Why startup founder Lucy Wark argues you shouldn’t bring your whole self to work

Lucy Wark is comfortable talking about sex. Being the founder of Normal — an Australian sex toy retailer that focuses on inclusivity and education — this isn’t surprising. Challenging the norm, being open and ‘authentic’ is par for the sextech course.

Taking the stage at SXSW Sydney this week, Wark announced the launch of her new startup Fuzzy, an online learning portal that offers courses and tools to help navigate your career, from negotiating job offers and raises to stakeholder and project management.

Listening to Wark, it was clear Fuzzy was born, at least in part, from the inequity that is rampant when it comes to careers, especially in the startup and tech spheres.

Being entirely real is something Wark says she used to advocate for in the work environment, but that has since changed.

“Over time, particularly time spent in the startup ecosystem where you have the combination of a very informal environment, early-stage companies and an existing gender imbalance, I’ve actually sort of come to the opposite view. My work views have evolved around bringing your whole self to work,” Wark said during the Three Elephants in a room: Sex, money and power panel at SXSW Sydney.

The panel was all about being purposely provocative while discussing these three topics, particularly in regards to how they play out in the tech and startup ecosystems.

In that space, VC and founders alike regularly promote being ‘authentic’, often as a way to differentiate from ‘traditional’ professional environments.

Normal co-founder Lucy Wark. Source: Women’s Agenda

Bringing your authentic self to work ‘unequally rewards people’

“Being a sex tech founder and speaking to investors, I’ve found that to be asking everyone in the room to bring their whole authentic self is not necessarily a good thing. Formality is protective,” Wark said.

And she has a damn good reason for why she has come to that conclusion.

“Formalities prevents a male investor talking to me about his porn addiction while I was pitching,” Wark said of her experience in the space.

“That’s an extreme example, most people’s daily business is not sex. But I have found that the emphasis in the startup ecosystem on leveraging everything about yourself to connect with others — or the notion that formality and structure of corporate settings kill culture and kill innovation — I think that’s a bit misplaced.”

Wark said the call to be your authentic self at work, especially in the tech community where it tends to happen more, unequally rewards people.

Wark went onto describe helping people from diverse backgrounds, many within the tech community, with learning to negotiate and advocate for themselves because, just like those ‘traditional’ environments that some startups say they’re trying to be different from, they are left struggling against the ‘boys club’.

These people have spoken to Wark about how they see colleagues, founders and leaders in the Australian tech and startup communities who share similar characteristics or backgrounds, even going to the same high school in some cases.

“I see those people being able to bring their full selves to work in a way that is everything from fine to bad, and being rewarded for it, and being able to win friendships and networks and get deals and are afforded more privilege in their work environment because of it.”

In many cases this has left others knowing that advocacy for their own authenticity and equity won’t be received positively.

And so Wark launched Fuzzy to help better equip people with diverse backgrounds with the tools to negotiate for themselves in the workplace. And she no longer guides people to be their authentic selves in the workplace. But that also doesn’t mean being fake. Instead, she invites us to be more considered.

“Be an intentional, sustainable and effective version of yourself at work based on who you are and your strengths. It’s not the same thing as bringing her exact private self work,” Wark explained.

Christina Hobbs, the co-founder and CEO of Verve Super, was also on the panel, and she too questioned the insistence on a particular brand of ‘authenticity’ in the startup space.

“I remember going into a pitch once and I called up someone I knew had pitched this investor. ‘They will want to see your authentic self… X cried in the meeting and got this amount of investment’,” Hobbs recalled.

“And I was like, ‘Well, I can’t really do that because that doesn’t feel very authentic’. I’ve put a lot of time reflecting on what it is in this investor’s nature that makes them want to see somebody cry, telling them a story about their personal life, to hand them money.”

Co-founder and chief executive of Verve Super Christina Hobbs. Supplied.

Power in authenticity

Jessy Wu, investments principal at AfterWork Ventures, was also on the panel and shared her views on authenticity, especially when it comes to power in the workplace

“There is a certain power that you can come into as an individual employee or founder when you’re not afraid of your own light,” Wu said during the panel.

She explained this by saying power tends to take two forms: borrowed and earned.

“Borrowed power is power that is conferred to you by the position that you’ve been appointed to, or elected to. It’s the power to make decisions or power to exercise control, the power to allocate capital as a result of holding a certain position,” Wu said.

“Owned power is power that emanates from who you are as a person, how you influence people, how you have to utilise skills or knowledge to achieve a certain outcome.”

Jessu Wu of AfterWork Ventures. Source: Supplied

Wu said that in employment relationships, most power starts off as borrowed due to your position in a company. But over time that can transform into owned power as you build relationships, trust and skills.

“Employers have an incentive to limit the amount of power that employees turn into owned power,” Wu said.

“And this is particularly true of professional services, where the incentive is to turn everyone in that organisation into a perfectly fungible unit of labor, who’s able to be a vessel for that organisation’s power. They want to limit individual employee’s ability to put a key client relationship at risk or to steal that client or to poach employees.”

Wu went onto recall a story from when she was a second-year consultant and got feedback about being too independent and too persistent.

“Is this a piece of feedback that’s geared towards making me a more formidable operator? Or is it a piece of feedback that’s geared towards making me a better cog in the machine? Perhaps one that does not squeak as loudly,” Wu asked.

Wu recommended that people think beyond being a more useful vessel for their manager, and instead consider how can they create their own power and take it to their next role.

“Become indispensable in an organisation. Don’t tell everyone your IP. Don’t be reducible to a handover document. Create a personal brand within that organisation,” Wu said.

“Absolutely you don’t owe your workplace your authentic self, but perhaps you owe it to yourself to not let your workplace dull down that version of you.”