4 things executives could learn from top freelancers

I am not a business coach. But as life in corporate America shifts, I’ve become a version of one to many of my C-suite clients who now find themselves in a career holding pattern. As the ground shifts beneath these executives, they are suddenly mighty curious about the lessons I’ve learned from four decades of navigating the kind of uncertainty freelancers deal with all the time.

Perhaps a new CEO is minimizing your role or changing your title in order to engineer your exit without a big payout. Maybe you’re waiting for stock to vest or struggling to find the right new position before moving on. In any case, you are uncomfortable in this unfamiliar role: You feel stuck, instead of just in neutral.

Because executives are high achievers whose careers have often been linear progressions, they view success in black-and-white terms. My job is to help them live in the grays, using counsel based on the self-reliance and resilience I’ve earned in my 40 years as a freelancer.

Executive tip: Save yourself

I tell my C-suite clients that I had to learn the hard way that you can’t care more than they do. (“They” being whoever is in the hierarchy you’re dealing with.) Whether your instincts and experience on projects are not being valued because of CEO ego, corporate groupthink, or data blindness, you job isn’t to save that project, but to save yourself. Have the self-respect to hold your ideas for the right audience. It is impossible to inspire the disinterested, and trying will only make you feel like a failure when you never had a chance.

Executive tip: Extract value

To paraphrase Hunter Thompson, you bought the ticket, now take the ride. You’ve done the work to earn your spot in the room, so now you have to find ways to continue to extract value. This is not Quiet Quitting. It’s actively accepting where you are right now and putting effort into finding the benefits that are undoubtably there—because there’s always a worthwhile takeaway, even in difficult situations. When there’s a lack of positive engagement with your hierarchical C-suite colleagues, turn your energy toward the people who report to you—those who may hold your experience in greater esteem. Call for general brainstorming sessions just to hear their ideas, participate in their project development at earlier stages instead of waiting for fully baked ideas to hit your desk, make the time to be a better mentor. Not only will this enrich your current situation, when you go off to another executive position, you may find yourself in need of their skills, which you now better understand; and their loyalty, which you’ve now earned.

Executive tip: Incremental accomplishments

To equate your own success with the successful completion of an idea that’s accomplished by a group will break your heart. You have to find value in incremental accomplishment. When you are not able to control a project’s final execution, it’s useful to break your idea-to-implementation process down into stages and acknowledge your accomplishment at each interval (to yourself). That way, even when the idea doesn’t work the way you envisioned—and it rarely does—you will still feel some sense of satisfaction, instead of judging your own success by the secondary work of others.

Executive tip: Highlight reel

Be sure to create a highlight reel. In addition to the detailed multipage résumés they already have (which most people won’t ever read completely), I urge my old clients to develop a one-pager that focuses on what they do best. Their super power. This clarity helps them—as well as their headhunters—direct their job search. To make the information easier and more interesting to read, I always suggest they hire a designer. A good one. Because these days, you are your own retail footage. Invest in your storefront.