📝 usncan Note: The Rise Of The Gig Executives
Disclaimer: This content has been prepared based on currently trending topics to increase your awareness.
Fractional Leadership in the C-Suite
getty
Flexible leadership models are growing in popularity and offer strategic advantages. Aligned with rises in other flexible work trends, like the 4-Day Work Week and working remotely, leaders are also seeking flexibility in their working lives.
Fractional Leadership in the C-Suite
Fractional leadership is a flexible leadership trend worth following in 2025. Fractional leaders are typically experienced executives who work with a company on a contract or part-time basis. They may hold multiple part-time or project-based roles simultaneously. These leaders operate within a portfolio career, as opposed to being tied full-time to one company. Fractional leaders may combine paid executive roles with board positions, teaching or consulting work, and/or volunteer engagements.
While both are categorized as flexible leadership models, fractional leadership is not the same as job sharing. Job sharing is when a full-time role is split by two (or sometimes more) people, each in part-time capacities, and is designed to cover the range of responsibilities of one single position.
Another related concept, interim leadership, is when a temporary (or gig) executive is brought in to hold a full-time leadership position, often for a defined and brief period of time, usually during a transition. Interim leaders are strategic hires that allow companies more time to appoint the right leader for a permanent position.
Benefits of Fractional Leadership in the C-Suite
Fractional C-suite executives (e.g., CEO, CFO, COO, etc.) offer a range of benefits to companies. Fractional roles are cost-effective, which may be advantageous to start-ups, small to medium enterprises (SMEs), nonprofits, and social enterprises. Appointing an executive on a part-time or contracted basis will save costs on salary, bonuses, and other benefits that would go to a permanent C-suite hire.
Externally recruited fractional leaders provide outside and potentially objective perspectives, as well as specialized expertise, drawing on banks of prior experience.
If fractional executives are willing to coach and mentor internal executives, they can help to build greater in-house leadership capacity, to grow talent, and to create opportunities for ownership. When a company can not only benefit from immediate external expertise but also strengthen their internal long-term prospects, they’ll witness their leadership capability multiply.
The Future of Fractional Leadership in the C-Suite
Executives will be drawn to fractional leadership, with the personal benefits of greater flexibility, protean careers – built on variety and stimulating opportunities, and financials upsides across their multiple positions within their leadership portfolio.
Expect to see a rise in gig executives and fractional leadership in the C-suite as companies strive to maintain competitive advantages and respond to the many financial and social challenges faced today, including the adoption of AI and growing climate concerns.
