Us vs. Them

I recently received a testimonial from a client of mine and one thing he mentioned was how the DotConnect team was effective in acting as an extension of his internal team it was like “no one would ever know they weren’t employees”. That got me to thinking about the gig economy, the consulting/contractor world that I’ve lived in for so long now. From my viewpoint, I never look at myself as the “outsider” to the clients I work with, yet sometimes they still do and often times candidates do as well. In fact, it’s quite the opposite for me. I fully immerse myself in my client’s world, so while I don’t get the fringe benefits, I definitely don’t draw a line in the sand in terms of how I support them or act on their behalf. Each day, I show up, I lean in, I learn, and I contribute more than just my time worked each day. I give what I want to get back as a partner. This isn’t a 40 hour work week, 9 to 5 gig. As a matter of fact, I’ve been offered many full-time opportunities with my clients through the course of my career. While I’ve been flattered, it was never something that I wanted to pursue for various reasons, but everyone is different. Some people really love being an employee for one company and some people do not. There are benefits and drawbacks to both situations.

So, what if we flipped the script and rather than “contractor” or “consultant” or “temporary support” or “interim” having a negative connotation, we were more inclusive of our contractor/consultant partners and armed them with more information instead of less. Another client said to me yesterday about one of our Recruiters, “he is doing great with about 60% of the information, imagine if we got him 90 or even 100% of it!”. I couldn’t agree more. In the current structure of the engagements we have, I am passionate about the “help us, help you” approach. Ultimately, if your team is made up of consultants, the more information you can share and the more inclusive your employee team is, the better results you will see. If we get away from the “us vs.them” conversation and act as one collective unit, imagine the successful outcomes for any business.