, I was vague about our vision for our future because we were still in the midst of figuring it out—we hadn’t even had that conversation with our students yet. Even though it was just a few weeks, it was still hard to sit on information we knew but couldn’t share.
Those weeks didn’t feel good to me. It felt like there was a cloud over me that wouldn’t leave. I took that feeling to bed with me each night and woke up with it in the morning. Last week, I even got a cold sore, which I only get when I’m stressed. I know it was the stress of holding all of this inside that caused it. I couldn’t ever forget that there was something big that I knew and others didn’t.
And that got me thinking: There is a huge cost to being inauthentic.
I have to imagine that there are people—maybe even you—who are keeping things inside they aren’t sharing, and it’s eating away at them. Maybe it’s big news that they’ve been told they cannot share. Maybe it’s a passion that they are afraid to say out loud because it would mean making changes in their life. Maybe they aren’t happy in their role or job. Maybe they want to sell their business. Maybe they want to share whatever it is they are holding onto, but they don’t have an environment where they feel safe to share it. There are so many things we hide, and we have so many reasons for hiding them. But what is the cost of that?
Now, I realize there may be things we just aren’t ready to share. I certainly get that. When I first had the idea for Student Made, I had to think about it on my own first to get clear on what I really wanted. At that very early stage, I didn’t feel like I was hiding anything; I felt like I was exploring so that I could then share what I found in my exploration. It was the way I handled this transition after that point that has given me pause. I’ll be honest with you: I’ve asked myself if waiting those few weeks was the right thing, and I still don’t know if it was. At the end of the day, I put my people in a place of being inauthentic: Our leadership team had to hold on to this information as we tried to figure things out. But I didn’t see any other way, so I’m not sure if I have an answer there. What I’m thinking about now is how I almost made the decision not to be externally authentic about our choice.
In December, when we mapped out our tentative plan for Student Made, I decided we would reveal our transition to the world on May 9th, our anniversary. When I told my coach, he challenged me: “Why not make the announcement sooner, while you are still working on the transition?” He was gently holding up a mirror to remind me of my values. At first, I couldn’t comprehend that. Tell the world before we figure it out? Who does that? It took me less than a minute to snap out of it and say, “Oh my goodness… You are right! Why would I EVER think to wait and reveal the news? That is the OPPOSITE of being authentic. We have to announce it first, before we’ve figured it out. There’s no other way to do it.”
So here I am, someone who values authenticity more than anything, and my natural inclination was to hold onto our news until we had it all figured out. And now, I think, thank goodness. I can’t imagine holding onto this feeling I’ve had over the last few weeks until May. I think about what that choice would have done to our people. How would our leadership team feel, having to hold on to that for so long? We’d have to tell our students before May… so what, they would be holding onto this information while in our clients’ homes? And then what, we’d tell our clients in May, right as they have to make a transition? And then we’d tell you? All while working to spread our message of human, authentic leadership? That certainly doesn’t add up.
I know that if I had sat with that plan longer before I shared it with my coach, I wouldn't have felt good about it, and I would have realized it went against our values. But it’s scary to think that my first inclination was to approach this in a way that was inauthentic.
I don’t think I’m alone. I’ve seen it show up in so many ways with so many people: You don’t like your job, but you want to wait until you find a new one before you resign. You want to sell your business, but you want to find a buyer first before sharing the news. You have a big change that will impact a lot of people, but you wait to tell them until right before it takes place so that you don’t lose them in the meantime. I could go on and on.
Look, I’m not here to judge. I understand that there are lots of circumstances that may warrant not sharing information when we first know it. But in general, I do believe that many humans, leaders, and organizations approach challenges in an inauthentic way, thinking it will hurt or cost less, when really it hurts or costs more. So then, that got me thinking… Why? Why do we sometimes choose to be inauthentic?
Because there’s also a cost to authenticity.
Let’s look at the potential consequences of our decision to reveal the news now instead of waiting until May 9th: It could devalue the sale of the cleaning business, if we decide to find a buyer. Telling our clients may have upset them, and maybe they will find another cleaning service now instead of waiting until May 9th. Telling our students could have made them want to find other jobs, instead of waiting to see how this all plays out. Our community may be upset about our new direction and abandon us. The world now knows our dream, and that means the world will also know if we fail to reach our dream. We are opening ourselves up to the opinions of others. Now that it’s out there, we can’t take it back. Again, I could keep going.
These are all real fears that have crossed my mind. If you’ve ever struggled with a decision like this, similar fears may have crossed your mind, too.
The catch is that when it comes to authenticity vs. inauthenticity, more often than not, there’s a cost to both. So how do we choose?
I think it boils down to this: Which cost can you live with? For me, I couldn’t live with the cost of not being true to myself. I couldn’t live with the cost of asking my people to withhold information for months. I couldn’t live with the cost of living under a cloud of inauthenticity. I was willing to accept the costs of being authentic because to me, the cost of not being so was far greater.
Last week, when we finally revealed the news and I banished that cloud for good, I knew in my heart that it didn’t matter if my worst fears came true. What matters is that we’re now handling this transition in a way that is 100% true to ourselves and feels 100% right. And thankfully, so far, my fears haven’t come true: Our news has been met with love and support. Sure, a few clients were sad. A few team members were shocked and needed time to process the news. A few of our friends in the cleaning industry were bummed. And maybe announcing this decision now has affected the amount we could earn in a sale. But you know what? I feel free. We feel free. There’s nothing to hide. Everyone knows everything. We are living with integrity. We are living our values. And that is the best feeling ever.
In my last post, I asked you a question: What do you want? What do you really, really want?
Maybe you are past exploration. Maybe you know what you want and you can see it clearly. Maybe you have a cloud over you because you are keeping a secret. My question for you this week is this: What would happen if you said it out loud? Is the cost of authenticity really greater than all that comes along with what you are holding onto?
I hope this comes across with the love that I’m intending it to. I’m grateful to those who challenged me, and I want to challenge you, too.
Big hugs,
Kristen
PS: Join us for our LIVE show this Wednesday (and every Wednesday!) at 11 a.m. ET, where our leadership team and I get REAL. We share everything from news and stories from behind-the-scenes of our pivot to what we’re learning, what we’re struggling with as leaders, and how we’re meeting this unprecedented moment in our history as a company. You can register here: https://bit.ly/3kWe2kT. It’s the same link each week. Hope to see you there!
