The expert imposter

For some of us the imposter looms large in many aspects of our lives.  Take Lana for instance.  Lana had completed her college degree and landed the job of her dreams at a corporate consulting firm in London.   Teachers and lecturers were delighted and unsurprised.  Lana worked exceptionally hard, was gifted in her studies, relatively unassuming, they all hoped she’d strike lucky because it wasn’t in her nature to ever acknowledge her gifts in public.

Whilst organising her move to London Lana checked out the city, the locality around where she worked and sat in coffee shops observing people in the area.  Being the first in her family to go to college and certainly the first to live and work in London the thought of making her way in the city was exciting and a little scary.

Since being a little girl, Lana learned to be good at things by studying, observing and working really hard to be exceptionally good at what she did.   And she was praised by her family and teachers always for her diligence and hard work ever since she could remember.   She had a wall full of certificates of achievement, of merit.   Her love of music translated into piano lessons and grade exams which she frequently passed with distinction.

Now Lana had achieved what her family had always dreamed of for her – a step shift into the big time and yet Lana, as gifted and consistently talented as she was, sat in the coffee shop, terrified and what she saw and heard.

Her nature made her an expert study and as she watched and observed people a little older than her coming out of offices to grab coffee she studied how they dressed, what they wore, their mannerism, the banter between the guys, the chatter between the girls.  She tuned into unfamiliar accents from this different part of the world to which she’d grown up in.  She imagined these young people having been raised through privileged education, taking regular trips to far-flung places in the world.

As her brain started to process all this information, this world that she’d longed for and had successfully landed her place in was disappearing in her mind into the far distance.  A gap emerging.  The “I am not like these people” gap.  The “I don’t know how to be like these people” gap.  The “I don’t belong here” gap.

For a young person in her early twenties this, for Lana, was the first time she could remember facing into a challenge that she didn’t know how to solve.  There was no text book to study, no exam to pass, no tutor to advise and direct.   Like a science experiment she had studied the landscape, made her observation but didn’t know understand her next actions.

The “expert” imposter

Many of us grow up with values like Lana.  We show early gifts.  We shine academically in our early school years.   Our values and how we are valued by others becomes embedded in our expertise.  When we tackle new and unfamiliar challenges, we instinctively look for the benchmarks by which success is measured and set our goals against these.

The thing is the “expert” imposter can never be content.  For there is always another goal to be reached, another benchmark to be hit and alongside us in the race of life we constructed in our own minds there are other players, alongside us, on our tails, inching ahead.

The “expert” imposter berates us for not being good enough, fast enough, strong enough.   Our question for happiness is contingent on hitting the benchmark or goal.   Yet even when we hit that goal it’s not good enough, there is still little satisfaction or at best it is short-lived.

Hit the goal and it’s immediately on to the next quest.  Hit the goal quickly and it was “clearly too easy”.  Find the goal difficult or challenging and “clearly you’re not good enough”.

You see how with the expert imposter it’s a set-up that ironically given the whole theme is about winning, you can never actually succeed in achieving.

Learning to calibrate

In our story Lana is transitioning from a world where expectations, benchmarks and calibration has been done for her.  She was studying maths – then someone told her what she needed to know and demonstrate to get top grade.  She wanted to learn piano – here’s the syllabus and expectations to get a distinction.   The rules of the game and how to feel valid are all set there to be learned.

And now sitting in the coffee shop – Lana is struggling to learn the rules because life itself isn’t straightforward that it has one single measure of what success looks like.   Lana’s journey involves learning to calibrate success for herself and it’s something that her “expert” imposter makes difficult to achieve.

The expert imposter revisits us at many of life’s transition points

Likely you’re reading this and can remember your first job and that sense of not knowing the expectations.  You can look back at Lana and know that once she starts her job the symbols and rituals of her company will help give her some of the benchmarks she is craving.

But living a life where our “expert” imposter can only be satisfied when it is conveniently provided with external benchmarks is limited.   Let’s look further ahead at what might be in Lana’s future to see how keeping the “expert” imposter as your guiding light is simply unhelpful.

Those of you who are parents will know there is no instruction manual for raising children.   You can go to a bookshop searching for the benchmarks and find 1001 different opinions and none of them quite seem to fit the situation in front of you.  Just when you master feeding and nappy changing, you’re expected to be the expert in walking and toilet training and before you know it, you’re expected to be the expert coach in someone else’s imposter syndrome.

Those of your in or striving to reach executive level roles will know the further you advance the harder it is for anyone to set out for you exactly what good looks like.   And furthermore, as the leader, you have people looking to you for your expertise.