Here's how you can cultivate leadership skills in temporary and contract work through executive coaching.

Adaptability and flexibility are crucial in contract and temporary work settings. Being highly attuned to the evolving environment—rational, commercial, and political—is essential to navigate successfully and avoid pitfalls. As a temporary worker, you must be vigilant about the organizational, functional and structural power dynamics that can influence your role and the trajectory of your projects. Understanding these dynamics allows you to adjust your strategies and actions effectively. This keen awareness helps you anticipate changes and align your efforts with both the immediate needs and the broader goals of the organization, ensuring that your contributions are relevant and impactful in a fluid, often complex professional landscape.

Na minha experiência vivemos em um mundo dinamico onde o tempo todo temos coisas novas. A única certeza que podemos ter é que as mudan?as nunca terminar?o, ent?o necessitamos estar preparados para aproveitar ao máximo

Character Strengths: like flexibility, resilience, and adaptability can be likened to leaders' core development. These strengths help maintain balance and stability, no matter how the ground shifts. By focusing on these core strengths, you can learn to embrace the fluid nature of temporary roles, adapting to new environments with ease and confidence. Character Skills: like quick decision- making, effective communication, and strategic thinking are akin to specific exercises that target and enhance particular muscle groups. These skills enable you to apply your strengths in various scenarios, ensuring that you can adjust your strategies in response to changing work conditions. This is how character strengths and skills work together.

Setting personal development goals when primarily working in a contract role is critical. It's all too easy to become swept up in ensuring others' priorities are realized. This is part of your job, and one you should embrace, but I advise clients to set aside time each week and then, each quarter, to ensure they've set blocks of time and have a written plan to look at their own leadership development.

Setting clear goals is essential for leadership development in temporary and contract roles. These targets enable you to create a focused growth plan that aligns with your current role's demands. To optimize this process: Continuously reassess: Periodically revisit your goals, adjusting them to reflect evolving responsibilities and opportunities. Seek feedback: Solicit input from colleagues, supervisors, and your executive coach to gauge your growth and identify areas for improvement. Apply learned skills: Implement newly acquired skills in your work and track your progress. By setting specific goals for leadership development, every temporary and contract role becomes a valuable opportunity for an important step forward in your career.

Build trust quickly. Trust forms the backbone of short-term engagements, ensuring both parties feel secure and valued. Demonstrating credibility is the first step; show your skills and experience confidently to gain confidence from others. Reliability is also critical—consistently meet deadlines and commitments to show you can be depended upon. Additionally, fostering intimacy by being open and genuine helps others feel connected to you, making you seem less like an outsider and more like a team member. Focus on the client’s needs rather than personal gains to avoid appearing self-interested. This approach not only builds trust but also creates a foundation for lasting professional relationships, even in temporary settings.

Contract work is a wonderful way to expand your network, because you have access to more people than if you were simply working on one place. It's a great idea to send thank you notes to the colleagues with whom you worked when your contract is over, and then, to make a note to reach out periodically to check in. LinkedIn is a wonderful resource for this, and makes staying in touch quite easy.

I advise clients (and myself!) to take one day every quarter as a mini-retreat, to look at longer term goals, prioritize projects, and review the past quarter with the specific aim of determining what worked best and what didn't work at all.

In contract roles, regularly soliciting feedback is crucial to ensure alignment with project goals and client expectations. By understanding others' perspectives, you can tailor your approach to meet specific needs, enhancing your adaptability and reducing any misconceptions about self-orientation. This practice builds trust by demonstrating openness to change and commitment to the project’s success. It is essential for teamwork. Asking for feedback on what is working well and what could be improved helps pinpoint areas for enhancement. This not only affirms your value but also prevents potential misunderstandings or trust issues, making your contribution even more effective and appreciated in the dynamic environment of contract work.

As leadership styles can vary widely from autocratic to servant leadership, it’s essential to role model effective leadership. 4 ways to role model effective temporary leadership: 1) Leading with a clear purpose by defining vision, mission, goals, and expectations clearly; 2) Empowering participation by fostering an inclusive environment that maximizes team output; 3) Aiming for consensus to ensure maximum alignment while leveraging diversity, equity, and inclusion; 4) Directing the process by having a firm grasp of the overall project roadmap, including milestones, roles, responsibilities, and utilizing advanced project management tools. This approach ensures your leadership resonates irrespective of the organizational culture.

Tengo la concepción de que uno mismo puede liderar con visión gerencial el desarrollo de un puesto que no tenga personas a cargo. Puede ser una pasantía o un empleo por contrato a un plazo determinado. Porque cuando hablo de una visión gerencial, me refiero a una modalidad de gestión orientada a objetivos, que establece planificaciones, que entabla acuerdos con otros para asegurar los resultados, y que va realizando un monitoreo del avance de los proyectos para detectar desvíos y generar soluciones con rápida reacción. Concebirse como el gerente del propio puesto permite tener un rendimiento destacado que facilita la continuidad de la carrera profesional.