Empower Your Tribe to Manage Your Career
The experiences of independent contractors as they relate to the realities of modern labor
Photo by National Cancer Institute On Unsplash
Show me someone who has mastered the new workplace and who sees uncertainty as an opportunity
Juliet, who was not known by her real name, described a trying time in her career as “inhumanely exciting.”. ”
Lucy had quit her full-time job in government service to follow her love of sculpting. Her abilities were hesitant. Setting up a company to sell her artwork was something she had never done before. She was frequently alone herself. She remarked, “It felt absolutely real, absolutely honest, and absolutely truthful. ” She experienced both the excitement and the risk of independence. “I was really impoverished. At times, I wasn’t even sure how I was going to buy for groceries. Something would surface
Making ends meet, even while doing what you love, would be the stuff of many people’s nightmares. However, the two went together for Juliet. She insisted that her work would not have been as aggressive and innovative as it was if she had achieved success too quickly, as some of her peers had done. She would turn down the offer of a paid residency at a prominent college years later because she was afraid that the perks and pressures of an institutional affiliation would make her job less demanding
In the art world, tales like the young lady’s have long been prevalent. Today, however, people from a wide range of businesses may either share a similar tale or connect to hers. For a study of knowledge and creative workers who made independence work for them, Sue Ashford, Amy Wrzesniewski, and I have gathered a lot of these experiences in recent years. Similar stories to those of the artists we interviewed were told to us by independent journalists, consultants, designers, software engineers, and executive coaches. That is, tales of persistent uncertainty, acrid loneliness, and creative effort. Still, the majority of them asserted that they wouldn’t have it any other way, much like Juliet. They were free, even though they could be unpleasant
I have to admit that first I was dubious. To me, those tales were reassuring delusions that filled the hole left by stable work. Precariousness is also present in companies, although it is frequently transient there, associated with a rapid transition or the early stages of a person’s career. However, for independent contractors, precariousness is a chronic condition, regardless of experience or prior accomplishment
However, I would assume that. I’m surrounded by research and opinion groups at an university that still consider not having a full-time job in an organization to be a kind of deprivation
On another thinking, though, wouldn’t many of our most intense desires — such as freedom, respect, safety, and love — be considered illusions? Would life be worth living without them, even if they were? Moreover, why are we so determined to ignore the fact that companies may also deprive and perhaps even abuse their workers?
My perception of independent workers’ stories as fabrications decreased as I gained a better understanding of their perspective on the world. Even if they were illusions, they were exposing the realities of contemporary labor and the truth of the individuals who told them
According to sociologist Anthony Giddens, “the capacity of maintaining a particular narrative going” is what gives us an identity in a changeable workplace. Although we may be taught as children that we may become anything we want to be, this is rarely the case. The only person we can become is one whose story she can continue to tell and act out in the world
When seen in this light, the capacity to believe and act on our delusions is a valuable and practical gift. (That capacity is sometimes known as “power. ”) The most crucial question is not whether our favorite self-stories are false, but rather what purpose they serve — that is, what it takes to maintain their authenticity
According to my study, the most valuable and beneficial of our illusions is the belief that we are masters, capable of overcoming hardship, experiencing freedom, and helping others. Being a master of oneself is more than just a source of pride. In a time when most people have strong attachments to their jobs but are less devoted to their employers, it is an useful asset and insurance policy
Nowadays, very few of us expect our employers to provide lifelong employment guarantees. Whether we like it or not, we are all independent workers in that sense. Talent in many organizations is defined by mobility: those who have plenty of alternatives elsewhere are the ones that organizations are frequently most anxious to retain, and those who feel the safest are those who know they can go
These individuals go to considerable lengths to maintain and broaden those alternatives. For instance, although companies frequently provide leadership development opportunities to employees they wish to keep on staff, Jennifer Petriglieri, Jack Wood, and I discovered in one study that these managers used these programs to increase their employability, which made them feel more safe and valuable in the marketplace
Despite their apparent differences, corporate managers and freelancers have a lot in common. Beneath their desire for mobility and independence, they both aspire to become masters of themselves. A person in control of their professional path or level of productivity at work. Master of one’s professional life at the end
The benefit of having a magnificent self is that it shields us from the isolation and unpredictability that come with working alone or relocating from one job to another (or city to city). It encourages us to assume accountability for our education and output. It boosts our self-esteem and productivity. It is valuable because it turns us from being victims of our circumstances into agents of our own fate
Here’s the catch, though. We cannot become and remain masters of ourselves by ourselves. In addition to taking pleasure in their expertise, the two groups of people my colleagues and I investigated made sure to build relationships that enabled them to maintain and relish their autonomous and mobile work lives. Despite their nomadic lifestyle, they need a tribe
Although they viewed networking as a necessary evil, the majority of them swore by its benefits. They were always conscious that they had to continue, that each new discussion might either promote or impede their work, that it could become a source of income, encouragement, or disappointment. They were tense because of this uncertainty
The persons we investigated frequently talked about having a close-knit community, generally a small group of people, that helped them cope with the stress of their professional life, in contrast to their wide-ranging networks. They weren’t for sale or on display with those folks