Wake Up! Hybrid Professionals Are Obvious But Not Well Known
Yesterday, a man told me he didn’t think the concept of hybrid professionals was profound.
Lidya Nada. Unsplash
“I agree. It’s not,” I replied. “It’s not original or new, but it’s also not mainstream. Why doesn’t the term hybrid professional appear more often in pop culture or widespread media?”
I never got a reply from him, but I have my own theory.
If you look at some of the most popular synonyms for hybrid professionals, you see the term #jackofalltrades has 281k posts on instagram. That’s a common term for people who do many things and wear a lot of hats.
More recently, the term #multipotentialite has taken off with 21k posts on instagram. However, the term multipotentialite is a mouthful. I can barely pronounce it without tripping over my tongue. There are scores of other synonyms that are equally awkward and uncomfortable to use, like being a renaissance soul or a t-shaped person.
The term hybrid professional easy to say and conveys exactly what it means.
Importantly, there’s a striking difference.
Terms like jack or jill-of-all-trades, multipotentialite, slashie, gig worker, and polymath mean being multiple things. BUT a hybrid professional integrates identities together. That’s their unique value.
My theory is that a hybrid is so obvious we overlook it. We simply disregard the effectiveness of this term and how well it applies to the professional realities of today. It’s time to embrace it and pull it out of the closet. This term describes a large segment of the workforce (gig workers, freelancers, creatives, job crafters, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and more). Why not use it as much as we use the terms expert and generalist?
In my research, it isn’t common for authors or scholars to write about people as hybrids—unless it’s about cultural studies and humans from mixed races or nationalities. The term intersectionality is popular, and it refers to hybridity. This term appears in diversity and equity studies. Let’s increase our usage of hybridity in conversations about professional identity because it belongs in that context.
My dream is to:
Simplify the terminology we use to describe the workforce: Expand our spectrum from only experts and generalists to include hybrids. The word hybrid is an easy idea and accurately describes a large group of professionals in the workforce (who currently think they’re misfits).
Popularize the term hybrid professional: The more widespread the concept of hybrids becomes, the more it will alleviate the pain point many professionals feel around how to describe themselves as well as how to be valued for having multiple, unrelated professional talents.