Face your imposter lies
This is the story of Marcus – not of course his real name – who wanted to work with me around what he described as imposter syndrome.
Marcus was a senior leader in a large corporate. He’d worked his way through the ranks and right now, life sucked. “I just don’t think I have the fight left in me any longer, everything is just so damned difficult”.
As a coach, I could have asked when Marcus started to notice these feelings so we might help him understand the inflection point when things changed. But Marcus was there before me.
“I thought I was good at this job, but lately I’m not sure. In fact, I’m wondering how I’m even here”
Marcus explained his company had upgraded their performance management structures to drive the company forwards. In this new process Marcus was required weekly to meet with his line manager to go through his divisional performance and be prepared to explain every metric that was below par.
Then monthly, Marcus would have a capability review where the results of the weekly meetings were wrapped up into a development plan for Marcus to complete. The idea being that the company provided Marcus with coaching and support to achieve the goals and be a better person.
Great in theory, except in practice Marcus’s performance started to get worse. He started to have what he described as panic attacks on Thursday evenings before the Friday “beatings”.
The monthly coaching meetings required him to write down his three fundamental weaknesses in preparation. These were lined alongside three weaknesses identified by his line manager and a development plan to tackle up to six weaknesses would be written down. And on top of his regular targets he was then accountable for achieving against the six elements of his improvement plan.
The formation of the imposter
“It feels a bit much but they kind of have a point. I’ve been doing this job for a while so I should be better”. If the session had lasted longer maybe the next thing Marcus would have said was “I deserve it”.
“Do you ever talk about anything good that’s happened?” I asked.
“No.”, replied Marcus. “This is all about improving the company’s performance so we focus on what needs to be improved. We don’t talk about things don’t need fixing. Only focus on what needs to change”. "I get paid to do this job, that's my recognition".
I guess there’s a logic in there somewhere. How many of us have heard this?
Marcus had risen through the ranks based on his ability to perform in every role. He was no spring chicken or a wearer of rose-tinted specs. He’d been in tough spots before. He recognised the need to work hard in his role. Bit by bit, the imposter was creeping into Marcus’ life – he had started to believe not only that he wasn’t good enough, but that he’d somehow cheated and deceived his way into getting as far as he had.
We can offer compassion to others whilst beating ourselves up at the same time
Imagine you’re walking down the street and someone in front of you stumbles and starts to fall. Their bag spills its contents on the ground. What’s your instinctive reaction? For most of us it’ll be compassion and support. We may rush in and help the person to their feet or check if they need medical assistance.
Someone might kindly gather up the possessions and keep them safe. Most of us will innately sense the embarrassment of the person that fell and use words to comfort them – it could happen to anyone.
In most cultures it would seem inappropriate to stand over them and say “wow, you’re an idiot, did you not see the kerb before you fell over it”. When we see tiktok and youtube videos of people filming others’ misfortunes we wonder why they were more interested in the filming and not helping.
And yet. And yet. Many of us are unwilling to offer compassion to ourselves for our mistakes. Instead, we berate ourselves for our stupidity, our laziness, our shortcomings. We seize on insights, we insult ourselves for our inadequacy. Even when others are offering compassion in return.
Sometimes we need that observer, that bystander to come over and pick us up when we fall.
Do we need pain in order to move us forward?
Many of us, from an early age, have experienced situations where conformance or performance shortfalls results in punishment of some kind. No pain, no gain. So it said.
This develops into a learned pattern of behaviour and a lack of self-kindness and self-compassion to ourselves. And research shows trauma and depression in many people in western societies can be traced back to lack of self-esteem and self-kindness.
In Britain we even coined the “stiff upper lip”, that notion that no matter how painful and unpleasant something is, your role is to smile and bear it. We try to live and ignore the pain.
And we become susceptible to believing that what we are told by others is undoubtedly true.
