Tame your inner imposter - Newsletter Feb '23
Tame your inner imposter. Cultivate your inner cheerleader.
Hi! Happy Friday!
It’s the middle of February, can you believe it? I love this month so much. Days are getting longer, the sun is shining brighter, we’re celebrating love.
This time of year I feel super pumped about the annual plan and strategies I set last month. I am optimistic. I am all in.
“In February there is everything to hope for and nothing to regret.”
- Patience Strong
Photo credit: Mink Mingle on Unsplash.
In any given week I hear from multiple accomplished leaders something along the lines of:
“There is this mismatch between what I know I am capable of doing and how I feel about myself. I have super high standards, and I’ve done well in my career. But I still feel anxious, doubting myself, and am afraid I’ll fail.”
That gap between our actual competence and our perception of it can be quite wide.
For instance, someone says to you “you did such an amazing job in that presentation” and you react dismissively: “Oh that, it wasn’t anything special.”
If you downplay your work, or set impossibly high standards for yourself, or feel self-doubt about your achievements even though on paper you look very accomplished, you might experience what psychologists call Imposter Syndrome.
As many as 8 in 10 of us might have it, lurking under the surface.
The other day, a former colleague, CMO by the age of 40, messaged me, asking “hey, I saw you write about the Imposter Syndrome. What’s that? I wonder if I have it.”
I wasn’t too surprised. I remember reading an interview with Michelle Obama opening up about her own imposter tendencies:
“I still have a little bit of imposter syndrome. It doesn't fully go away, that feeling that you shouldn't take me that seriously. We all have doubts in our abilities, our power, and what that power is.
My advice to young women in that you start by getting those demons out of your head. The questions I ask myself - 'am I good enough?' - that haunts us, because the messages that are sent from the time we are little is: maybe you are not, don't reach too high, don't talk too loud.”
For many years, while confident on the outside, I too had this feeling that I don’t really measure up at work, because English is my second language.
I would be terrified to speak in large meetings, worried my accent made me sound inexperienced and that peers wouldn’t take me seriously.
It took me years to realize that everyone feels self doubt, even the most accomplished people.
The inner imposter typically gets triggered every time we reach the next level of our career.
And it makes sense - the higher we go, the bigger the pressure.
I think of the Imposter Syndrome as the voice of our fear - that sweet overprotective mother figure that wants to keep us safe, so we can be accepted, loved. So we can belong.
When we work hard, we earn accolades and people’s respect. It also makes it difficult to separate our identity from our work.
This whole concept touches something deep in my heart, because each of us is so much more than our accomplishments, than our work.
Illustration by Alva Skog
So what happens when the imposter syndrome takes over and our fear center is activated?
We take on more work than we know we should, to overcome the feeling of inadequacy. Our self worth is so deeply tied to our work, no wonder we get caught in overwork.
“I used to believe all I needed to do is to outwork 90% of people to get ahead” some leaders say in coaching sessions.
Overwork is rewarded in our hustle-oriented, capitalistic culture. But the tide is beginning to shift. I hear in coaching sessions that leaders are no longer willing to overwork themselves. Being busy is less and less a badge of honor.
We now all know that overwork leads to prolonged periods of burnout.
It also leads to inefficiencies. It’s hard to be your most strategic, creative self, when you’re chronically exhausted.
The imposter syndrome is deeply connected to perfectionism. We want our work to be flawless, and as a result we have a hard time delegating.
“I don’t want my name attached to work that isn’t perfect” someone shared with me recently in a coaching session.
We’re also not great team players when we’re overworked. The inner imposter tends to react defensively to constructive feedback.
To change our behavior, we need to address its root cause. We need to address disempowering mental habits that hurt us, our work, and those around us.
If your actions are at the tip of the iceberg, your mindset and self perception, are all hidden just below the surface.
They run the show, and we don’t even realize it.
© 2023 Ramona Harvey Coaching | Inside Out Leadership Accelerator
Here is what helps in taming your inner imposter tendencies - btw this stuff works, and it’s backed by science:
#1 Acknowledge your negative thoughts that come with the Imposter Syndrome. Notice the feelings triggered by those thoughts.
Validate your feelings with compassion. That’s where the magic is. I love the RAIN mindfulness method - super simple and powerful.
#2 Start a Proud Log, where you name things you’re proud of - every day.
We have a part of our brain - the fear center - fully dedicated to scanning what’s wrong that needs to be fixed.
But no part of our brain is dedicated to automatically scanning what is right, that encourages us, that cheers us for a job well done. Too often we wait for others to notice our work, giving away our power.
We have an inner critic but we don’t have an inner cheerleader. We need to cultivate one.
So your job is to empower yourself by building your cheerleading muscles.
You can’t let go of the Imposter Syndrome with just encouragement like “you’ve got this” or “you deserve to be here” as much as these statements are true.
You can tame it by jotting down in your Proud Log every time you do something well (e.g. you delegate something you would have otherwise done yourself because it’s quicker; you overcome a frustration in 2 hrs rather than in 2 days).
This is how you steadily build the confidence habit that soothes and tames the imposter tendency.
Last but not least - check out this powerful article that acknowledges the elephant in the room.
The problem isn’t just our perception and negative thinking; it’s also the setting that created it in the first place: the competitive culture, the bias against underrepresented individuals.
We can change cultures. One step at a time. It starts with our team and our community.
Big hugs,
Ramona
P.S. Interested in getting professional support to tame your own imposter tendency, to get out of your own way and put forward your best work yet? Set up a free discovery session with me here.
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Hi, I’m Ramona, a high-impact professional executive coach with a track record of empowering leaders to become more impactful and more satisfied. I coach leaders at Google, Facebook, Capital One, Salesforce, Adobe, Warner Brothers, etc, as well as UC Berkeley and several non-profit organizations.
I’m a certified Emotional Intelligence trainer and Master Practitioner of Energy Leadership(TM).
Prior to becoming a coach I was a marketing research leader in tech (Twitter, eBay, Ancestry, StubHub). I started freelancing in 2015 to explore a career change. I launched a self-funded research project on happiness, which led to coaching and creating my signature Inside Out Leadership model which I teach at several organizations.
I’m passionate about deep inner growth and personal agency, which I believe are key in making the world a better place.
I was born and raised in Transylvania, Romania.
