Free agents can play an important role in your company, but they are only helpful if you use them right. One thing to remember is that the leadership style you use with your full-time employees is not going to be appropriate for someone who is with you temporarily, and who you may never meet because they are on the other side of the world. You do not get to develop a relationship over time…you have only got a short window of opportunity to do it.

Is short-term leadership really just “management?” Are you really trying to lead someone, or are you just trying to get them to complete a particular task? Do you really have the responsibility to lead them like you do your regular employees?

Well, consider the possibility that you might want to bring them back sometime. Maybe you will want to use them again for future projects, or you might even want to try to bring them on full-time. If you think you might work with this person again then you have an interest in developing them somewhat. You might not be the mentor that guides them to a successful life. Then again, you might.

In addition to trying to turn them into someone you would want to have working for you, you may also need to sell them on the idea of working for you. After all, if they have chosen the free agent route because they like it, you will have to show them the benefits of working for you. One of the things you can offer that a free agent is lacking and might want is good leadership. To be honest, many people become free agents because of the poor leadership they experience when working for someone else. If they see you as a good leader, than can provide them the motivation to stick with you.

So how do you exercise leadership with a free agent? Well, first of all, be very clear about your objectives for them just as you would with any other employee. Help them develop a plan for meeting those objectives, whether they are with you for one project or for a specific period of time. Do what you can to integrate them into the organization so they can play well with others…make sure they are introduced to the people they need to know, make them aware of all the resources available to them, and do your best not to make them feel like a second-class citizen.

This brings up a unique issue with free agents: making them feel like part of your team even though, for the long term, they usually are not. This is tricky. They will not have the relationships with other workers like the full-timers develop. Your other employees know that this person is just here temporarily and may not be interested in being very accommodating because, after all, this person is probably leaving after the project anyway. It is also possible that you are paying the free agent more than your full-timers to balance out the lack of benefits…if your regulars hear about this they may start thinking that being a free agent is a better deal, and you may create a retention problem for yourself.

In addition to your full-timers’ perspectives your free agent may feel uncomfortable as well. One of the better documented cases of this was at Microsoft, where full-timers had benefits such as stock options that would ultimately make many of them millionaires while the free agents did not. That is a risk that somebody takes when they become a free agent, and they should understand that, but you may still have to soothe some ill feelings, especially if your full-timers are getting something good and brag about it to the free agents. Also, you do not need to do one thing that Microsoft did: full-timers and free agents had different colored badges, making a very clear distinction between the two groups even though they had the same goals in terms of producing a product. Bad idea.

Do not worry about providing free agents the training or other development opportunities you give your full-timers…anyone who takes on free agency needs to understand they are responsible for their own training. But while all your leadership tools are not available to you, that does not mean you should ignore leadership. For 2 days or 2 months or longer, these folks DO work for you, and in order to get the best results out of them, you need to invest some time in leading them.