50 Shades of Plural

Have you noticed how being an NED or a Coach has become the recent trend? It can be a helpful step to a happy and rewarding plural long-term career, but these are just a couple of  many options. Read on to decide what’s right for you. Maybe I keep noticing it because I am in this space, but it feels like more and more people are wanting #NED positions or are looking to re-train as a #coach. Just this year I’ve been on three panels talking about becoming a NED and earlier in the year was involved in a survey1 across senior business leaders, which showed over 1/3rd had switching into something ‘plural’ as a near-term plan. This was a scale of interest in plural that I wasn’t expecting.This interest in ‘plural-ness’ is a journey I started 8 years ago, when I got my first NED position and shortly after decided to invest in becoming a coach. For once I was ahead of the zeitgeist! Both of these decisions I made whilst still in an executive career and they have made my transition into a plural portfolio career easier.But what is a plural portfolio career and how do you decide what is right for you? When you’ve been in binary career all your life, the prospect of going plural can be daunting and it is worth having a long run up at it. It is also best to think about being plural using the ‘fruit salad’ metaphor Mark Evans has coined. As plurals we all have a different blend of ‘fruit salad’, which is very much driven by who we are, so if you are to embark on a plural journey  start by understanding what motivates you.Don’t just jump on the bandwagon and do what others are doing. As my old coach @Piers Fallowfield-Cooper said to me recently, ‘does the world really need another coach?’ 
Coaching is of course very powerful, and I have taken his comment slightly out of context, but his point was too many experienced leaders are giving up their core expertise to become coaches, when they should retain and re-use these skills, with coaching being one tool. To help to start tease out what your fruit salad should be, I found a simple 2x2 matrix @Chris Clark developed is useful. What you choose for each axis is driven by what motivates you, but I liked the two he chose: the x-axis was inner directed and about what activities he found fun and fulfilling today. The y-axis was outer directed and what gave him significance and status (the simple model is on the attached presentation). Think about your axes and what are the activities which fit onto this. You may find your axes are the same as Chris, or they could be intellectual stimulation, peer group recognition, purpose/giving back, or local belonging and connection. Look then at what appears in each quadrant. You need to your fruit salad to have the things you love. Having had a bash at this 2x2 assessment, you can then layer on top of this more about you. What type of work and working practices will always get the best version of you and not leaving you feeling frustrated, anxious or alone. I’ve come up with 6 areas to consider: 

1. How directive to you want to be?

I flag this upfront to recognise the many frustrated coaches I have come across. Without going into the coaching theory, there are six style of intervention2, which can be summarised as authoritative (you lead) or facilitative (you help others lead). The authoritative style is more directive, you confront, prescribe and inform. The facilitative style is more supportive, exploratory and releasing, helping others to think. Being a coach means you need to read when it is appropriate to be authoritative vs facilitative, but the clue is in the name, you are coaching not leading.  Whilst you may ask your client’s permission to offer direct advise, you can’t take control and remove your clients their ability to think for themselves. I think everyone needs to have coaching skills in their toolkit, but don’t become a coach if deep down your strong preference is lead and direct.

2. How do you want to manage your time?

Being an executive means you are fully employed throughout the day and whilst you have the weekend and holidays free, the bulk of your time is committed and inflexible. As a plural you are your own boss and depending on your choices you could be fully flexible or more rigid. The reality is many plurals wake up each day with nothing in their schedule, which can be terrifying for some or exciting for others. You need to decide how much pure independence and flexibility you want, compared to how much rigidity and structure you need. Full flexibility could for instance mean being a freelance consultant, or in contrast you could be a NED or Trustee, where for the year ahead meetings are defined. Of course it’s never quite so black and white; freelance consultants can’t necessarily turn on work when they want it (unless they are brilliant) and NED/Trustees are often needed inbetween board meetings or for various committees.  The point is think about the level of flexibility or structure you need.

3. How stable does your income need to be?

If you are going to go plural you need to be confident about your financial situation, so it is worth talking to an IFA first. Being self-employed means you can manage tax differently, so you don’t need the same income levels as an executive, but you need the numbers to stack up. You then need to think how important a regular pay cheque is. As a FTE you can easily forget how the regular pay cheque comes in and life just rolls on. This isn’t necessarily the same as a plural. You can get some monthly security if you get a paid NED, Chair or Trustee position, or agree a retained with a company (eg fractional CMO), but you may, like most plurals, just ride the wave and accept there will be good months and bad months. Thinking this through before you move into a plural career, means so you can avoid panics from month to month.

4. How important is team belonging?

Leaving your executive world can mean leaving your team behind. You could suddenly feel on your own, and relying on your own self-confidence and personal motivation. Going plural can mean no year-end appraisal or team feedback to boost your confidence and you can miss being part of a team. To counter this you can become part of different communities which can help  give you this sense of team, but it is also worth thinking about plural roles and how these give you belonging too. Being a NED or Trustee means you are part of a team and need to foster relationships, albeit these are less involved than at an executive level. Similarly joining an existing partnership, gives you peers to talk to, or you could become an associate or brand ambassador for existing businesses. You need to evaluate how much team belonging you need and how you will nurture this.

5. How important is your ego and identity?

As an executive you have a title and are able to introduce yourself as part of something bigger. You are the Chief something or other for something or other. If you are independent, how will you define yourself? How comfortable are you being you, or do you need to feel a part of something else and have a title? Having a non-executive role with an organisation gives you a title and an identity, but you can do this in other ways too (see point 4 above). It is worth thinking through who you really are and how you need to position yourself. You can read more about this in Working Identity3 by Herminia Ibarra.

6. How important is execution and delivering results?

Finally, how much focus do you want on delivery. As an executive you are likely to have got a kick out of thinking about the strategy, developing the execution, and then monitoring the results. You can replicate this slightly by becoming a fractional CMO or a consultant, but leaving a full corporate job means you are leaving this full end-to-end responsibility behind. NEDs as their name suggests aren’t executive and Coaches, as explained in point 1, need to be careful about becoming too directive. Both of these roles can of course still feel the triumph and tragedy when things go well or badly, but the business-client engagement is different. Having said this, there are shades of grey around this. I have found there is a growing gap of pseudo-NEDs, people who lean in and support more overtly from time to time and also mentor-coaches, people who again give direction when asked and appropriately contracted. This is the space where I like to live, although I recognise purist NED and Coaches will hate this!

As you answer these questions and think about the best version of you, you can start to define your fruit salad. To help this process, have a look at the attached charts. This roughly shows how different plural roles compare of these 6 questions. This is by no means perfect, but hopefully a helpful start. For wider inspiration, it is worth read Jon Stokes and Jan Hall’s Changing Gears. In here you will find inspiring stories on people who changed roles significantly.

For more information and support about career change please reach out to me at sideminds.com.  Sideminds is there to help executive manage transition from job to job. This maybe helping you as you move between roles or as you spin out and try something new.


1 Marketing Academy Fellowship May 2023
2 John Heron’s Six Category Intervention Analysis
3 Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra 2004