You’ve probably heard of the halo effect, where a generally positive gestalt is created around things or people with specific positive traits. For example, charismatic and articulate people who project confidence are viewed as more trustworthy and intelligent.

Take a second to think about this question: what color is your halo?

Or less figuratively, what do you think is the gestalt effect of how you are perceived in a client organization.

I got the idea for the question from a 1970s job-hunting classic called What Color is Your Parachute? According to author Richard Nelson Bolles, the title came about as a joke:

Years later, Bolles explained the book’s memorable title as his response at a business meeting in 1968 when someone told him that he and several co-workers were “bailing out” of a failing organization, prompting Bolles to joke, “What color is your parachute?”. “The question was just a joke,” he said, “I had no idea that it would take on all this additional meaning.”

It is interesting that a precipitate exit from a job in the industrial world is, by default, perceived as a catastrophic failure event that requires a parachute to survive. Even senior executives think in terms of “golden parachutes.”

One of the hardest mental shifts to make as an indie is letting go off this catastrophic failure mental model. You only need a parachute if you think you’re in a crashing airplane. If you don’t believe that exiting paycheck employment is like jumping out of an airplane, parachutes are moot.

As it happens, I’m in that situation right now. Next week, my 9-month fellowship at the Berggruen Institute will end. I’ll be back to full-time indie consulting starting May 15. Yet, though it’s a fraught time out there in the open economy, it doesn’t feel like I’m stepping out of a flying airplane without a parachute. To my pleasant surprise, I have enough confidence (and savings, and live cash flows, and active clients) that it feels like just stepping outdoors again, after a sabbatical indoors. The weather outside is bad, and things are probably going to get rough, but I’m not about to plummet to my death.

Certainly, there is risk involved in leaping out of paycheck employment, but in 2020, it is hardly leaping-out-of-a-plane level of risk. Or if it is, indies leap out not with parachutes, but with wings. Pandemic or no pandemic.

Halos over Parachutes

A parachute is for people who might fall to their deaths. Halos are for angels with wings who can sort of float in the air without an organization beneath their feet. Your future depends not on the color of your parachute but the color of your halo.

So a better question for the gig economy is this: what color is your halo?

Halos are very important in indie consulting, because they shape how you are perceived when you enter a client organization as an outsider, which is very different from entering it as an employee, as you’ll have learned if you’ve been at it for more than a few months.

In consulting work, it is important to be able to recognize a few important types of halos, including your own. Here is a picture of a handful:

Non-Indie Halos

Let’s take a quick inventory of the five non-indie halo types in the picture above:

1. Star Employee halo: This is the most basic kind of halo. The star employee harmonizes with the organizational background without blending in, is generally viewed positively, and sets the internal standard by which the halos of external parties are judged. The star employee is the hero of the organization. The halo color is gold, as in Golden Boy. I enjoyed a Golden Boy halo for a couple of years a decade ago. It was fun, and came with many privileges, but it is frankly an over-rated experience, since it tends to create limiting perceptions.

2. Big Consulting Firm halo: Employees of big consulting firms are the main external parties with recognized internal status (contractors and below-the-API staff are generally not “seen” at all). They tend to have somewhat robotic, one-size-fits-all, terminator-type halos. They project a mix of effective professionalism and intimidation (through borrowed authority of the CEO, and perception of involvement in things like layoffs). Their halo color is blue, as in blue chip. Big consulting firms are often seen as emissaries of the broader industry or market. There is a hint of benchmarking and judgment in the very presence of one of them in your workgroup.

3. Specialist Consultant halo: Specialist consultant types, such as lawyers or CPAs, tend to be put in well-defined boxes (hence the square halo). Their halos too are blue, and they too are seen as emissaries of the broader industry or market, but less threatening. They are sometimes indies, but more often part of partnership firms, receiving both paychecks and a share of profits. The often represent a particular sort of risk management, but crucially, they don’t own the risk, and don’t participate in it. They just help clients manage it.

4. Auditor/Inquisitor halo: Some sorts of outsiders have unambiguous threatening halos: auditors, compliance consultants for health regulations, pollution, sustainability, or diversity, trainers offering sexual harassment seminars, and so on. Their halo color is green, as in green-lighting (as in signing off on your compliance/conformity to some sort of external standard), but also as in green-washing (accepting complicity in a theater of compliance, particularly common in sustainability, hence the term).

5. Charismatic halo: Charismatic outsiders — famous authors, celebrity professors, ex-Presidents — tend to be brought in for largely ceremonial purposes such as keynotes during marquee meetings. They are not there to provoke, rock the boat, or actually make any difference. They are there to lend star power and charisma to the status quo. Their halo is therefore the same color as star employees — golden. Except their halo is actually star-shaped, since they are stars in the broader world outside. Often, they model, in exaggerated form, one or more desirable characteristics the organization wants to encourage in employees. They also afford senior leaders a chance to BIRG — bask in reflected glory.

That’s just a sampling of the halos you might see in a typical organization. There are many more, but that should give you an idea of how to think about perceptual gestalts of people against organizational backdrops.

Let’s talk about the sixth cartoon, the indie halo.

The Indie Halo

The indie halo…

Now here we run into a problem. Indies come in many varieties. In fact each indie is technically a distinct variety or they wouldn’t be called indies. There may be a certain amount of imitation in methods and postures, but we aren’t cookie-cutter types.

In one of my earliest newsletters, I argued that indies are shadows. In another, I argued that a fixed self-image is a dangerous thing for indies and that the right self-image is that of a trickster.

My opening question was a trick question. There is a correct answer: as an indie, your halo should not have a fixed color. The whole point of indie status is a certain amount of adaptability.

Personally, I have appeared in client organizations with a whole range of halos. I’ve had opportunities to do the charismatic star halo (even if only at D-list level) thing, the nerdy specialist halo thing, and the ersatz Big 3 thing. The only kind I haven’t done is the green audit/compliance thing.

But these fixed halos, even in imitation, are the exception. The default mode of indie consulting is to adapt to a very specific situation. Sometimes this means projecting confidence and charisma. Other times, it means projecting a narrow kind of competence. And sometimes it means projecting an annoying Jiminy Cricket type of conscience-on-the-shoulder personality.

You can never tell until you’re in the situation what the right way to play it is.

This is in part because indie consulting, no matter what you do, nearly always has a strongly improvisational component to it. You have to go yes, and… in response to the opening overtures of the client. And the nature of that improv response depends on the nature of the situation, and the posture the client is adopting within it. Your task is often to provide a response that is surprising without being disruptive.

If you’re new to this, one trick is to spot the local star employee halo, and then play foil to them in an interesting way. You don’t want to be seen as competing with the local hero, nor as the natural villain opposed to them. You want to be seen as someone whose presence makes the local hero’s journey more interesting. If you’re lucky, that local hero is in fact your client. If not, it’s a trickier improv challenge.

It takes time and practice across many situations and with many clients to develop a broad “halo range,” but once you’ve expanded beyond a couple of basic postures, you’ll find that it gets easier and easier. It’s a sort of method acting practice.

So take another stab at answering the question: what color is the halo?

But this time, think of the range you might develop around it, and how you might expand it.