Cuprins
Office life for a former freelancer often turns into irritation, loneliness and a desire to immediately leave a new job. Psychologist Anetta Orlova shares tips to help you understand why this is happening and build constructive relationships with your boss and colleagues.
Getting into the office as a freelancer is often not easy. A specialist can quickly find a job, because he is highly qualified and has unique experience in his field, but it can be difficult to fit into the format of relationships accepted in the team.
Clients often come to consultations with a similar problem. First, they apply because they want to leave the office for freelance, and then because it’s hard to return. Here are some tips that help a lot of them.
1. Analyze why you went freelancing
What exactly was your motive for leaving the office? Perhaps you left to implement projects that were impossible to combine with the main load, or perhaps, to some extent, you fled from the office routine and the pressure of the manager. Consider whether it was the desire to avoid discomfort that prompted you to go freelancing.
If some factors in the office used to create tension for you, then they will cause the same discomfort now. To adapt, you need to rethink your ways of coping. To do this, you have to go beyond the usual scenario of behavior and learn new tactics.
2. Formulate a positive intention
We overcome difficulties more easily and adapt to new conditions if we understand the expediency and meaningfulness of our activities. Ask yourself why you are coming back. Find several reasons. Justify for yourself all the bonuses: salary, career growth, confidence in the future.
Then ask the more important question: Why are you doing this? It is more difficult to answer it: in addition to expediency, it implies meaningfulness, and only you can determine the meaning. Maybe it’s the emotional comfort at home for your children, the opportunity to realize their potential on larger projects and bring more benefits? These are great goals!
3. Don’t give in to internal resistance
Often, former freelancers perceive the office as a temporary measure, thinking that they will soon go back to free swimming. This attitude makes it difficult to overcome difficulties in relationships with colleagues and invest in long-term cooperation. The attention of such a person will be focused on noticing negative points, as if confirming previous attitudes.
In the first working days, barely feeling internal resistance, work with attention — learn to notice the positive aspects. Start by making your workplace comfortable. This will help you connect with the new space and feel better about yourself.
4. Be part of a team
Upon returning to the office, it is extremely difficult to perceive yourself as part of a whole, and not a separate unit. The freelancer is used to the fact that success depends entirely on him, but when he comes to the office, no matter how well he performs his tasks, the result will be the same. However, such a specialist often notices only his part of the work, and others consider this a manifestation of selfishness.
Assume that you are part of a team, consider common tasks. Take the initiative, participate in conversations about the future of the company. At meetings, in the process of discussion, try to speak on behalf of the team. For example, instead of “I want this for my project,” say “we would be interested in doing this.”
Thanks to this, colleagues will perceive you as a person who thinks about the interests of the team, and not about their own. Attend company events and birthdays so people feel like you’re part of the team. This is also necessary in order for your brain to get used to the fact that this area is comfortable and safe.
5. Uită trecutul
Even if you enjoy remembering the period when you depended solely on yourself and worked effectively at home, you should not do it in the workplace. Such seemingly idle conversations are always annoying and automatically turn you into a toxic employee. In addition, this is a direct path to the depreciation of the current place of work.
Instead, make a list of the positives of the new location. Keep a diary to note every night what you couldn’t do today when you were a freelancer. Look for confirmation that you made the right choice. Set a three-year office plan. It is not necessary that you will work for this particular company for three years, but such planning will help you consciously develop in this job.
The need to constantly be in the same space with a large number of people can be uncomfortable, especially at first. Moreover, you may even unconsciously oppose yourself to the team, which will exacerbate the conflict within you and reinforce negative stereotypes about the freelancer in others — for example, that you are not in the office for long and that it is difficult to negotiate with you.
Try, when you come to the workplace, to talk about something with three or four colleagues. Ask clarifying questions, ask about the ways of the company, offer to dine together. Look for common qualities in you and colleagues, mark those qualities that you like in others. People around you will immediately become closer to you, and it will be easier to communicate. Every evening, write in your diary of gratitude to people who at work have given you even the slightest support, even if only with a look or a word.
7. Learn from your supervisor
A self-employed person gets used to the fact that he is his own boss, so any orders of the head can be annoying. It may seem to you that the boss criticizes your work and generally finds fault. Remind yourself that the boss is responsible for the final result, so it is important for him to optimize the work of each employee.
Another mistake is to notice in the boss his shortcomings. Yes, perhaps in terms of some particular skill you bypass him, but he has a dozen others. And if you chose to return to the system, then you should look at the skills that allow the boss to manage this system. Try to see his strengths, think about what you could learn from him to make up for what you lack.
8. Find the good in everything
After working remotely, the need to travel every day to the office and spend a lot of time on the road will weigh you down. Come up with an interesting way to use this time. For example, walk part of the way to take care of your health and switch from personal to professional tasks or vice versa.
Changing from self-employment to working for a company is not an easy choice. If you have decided in favor of an office, look for a good large company where you can communicate with interesting people and receive a decent salary. Look for pluses in your new quality and make the most of all the possibilities of working in the office.