The Executive Challenge Nobody Prepared You For: Leading People Who Don’t Work for You

Guest post by Sara Daw, who is Group CEO of The CFO Centre and The Liberti Group, and the author of Strategy and Leadership as Service – How the Access Economy Meets the C-Suite, which explores the fractional leadership trend.

It’s official – our modern workforce is blended. More companies are made up not only of full-time employees but also freelancers, contractors, gig workers, and fractional leaders.

Not all work now fits the “one person, one job” approach. Instead, roles are unbundling across a wider workforce. It’s all about accessing the right skill, at the right time, from anywhere.

Leading People Who Don’t Work for You

As a leader, if you want to build a business that lasts, you need to rethink how you engage with everyone contributing to your mission – not just those on the payroll. So, what do the different players of the blended workforce bring to the table, and how can you lead them as one?

The blended workforce

Our workforce now consists of four main groups of people:

1. Core Employees – stable and committed individuals on the payroll
2. Fractional C-Suite – flexible, strategic and innovative leaders who work with a portfolio of companies on a pay-as-you-go basis
3. Technical Project Freelancers – flexible and skills-rich individuals like your digital nomads who complete project-based work
4. Temporary Contract Workers & Outsourcing – efficient and flexible talent who complete lighter-skilled tasks at high volume

This blended workforce is a strategic approach to meet a business’s needs effectively over time, especially as the skills we need in our organisations are increasingly only available in the freelance market. Working together, these wider teams can adapt to changing demands and provide specialist expertise quickly and flexibly to maximise productivity. So, how can you lead this wider workforce together as one?

See it as a relationship, not a resource

It’s tempting to see external talent as merely a temporary resource. These individuals complete an isolated volume of work, taking care of less ‘important’ tasks than your core employees because it’s less risky. But to truly capitalise on the benefits of a blended workforce requires a mindset shift away from this thinking. As a leader, you must start seeing the wider workforce you engage with as part of your workforce.

The key is building emotional relationships right from the first project. When you bring in external talent, familiarise them with your culture, the way you and your core employed teams work, and make the effort to learn about them and the way they work too. That way, the relationship moves from transactional to collaborative, with every player more invested in achieving desired outcomes together.

Measure the outputs, not the inputs

Traditional and contract talent alike want flexibility in their work lives to choose how they complete tasks and achieve goals. This requires leaders to shift their focus to measure outputs, not inputs. Rather than getting caught up over hours worked, give your blended workforce the flexibility to decide what way works best for them to deliver the work that needs to be done.

As a leader, it is still your responsibility to set the direction, parameters and purpose of the work. But once this is done, and everyone is on the same page, leave them to it while being available for support if needed. This way, a deeper level of shared trust is developed, and individuals feel a stronger sense of control in the roles. This increases each worker’s interest, involvement and creativity – which is vital for a functional blended workforce.

Conclusion

Moving forward, blended workforces will become the norm for businesses. Each type of worker will bring their own skills and ways of working – it’s up to leaders to bring harmony. By building emotional relationships and measuring outputs with flexibility, leaders can create one wider culture and team working collaboratively towards a shared mission.

Sara Daw is Group CEO of The CFO Centre and The Liberti Group, and the author of Strategy and Leadership as Service – How the Access Economy Meets the C-Suite, which explores the fractional leadership trend.

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