Imposters thrive through flawed perspectives
We all have an opinion but that doesn’t mean that we’re right. We’ve all received feedback at one point on a flaw or failing that we have only to find when we change bosses or roles somehow that feedback is no longer there. When I first started out working in recruitment it was said when you read a reference about a candidate it tells you more about the foibles and insecurities of the referee than the person you’re hiring. I read quite a few to recognise the truth in this.
The imposter’s job is to amplify low self-esteem. It means at your already low point you’re no longer taking on board messages of positivity and praise. Whether you feel it’s sugar coating the bitter pill, or about the have the rug pulled out from under you – this hackneyed phrases we recognise for a reason.
Feedback is all around us. The imposter only wants us to see one perspective. If we get feedback from one client, one boss, one company it is one perspective. And that perspective, like the references, is often biased towards what is important to the other party, it is a partial and filtered view not necessarily shared by others.
And here sat Marcus with his development plan focussing on six weaknesses and the energy and fight knocked out of him with no redeeming qualities to fall back on.
Self-compassion comes from being tuned to your strengths as well as shortcomings
There are going to be times when feedback is genuinely useful to help you become better and build your skills and performance. But when feedback is reducing your forward motion energy then it is time to check in with yourself.
Building self-compassion is about firstly being in tune with your strengths.
No CEO in any company is good at everything. They have the luxury of figuring out what they can’t do and hiring a bunch of people to compensate for those things. They are still human and despite their status, we’re yet to meet one that can work more than 24 hours in a day. Successful leaders are in tune with their strengths and discerning about their weaknesses.
They know that trying to get excellent at everything is pointless, they must know their strengths and be discerning about what they choose to develop in themselves.
Pain and punishment are learned rituals that destroy rather than enhance performance
In this story no-one, including Marcus, believed there could be wider ways to improve performance. The default position of Marcus’ company was pain and punishment. We will put you through a ritual of weekly conversations about only your failings and if you don’t comply then we will fire you but be able to do so legally and safely because we’d “given you every chance”.
In reality the process through its relentless one-sided focus only on what was wrong rather than what was right YET could be better was responsible for Marcus’ loss of faith in what he could already do. He started to go backwards in things he was accomplished in.
Some of us are brought up in childhood within cultures where pain, punishment and retribution are omni-present but think about it for a while. When the tormentor leaves the room – what’s left?
For some of us our imposter syndrome stems from the fact we learned from our external tormentors and trained our brain to do the same thing for us when they weren’t there. Pain is never sustainable as a driver of performance.
Tactic 1: Start from a position of strength
One tip therefore to combat your imposter syndrome is to reacquaint yourself with your strengths that you’ve not said hello to for a while or maybe you’ve never recognised them at all. There are great tools out there of course, Clifton Strengthfinder, VIA and others.
You only have to look around you and consider the interactions you have with other people, what they come to you for to recognise that’s feedback. People don’t randomly ask for your opinion or help on something, they are telling you in their opinion this is something they think you’re good at. Feedback is all around you.
Tactic 2: Build your board of advisors
Just like the CEO you shouldn’t go into this journey alone. Building a personal board of advisors can help you find perspective in the darker moments and the dark moments. Find someone who is neutral and objective who is good at seeing other points of view to support objectivity. Find someone who knows you personally, inside and outside your work who can help you with perspective. Find someone who about you who can be support you with empathy.
Multiple perspectives will help keep the imposter in check
And what happened to Marcus?
This story can’t end without understanding the story of Marcus himself. He’s to my knowledge still contentedly working in the same industry. Through his support network he went back to speak with people he’d worked with previously to validate feedback and put things into perspective. He changed the city he was working in and moved to work with a more supportive team that appreciated his experience but also offered him the value of their experience that he could learn from. He still has a more reasonable development plan but moving to his new team and seeing all the things he could teach them reminded him of his strengths.
Perspective and self-esteem helping to keep the imposter in check.
Liked this article – check out more resources at www.ianbrowne.com
If this strikes a chord, let’s chat about your imposter and how I can help you put it back in its box. https://oncehub.com/careersredesigned
Out there are many people suffering from imposter syndrome – I’m grateful for you sharing Thriving Leader with others.
