I remember it well. I was working with an accomplished leadership team to help them improve their performance. Each leader was sharing one development area and then it happened. One leader explained he was experiencing imposter syndrome. The room went deathly quiet, you could hear a pin drop. I encouraged the leaders to be vulnerable but this seemed like vulnerability on a 10x scale. What had happened?
Imposter Syndrome
Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern where individuals doubt their abilities, feel like a fraud, and fear being exposed as incompetent, despite evident success and accomplishments. In the case above, the leader felt like a fraud and was waiting to be found out. Rather than stop and try to address it, the group moved on uncomfortably. I suspected this wasn’t the only leader in the room who was feeling insecure.
What Is Going On?
Imposter syndrome is nothing more than a self-assessment. It isn’t a fact, it is an opinion, a deep fear we have about ourselves. Like any assessment, we can examine its validity. Is the assessment accurate? And perhaps more importantly, on what basis are we judging ourselves? I often find all we have is a judgement of not being good enough. This is a conclusion without any evidence. Guilty until proven innocent.
How To Address It?
The good news is we don’t have to treat ourselves this way. We have a choice. We have agency and here are five things we can do to create a more healthy mindset:
- Recognize imposter thoughts and acknowledge they are a self-assessment, there are not fact-based.
- Test your assessments by asking yourself on what basis you are judging yourself. What hard evidence exists to support it? I suspect you won’t find any.
- Be kind to yourself. Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. Without them you aren’t growing.
- Don’t compare yourself to others. We can easily fall into the trap of only seeing others strengths and ignoring their weaknesses. Your colleagues are not superheroes.
- If it persists, seek professional help. That could be through a coach or a therapist. Many companies offer these resources.
Lastly, don’t be a victim of your own negative thinking. Everyone can choose to take responsibility for their personal and professional well being.
If you want something doing ask someone with impostor syndrome, they care and will go the extra mile.
Fair point Dave and in the long run, I hope they learn to overcome this so they can continue their high level of performance without the emotional toil of imposter syndrome.
A few thoughts on this topic:
(1) Recognizing that one suffers from Imposter Syndrome may be the all-important first step towards addressing the problem (as in any “12 step” recovery program).
(2) Each person also has their individual standard (from “whatever” to “good enough” to “demanding absolute perfection” …) by which they judge their abilities. While this is about the gap between one’s actual level ability versus desired level of ability, and different from Imposter Syndrome, it somehow may factor in. Concepts such as personal ambition come to mind here.
(3) The article got me wondering how to address the opposite of Imposter Syndrome, i.e., when one’s perceived level of competence is significantly higher than the actual competence level. In other words when suffering from inflated self-confidence or hubris.
(4) How would one go about determining one’s *actual* level of competence in a given area. Seeking feedback from a combination of sources comes to mind: outcomes/ performance against goals & objectives, org health, individual performance reviews, 1-on-1 feedback. But that also has its limitations especially given that any objective (assuming there even is such a thing) measure and feedback will ultimately be subject to the individual’s biased interpretation and rationalization.
Thank you Herman. Re #2, I agree this is founded on an assessment against some standard, typically imagined instead one that is grounded and well thought out. Your point about ambition is interesting. In a recent conversation, the other person noted their tendency to only see each of their peers in terms of their biggest strengths in effect creating an unachievable composite standard.
Re #3, good point. In this case, they also tend to be poor listeners who overly rely on their inflated view of their performance. This requires strong leadership from above to set clear expectations and make grounded assessments of performance and not to fall for hubris or bombastic statements.
Interesting point on #4. It takes me back to your point #1, being self-aware and vulnerable. I find people like this tend to make more grounded, realistic assessments, but there will always be a level of subjectivity involved.
Thank you again for your thoughtful response, it expanded my thinking on the subject.