Finding your purpose
If you’ve experienced Imposter Syndrome you’re probably familiar with that feeling of never quite being settled.
You look left, right to the people by the side of you. You look behind to see who is creeping up you. You’re constantly rating yourself in relation to how good you perceive others are.
It is exhausting. With ever present social media it gets worse because we’re bombarded by what we really know are people’s best versions of themselves – it’s not after all like many people go on LinkedIn to announce their latest mistake – but we get that feeling of insecurity instantly.
They’re ahead of us, they’re doing more, they’ve just landed an impressive job title, what have I got to show for myself.
Deep inside, we humans are intrinsically tribal in nature. We want to be loved and accepted. We want to find belonging. We want our rightful place around the campfire. We want security. We want to know we’re valued and have a place.
When we look to others for that security it is exhausting and a never-ending road to perpetual insecurity.
Developing your own context of purpose is key.
How do you define your purpose?
Imagine you’re at a dinner party and some people you’ve not met and someone asks what do you do? What’s your reaction and line of response?
For many people it’s to dole out the name of their employer, describe what their employer does. For others it is to repeat their job title or start to dole out their job description.
Relatively few of us tend to answer that question by explaining our purpose. Our purpose. Our identity. Not our assumed identity for this current employer. Once you understand your purpose, you have a key piece of the puzzle to overcoming imposter syndrome – because you can’t really be an imposter to yourself.
Purpose has different meanings to different peoples
Not everyone will have a grand purpose. We live in difficult times. Not everyone has the luxury to create a grand purpose. Their purpose may be more in the here and now. Others will have purpose mapped out to the end of time, what matters is that they can see themselves independent of their job or work title, their own identity.
Compare and contrast.
Mary has worked at a few companies across her working life. Ask Mary about her happiest memories at any of these companies and she’ll tell you stories of the co-workers but very little about the work itself.
Ask Mary about her why and it’s about the pay-check. The job is the job. There are times when this is understandable. It’s not a great place to be in for the longer term. Ask Mary how she feels about what she does, how she feels about the company she works for and there’s little there.
This is a job mindset – work is just a job. Over time Mary’s worked for managers she’s liked and many she’s hated. Things around here have got slowly and steadily worse. More is expected for relatively less.
Mary has rarely felt involved or emotionally connected with any job she’s done. She’s disengaged and cares about the company stability so that in turn she gets to pay the bills. Her purpose is short-term.
Jackson is quite the opposite of Mary and is quite the career go-getter. First in his family to get to college he feels he owes it to his parents and his background to make the most of every opportunity that he can possibly get his hands on.
Now a father of two under 5s, he has the house, car, beautiful wife and two great sons who he tries hard to spend time with on Saturdays, devoting his weekday evenings to working hard, taking on more extra-curricular work in order to impress the bosses and progress with his career.
The money is more than he could have ever dreamed of. It’s quickly eaten up by the house they bought in a great location, the car he leased and the demands of two young children. Sunday mornings is swim practice for the whole family, then brunch before Jackson reverts to work mode, catching up on the weekend emails before invariably heading off to the airport for whatever weekly assignment he’s been allocated.
Jackson is thrilled at the rate he’s progressing. He drives his team hard to get great results which have been noticed by senior leaders. Rumours are that a company wide organisational restructure is on the cards. Jackson’s confident he’s shown enough capability that it’ll lead to his first divisional leadership position, giving him more people under his control and greater prestige from a greater job title.
He's constantly aware of his peers – those who got their degrees from more prestigious colleges, those whose family circumstances and connections still help. Even in social conversation with his peers he can feel those who are accustomed to relative affluence, have led different lives to him. When one of his peers mentions taking a break for a ski trip, it’ll never be Jackson who can provide the tips on the best places to stay, eat or ski.
