Taylor Swift, cultural glue, and the value of outsourced talent that feels in-house

Lets start with a story of two people - one an outsourced programmer, the other an in-house project manager. Otherwise separated by hundreds of miles and a national border, they arrange to meet in yet another country, to see TS live and share a moment of Swiftie bonding. Why is this important? Because it is evidence of two people who might otherwise have stayed in their silo and on the rails set out for them by their employers and contractors, coming together over a shared love or passion that transcended the borders of the role and task of their day jobs.

Often, outsourced teams and in-house teams, though supposedly working to the same end, remain unaligned, and unintegrated - siloed from each other.

This is to miss an opportunity for organizations trying to benefit from a hybrid talent strategy and the benefits of its integrated mix of talent. A lack of alignment and integration can lead to cultural friction, reduced performance, inefficiencies, and costly duplication and overlap.

It is also a missed opportunity for the outsourced contractor who might otherwise deliver far greater value to themselves and the increasing number of global organizations seeking to embrace an integrated talent strategy that fuses outsourced teams and in-house teams to the best effect.

Figuring out how to cross the bridge between outsourced and in-house and thereby make yourself far more attractive and valuable to the exponential talent trend that is sweeping the globe is a new imperative worth seizing.

By developing and improving your soft skills your capacity to engage, align, and bond yourself to the in-house teams you are working with beyond the job in front of you.

Yes, a large part of successful integration between outsourced and in-house teams relies on having been selected with sensitivity and consideration in the first place, to ensure you are already to some degree values and culture aligned. It also relies heavily on the contractor giving you access to the social and cultural layers and channels of the organization as well as the project, process, and system platforms your task or role requires.

But your ability to thrive in close proximity to in-house teams also has a lot to do with your own character and disposition, and your ability to empathize and socialize with your in-house colleagues beyond the day job.

How you behave in this burgeoning hybrid talent world can hugely influence how you blend with our in-house colleagues.
Working in isolation, mostly on very short-term projects that require little of yourself to be included in the process, can lead to bad behaviors and traits that can jar with talent who are fully immersed in their culture. Yes, as outsourced contractors we have something fresh to bring to the party, but in longer-term tasks, this cannot be at the cost of the social and cultural nature of the organization were working for.

So, how do you best understand and integrate with the social fabric of an organization beyond skills and deliverables?

Here are three ways in which, as an outsourced team member, you can start to get match fit and be part of a truly integrated team where the outsourced teams truly feel like an in-house team.

Knowledge is power. Insight is rocket fuel. Gather as much as you can, without the need to drop into industrial espionage. Do in-depth research on the company outsourcing your talents. Look not only at the About Us and Our Story parts. Check out their ExCo on Linked In. Look at their Annual Report see what theyre really committed to achieving their purpose and mission. Have a PoV as someone well may ask. Check out their competition whos hot and who's not and why. Look at their socials as far as possible. Speak to people you know who may have worked for them previously. Every little helps.

How you behave and engage in your first hybrid screen-meeting can have a seismic impact on your longer-term value and opportunity, and how the team leader or line manager perceives you beyond task or role fulfilment. Approach the meeting as if for an interview and remember, there is no camera off. Leaders and Managers, especially in high-performing organizations, are sensitive to the pandemic strategies of disengagement. Too many people claiming bad internet connections so we can sit in our pajamas eating ice cream while on a call with the CEO. It wont wash so try to avoid camera-off moments. Posture is also very important, both to you and to those looking at you. Try to sit square to your camera (and always try to avoid sitting sideways, doing emails off-screen, or making paper planes).

Assume that punctuality is a given. The nature of a lot of remote working allows a lot of flex on this - but this can be seen as inefficient by organizations that run on tight rails. Be on time the first time and then every time. It is respectful and efficient.

A lot of us like the sense of separation we get from sitting behind our screen-based social firewall - but it can lead to very anti-social behaviors, or dial-up existing ones in those of us less sociably minded.

This is not to say that integrating is just a popularity contest but empathetic engagement is vital to the glue of high-performing teams. If small talk isnt your thing, thats fine. But its worth reminding yourself that people who people like celebrate and utilize their openness, always: they ask questions, enquire after others; they use peoples first names where appropriate, they try to remember others like and dislikes, and they try to help in situations that are not strictly their responsibility. They are visibly and actively part of the team beyond their specific role and task mandate and gladly so.
Now, if that all sounds a little too Teachers Pet and youd rather stick spoons in your eyes than engage beyond the task itself, perhaps being part of an outsourced team trying to function like an in-house team is not the place for you.

Proper integration also requires the outsourced team to be sensitive to any energies and turbulence in the in-house team that may be coming from in, around and above it.

With contracted work done directly and individually, it is always only about the task in front of you. But when youre collaborating closely with an in-house team thats already fully immersed in the culture and politics of their organisation, often things arise or skew a meeting, task, or plan that are fuelled by agendas and frictions or challenges outside of your immediate teams remit. You cannot control these, but you can keep your antennae on and stay aware, so you dont get tripped up or drawn into something where you become stuck or part of the problem.

But of all the tripwires, the biggest one is the simplest: listening.

One of the more sociopathic tendencies a lot of remote and contracted workers can develop is an inability to truly listen, usually without even realizing they are doing so.

There are a few versions of this, the first being a kind of signal and noise approach, where you treat the meeting as noise, and only engage when a signal you recognize pops up for example, a task, skill word, your name, or a reference that you know directly affects or involves you.

Another version arises where you are simply waiting to say your piece a very closed, linear, and modal behaviour that shuts down a chance of more creative thinking.

The third, often difficult to avoid on long screen-based calls, is switching off entirely and thats just a bad look that never ends well. Remember that feeling when you were daydreaming at school, and the teacher asked you a question and you had no idea what they were talking about? Well, its the grown-up version of that.

As a seasoned contractor, clicking into a new role or team usually comes as second nature but integrating into the culture, values, behaviors, and working style of an in-house team takes work. It takes curiosity, empathy, sensitivity to others, and an ability to stay switched on to whats going on in the wider organization and that isnt always immediately obvious.

For the psychology geeks out there, all of the above can probably be explained to a more forensic degree using the Big 5 personality traits. Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism or OCEAN for short.

Now if you are contracted often and get good ratings, you can pretty much guarantee that you score highly in the Conscientiousness trait at its most basic level by being organized with an eye for details and awareness of others the basic functions of engaging in, doing and delivering a job, task or role. If you enjoy the constant source of new people and ideas contracting provides, or are in some form of creative role, you will find that you are also probably indexing high on the Openness trait to some degree.

BUT.

The areas which can become more problematic for seasoned contractors are the areas of Agreeableness (kindness/altruism/trust/affection) and Extraversion (sociability/assertiveness and high emotional expressiveness). Low scoring on these can hyper-drive high-scoring Neuroticism, which brings with it high levels of stress, work paranoia, and a loss of the ability to bounce back when things dont go as planned. Thats a recipe for disaster.

A simple first step? It is worth doing a little open and honest personal assessment of yourself prior to embarking on a potential contract where you will be expected to align, behave, and perform like an in-house team member. Take a note of the areas where you think it needs a little work, and then seek out some simple tools and tips to help you improve in those areas.
Not only will attending to this side of your engagement skills make any particular role or task you are contracted on far more exciting and interesting it may also secure more and better work for you in the future by gearing you up to take full advantage of the new wave of hybrid talent strategies that demand outsourced teams that feel like in-house teams.

Who knows, you may even get to see Taylor Swift. Your call.