Authority: Title vs Trust
The shift in authority for executives moving from corporate to being free of their masters' lance.
I’ve been virtually hanging out a bit with fractional leaders lately, and so LinkedIn’s algorithm seized upon this interest and has been filling my feed with advice for the fractional C suite.
Some of that advice has been about making the transition, from senior in-house executive to being a consultant, advisor, fractional, non-executive director, coach, mentor, whatever this new role is - free of a master’s lance.
As of course, the word “freelance” comes from “a medieval mercenary warrior or knight who was not sworn to any lord's service”. You knew that.
Becoming a mercenary knight involves a repositioning, specifically of the executive’s personal brand, to appeal to the folks they’d like to do the mercenary knighting for.
And this is about authority, specifically moving from having authority (as you do when you successfully shinnied your way up the greasy corporate pole) to being an authority, showing folks that you are the right person to call when they need some knighting done.
Being in authority is clear, governed by an org chart and hundreds of years of industrialized, organized labor; being an authority is a little more ephemeral and in the judgment of others.
I have some experience with the opposite of this. At one point in my career, I was considered an authority, as I had the word “analyst” on my business card. I then went back into a vendor leadership role, and while internally I had authority with a fancy title, externally I had been stripped of my “being an authority” badge and gun (maybe that should have been lance) as I was considered a vendor shill, and my ideas were no longer to be trusted.
And who could blame them?
The uncomfortable truth is that, when making the transition from corporate to freelance or fractional, nobody gives a f**k about what you did (though that gives some credibility); they care about what you can do for them now.
This is where our brave knights need to do the work, reframing years of lord’s service listed on a resume and presenting it generously as something genuinely useful for others.