This leads to FOMO – fear of missing out. Jackson convinces himself that since he can’t replicate the background of some of his peers he has to be better at them by being more present, available and capable. It begins with taking a little bit of project work home and after putting his young son to bed, sitting at the dining table writing preparatory notes for the meetings the next day – time he could be spending with his wife.
Scared he’ll lose it all, Jackson convinces himself the sacrifices he’s making in time with his family will be worth it for the better life, house, car, education that he can give them.
A career mindset is helpful. In Jackson’s case, work is about advancement, gathering more status and more power. As always there is a compromise and that is time with his young family. The greater salary and rewards allow them to buy in more help around the home but deep inside Jackson feels that trade off between wanting his family to have the things and the life he never had and getting home Friday evening after a week away from home, catching up on the news and life landmarks that he has missed.
His purpose between leader, father, husband, community member is confused. He's fallen into the common trap of believing if he can fulfil the former then the latter will follow. We know it's not likely to pan out that way.
We intuitively know purpose is important
Many of us reading Mary’s story know intuitively that we’ve met Mary before. Whenever we’re interacting with a service industry or using something that’s been manufactured, Mary was there. It’s tempting to judge but that’s not what we’re after here.
It’s easy to feel the hollowness in finding something takes up so much of your time and your life that you care so little about and yet even in corporate life there are Mary’s who are either quietly or out loud wishing the days away before retirement. They long gave up on any notion of changing the system. They are out of love but feel stuck with it.
And yet purpose is multi-dimensional
In a toss-up between Jackson and Mary, I’m sure lots of you are rooting for Jackson. He’s come from a challenging background, he’s clearly working hard at his career. The status and advancement he’s getting feels richly deserved.
But for Jackson himself – advancement, status and prestige at work is a one-dimensional purpose. Few people as they are sitting on that porch as the sun goes down on life wish they’d spent more time in the office.
The day Jackson met Sadie
On yet another company retreat Jackson met Sadie. He’d never heard of Sadie before. She’d been with the company a little while and was about the same level as Jackson. Yet the conversation he had was totally different to those he was having with others on the retreat.
He admired Sadie’s surety of being and questioned why this was? Why was this capable woman not sharpening her elbows, sizing him up as competition to crush in the race to be next VP?
As he listened to her talk he absorbed and took in another sense of Purpose. Sadie had worked for the company before and outside work had developed a deep interest in ecology and sustainability.
“I feel I have the best job in the company” said Sadie. “Sure I don’t have as large a team as most of my peers – in fact there’s me and just two other folk. And we don’t have a big office, because as a team we’re not big enough to need it. But what we do is important.
I could tell you about the carbon emissions we reduce, the supply chains we’ve shortened, the energy and resource consumption we’ve cut in half but that’s not what I get out of bed for. I know this contributes to climate change and I know the impact climate change is having on families less well off than me around the world. Somewhere out there I am helping families. I don’t know who they are, I’ll never know but I know I’m helping and I know it’s important”
What’s your purpose?
After sleep, for many western workers, work takes up more time than anything else. You spend more time with co-workers awake than many members of your own family.
There’s no single answer to Imposter Syndrome but one piece of the puzzle is to develop your clear sense of purpose. It’s developed by you. It’s owned by you. It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning. It’s your why.
Grasp this and in those moments when FOMO starts to creep up, when you find yourself looking left, right and behind again you can remind yourself you’re in a much bigger race than merely the one at your workplace.
If you're really unsure where to start with purpose try this:
Start with the problem - then your part in fixing it - then the so what.
Sadie might say you know how we're experiencing all this strange weather around the world and temperatures are rising because of greenhouse gasses? Well I help companies to limit what they consume and limit the damage they do to the planet so that we can limit the damage and creating a safe place for our children.
Not everyone is fixing the entire world like Sadie but in your own way if you dig deep enough you absolutely can change the world around you.
Find your purpose, then make it happen.
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Out there are many people suffering from imposter syndrome – I’m grateful for you sharing Thriving Leader with others.
