Career experts and mental health professionals call it the “Impostor Syndrome.” Successful and intelligent leaders who have earned promotions, accolades, and recognition from their bosses, their peers, and their teams feel, deep down, like frauds. They worry that it’s only a matter of time before they are found out and their colleagues question their abilities.
Leaders who exhibit the Impostor Syndrome share many traits. They are typically ambitious, high-achieving individuals who believe they have not earned success. They frequently discount their own accomplishments. Negative stress, anxiety, and fear remind these leaders of their sense of inadequacy.
Does this sound like you or someone you know?
This book explains the developmental challenges that arise when “impostors” fail to recognize their abilities and are unable to internalize their accomplishments. After reading this book, you will learn how to recognize and manage the symptoms of the Impostor Syndrome to create a productive and fulfilling career.
War Games
Charlie, a retired US army colonel, served for seven years in key strategic leadership roles at the Pentagon. After hearing the authors speak about the Impostor Syndrome at a conference in Washington, DC, Charlie approached the dais full of emotion. “All these years, I had no idea what it was,” he said. “I thought I was broken. I used to sit behind a desk, wearing this decorated uniform, feeling like a scared, incompetent nine-year-old in a hero’s costume. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why they kept promoting me.”
How IMPOSTOR SYNDROME Affects YOU
Leaders who exhibit the Impostor Syndrome have an intense fear of failure, a lack of confidence, and anxiety. These feelings often manifest as procrastination, risk aversion, and workaholism. Imagined impostors are also reluctant to ask questions for fear of appearing unintelligent. Such constraints negatively affect job performance and satisfaction for leaders at all levels, from individual contributors to members of an organization’s executive team.
Furthermore, negative and self-defeating thoughts can keep even the most highly respected leaders from developing their skills and talents. These missed career opportunities diminish contributions for those leaders, their teams, their organizations, and their communities.
The Impostor Syndrome can also lead to overwhelming negative stress, which plays out in a number of ways, such as sleeplessness and a weakened immune system. Additionally, the intense fear and stress experienced by imagined impostors create blurred work-life boundaries because those affected feel they must work 24/7 to keep their faux incompetence from being exposed. They believe there is no choice: work must take precedence over all else.
How IMPOSTOR SYNDROME Affects OTHERS
Let’s begin with an example of the impact of the Impostor Syndrome on the people you lead. Clare is the executive vice president of a large, successful company and has nine direct reports. In a recent culture survey conducted by the company, her direct reports described their working environment as “disempowering,” “demotivating,” and “lacking in trust.” These descriptors were so dramatically different from the results of other corporate functions that Clare’s organization brought in consultants to help Clare and her peers figure out what was going on.
Despite her outstanding credentials and obvious intelligence, experience, and magnetic personality, Clare feels like a pretender. She feels unworthy of her position, which affects her ability to make decisions. As a result, Clare keeps her team in perpetual “analysis paralysis.” She asks for more and more data, test cases, and proof of potential outcomes—and then fails to make decisions. Additionally, because Clare doesn’t trust her worth as a leader and decision maker, she projects distrust onto her reports, which results in her rarely delegating work to others. Clare’s team doesn’t understand her behavior, and her direct reports think they’ve done something to lose her trust. “I keep playing back different situations, wondering what I did to make her lose faith in me,” one says. “Where did I go wrong?”
The unfortunate part of this story is that Clare genuinely cares about her people. She was deeply concerned when she saw the results of the culture survey and devastated when she received some of this feedback. However, breaking free of the Impostor Syndrome is hard work. “I care so much about them that I don’t want to make a mistake or a bad decision that will affect them or the function,” Clare says.
Blowback: How the Impostor Syndrome Affects Your Team
If you suffer from the Impostor Syndrome, your deep sense of unworthiness drives behaviors that can negatively impact others. Just as Clare’s drive to micromanage and to make the “right” decisions negatively affect her team, your actions could be hurting your team in similar ways. For example:
If you’re driven to … |
The result might be that … |
micromanage |
your people feel untrusted, incapable, and paranoid. |
make decisions slowly |
your people feel demotivated because they can’t make progress. |
be perfect |
your people feel insecure because nothing they do is good enough. |
worry excessively |
your people lose confidence because you lack confidence. |
exhibit workaholism |
your people feel that they’re expected to work the same hours, and they become overworked and stressed. |
The insidious, unrelenting sense of inadequacy that plagues some leaders often remains masked. As such, people with the Impostor Syndrome frequently rationalize their success in the following ways:
“I got lucky.”
“I was in the right place at the right time.”
“I just work harder than everyone else.”
“It’s just because they like me.”
“Anyone could have done it.”
“I had a lot of help/connections.”
“Someone must have made a mistake.”
“I fooled them … again.”
It’s important that you not confuse the Impostor Syndrome with humility. Displaying modesty about your abilities is much different from believing you lack certain strengths or that you have somehow faked your way into your current position. Being humble can be a positive trait, and it might be expected in your organization or as part of your cultural heritage. Feeling like an impostor is a negative belief that handicaps your performance, and you should address it.
However, leaders who exhibit the Impostor Syndrome can go beyond rationalizations. They often make extraordinary efforts to cover up their supposed inadequacy and to avoid being found out. Many leaders work hard, but sufferers of the Impostor Syndrome take an obsessive, nearly frantic approach to every detail. The coping and protection mechanisms that kick in for sufferers of the Impostor Syndrome include
overpreparing
“Even when I know my material, I overprepare because I worry about looking foolish or incompetent.”
“I tend to be a perfectionist and have a hard time letting go of the details.”
“It’s not uncommon for me to work more than 10 hours a day.”
“I tend to assign equal weight to every task—everything is high-stakes.”
holding back talents and opinions
“I avoid situations where I think I might fail or where I’m not 100 percent sure I know what I’m doing.”
“It’s hard for me to ask for help, even when I really need it.”
“I frequently feel scared that I might fail, even when I’m familiar with the task.”
“I find it difficult to accept compliments and praise.”
“I have a hard time advocating for myself to get raises and promotions.”
“I avoid situations that call attention to me; I prefer to be in the background.”
procrastination
“I wait until the last minute to work on important projects.”
not finishing
“I hold off launching anything new until I’m sure everything is in place.”
self-sabotage
“When I experience a setback or failure, I have a hard time bouncing back.”
“I am very critical about my personal appearance.”
“It’s easier for me to remember the failures in my career than the successes.”
“I often feel anxious and worried that
I’m not doing a good job, even if there is evidence to the contrary.”
Do any of these actions sound familiar?
If so, you may be suffering from the Impostor Syndrome. However, you can overcome the Impostor Syndrome by reassessing your abilities and applying some simple strategies.
Irene was always an overachiever. As the youngest of five girls in her family, she felt that she needed to work harder than any of the other kids to stand out. After graduation, she went into pharmaceutical marketing, was promoted very quickly, and eventually was made head of a multimillion-dollar account.
This account was incredibly demanding, and Irene worked diligently to exceed expectations. Although she never felt like she was doing a good enough job, the account grew substantially under her leadership, becoming one of her firm’s most profitable clients. Irene received praise from both her supervisor and the executive leadership. Despite all of this, she finds it hard to ask for a promotion or for more money because she doesn’t feel like she has earned it. She sees less qualified people moving ahead of her, and she knows it’s because she has such a hard time advocating for herself.