Leadership Skills Matter for Freelancers

Many freelancers believe leadership skills don’t matter much to independent operators working remotely or on their own.

After all, freelancers don’t have anyone to manage but themselves. In fact, a lot of freelancers believe a big advantage to freelancing is not being distracted by leadership and management responsibilities and tasks.

Based on my experience, as a part-time freelancer for much of the past 5 to 10 years, Leading to Win leadership skills and the 5E behaviors can make a big difference in freelancer effectiveness, satisfaction and success.

engage, enable, execute.

Three of the 5E’s are particularly important for freelancers: engage, enable and execute.

Knowing how, when, where and with whom to ENGAGE with can be the difference between getting the job and not getting the job. Skillful engagement can result in better pricing and better terms for your contract work. Smart follow up engagement can capture invaluable feedback and lead to another assignment and/or another reference.

Knowing how to ENABLE yourself to perform at your best and deliver your best work product consistently and reliably every time is an incredibly important self-leadership skill. Do you know yourself well enough to really understand how, where and when you do your best work? Do you have the discipline to schedule your days/weeks/months around those optimum work performance occasions and situations?

Often times, freelancers are on their own. There is no one else to manage them — no boss, no colleague, no teammate to provide discipline, schedules and structure to ensure the work gets done well and on-time.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, EXECUTE is the single biggest determinant of success or failure. The freelancer is judged solely by the content, quality, usefulness and actionability of the work product. A freelancer doesn’t get any personality, process, or style points. The only thing that matters is the work.

Leadership matters just as much for freelancers as it does for CEOs of nonprofits and small businesses.