Seventy-one percent of American CEOs admit to struggling with imposter syndrome. More than half – 58% -feel stretched beyond their abilities. If you feel like you’re winging it some days, you’re in good company.
CLIENT QUESTION: Wondering if you had any thoughts on Imposter Syndrome? My role is increasingly challenging and most days I feel like I’m terrible at it, despite external signals.
Quick Summary:
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- Imposter Syndrome is more common than you think, and normalizing it is a powerful first step.
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- Burnout may be fueling your self-doubt more than you realize.
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- Your Imposter Syndrome isn’t just in your head – it may be signaling something real that needs action.
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- In our current zeitgeist, feeling like an imposter is a natural response to relentless challenge.
Go Deeper:
Imposter Syndrome is defined by the National Library of Medicine as “self-doubt of intellect, skills, or accomplishments among high-achieving individuals. These individuals cannot internalize their success and subsequently experience pervasive feelings of self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and/or apprehension of being exposed as a fraud in their work, despite verifiable and objective evidence of their success.”
I have several perspectives on Imposter Syndrome. If intelligence is defined by our ability to hold a paradox, and wisdom is knowing that everything has at least two sides, then I invite you to explore these perspectives for yourself and hopefully find one or multiple solutions.
I’ll start with self-compassion – accepting Imposter Syndrome – then shift toward growth. Try not to think of self-acceptance and growth as mutually exclusive or believe, as many people do, that the only way to grow is to judge yourself. Self-judgment prohibits growth as it’s almost impossible to improve when we refuse to truly look at ourselves. Improvement requires clear vision and all progress starts by telling the truth.
Instead, imagine a polarity with self-compassion and acceptance to the left, and growth to the right, and ask yourself what you recommend most for yourself right now. I sometimes see my work as “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable”, so knowing whether you’re more afflicted or too comfortable may help you to decide what’s more pressing.
Reflect on the root cause of this sense of being an imposter. To what can you trace it back? Past experiences, underlying beliefs about yourself and life, the perceived negative opinion of others that challenge your confidence, being out of integrity with your internal standards, comparing yourself, career burnout, or transition fatigue? I wish I could address all these areas here, but for now, just getting a clearer sense of what’s creating that feeling for you may help you know what to solve for.
Here are a few immediate options:
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- SEE IT AS A WIN
Imposter Syndrome usually means you’re in the right room. If you’re never in over your head, you’re likely under-challenged. The first step is acceptance. Think of it as a launchpad, not a landing zone.
A sense of humor about ourselves also helps us cope with anxiety. There’s some wonderful research on how labeling our negative emotions in amusing ways can help us transcend our fears around different situations. What may be a good name for your Imposter Syndrome, e.g. the “board meeting wobbles”, or the “I’m-not-yet-perfect agony”? My mother used to say the most important thing you can have in life is a sense of humor, and the older I get the more I agree. At any rate, humor facilitates learning, reduces stress, indicates wisdom – and humor about yourself works best.
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- THE BURNOUT COMPONENT
Start to question to what degree the feeling of being an imposter is valid, and to what degree this may just be what I call “the burnout talking”. Most people believe that symptoms of burnout are physical, but they are more frequently mental and emotional.
Career burnout is commonly traced to four causes: 1) over-caring, 2) lack of appreciation, 3) not working to your strengths or operating below your capacity, and/or 4) sustained effort without progress. It is also created and sustained by core beliefs, e.g. It’s all on me.
Burnout directly impacts confidence, and self-talk invariably suffers, where you may start to think you’re not actually that good at what you’re doing anyway. Not a fun loop to find yourself in. A huge number of leaders I work with are suffering burnout on arrival and that’s often the first thing to diagnose, alleviate, and prevent from recurring. I’ll go deeper here Leadership Burnout: Causes and Cures.
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- SEEING THE TRUTH IN IT
All progress starts by telling the truth, and many people experience Imposter Syndrome because it’s valid. You may be new in your role or industry. Your responsibilities and organization are growing faster than you are. You’re at the mercy of compound volatility (economic, geopolitical, technological, and cultural). This is normal. However, the degree of negative emotion you’re experiencing on an ongoing basis is directly related to the level of responsibility you’re taking for addressing these issues. You can read more about that in Negative Emotions and Responsibility.
If you have recurring negative emotions about yourself and your performance, it’s because you’re not taking the actions you know you need to be taking. Cognitive dissonance is the friend that tells you the truth about yourself.
The solution is not massive action so much as it is developing the right habits, or what I call Process Goals. Imposter Syndrome disappears quickly once you’re taking sincere, regular action toward what needs to be remedied and I’ll write more on that in future in Leadership and Peak Performance.
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- YOUR ROLE IS PLAIN HARD
A play on Kipling’s poem “If” that I find amusing is, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then perhaps you’ve misunderstood the situation”.
If you’re in over your head right now, it’s not just you. Old ways of leading are changing and new approaches are required, including ways of leading through complexity, higher levels of adult development than you’ve ever needed before, polarity management, and a very strong core.
These are opportunities for growth and a deeper and higher understanding. My motive is to have you see your Imposter Syndrome as the blessing and call to action that it is. It is your integrity in action telling you that something needs work.
I hope this helps you accept, locate the causes of, and start to solve Imposter Syndrome in your life. I recommend bringing greater self-compassion and responsibility. Imposter Syndrome is a sign that something needs attention and can be alleviated through right action.
If this resonates, let’s talk about how to turn your Imposter Syndrome into a catalyst, not a constraint. As Marcus Aurelius said, “What stands in the way becomes the way.”
