Exposing Imposter Syndrome by Telling Better Stories
A common refrain I hear as a leadership coach is when clients—typically accomplished, highly motivated clients—describe themselves as having “imposter syndrome” when they reflect on their role in their organization or perhaps a new opportunity they’ve been given. You might have heard or even used that term yourself.
I know I have. Although people tell me I come across as confident and self-assured on the outside, on the inside it can be a whole ‘nother story. I am intimately familiar with the feelings of inadequacy leading to imposter syndrome, though I tend to think of it as “Who Am I Syndrome”—as in, “Who am I to speak out on this particular topic?” or, “Who am I to think I’m the right person for this role?” If truth be told, this same “Who Am I Syndrome” rears its ugly head and causes me to throw up in my mouth a little bit every time I hit “send” on one of these blog posts. (You’re welcome for that imagery!)
The good news is that while the feeling of imposter syndrome may be real, the substance behind it often is not. I believe the key to exposing imposter syndrome as, well, the imposter it is, involves learning to tell ourselves better stories about who we are, what we’re capable of becoming, and how we can make our own unique contributions to our team and the world.
What is Imposter Syndrome?
For those fortunate souls who haven’t experienced it, “imposter syndrome” is a concept first identified by psychologists Suzanne Imes and Pauline Rose Clance in the 1970s to describe high achievers unable to internalize and accept their success without being riddled by self-doubt. People suffering from it attribute their accomplishments to luck rather than ability, question whether they’re deserving of accolades or promotions, and secretly fear others will eventually unmask them as a fraud. Sound familiar?
Much of the literature concerning imposter syndrome has focused on high-achieving women plagued with concerns that despite their academic and professional accomplishments, they’re not really that talented and will be “found out” eventually. To underscore that point, “[e]ven famous women—from Hollywood superstars such as Charlize Theron and Viola Davis to business leaders such as Sheryl Sandberg and even former First Lady Michelle Obama and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — have confessed to experiencing it.” https://hbr.org/2021/02/stop-telling-women-they-have-imposter-syndrome
While I don’t doubt the prevalence of imposter syndrome among highly accomplished women, my own experience tells me the feeling is not bound by neat lines of gender or status. Stereotypically, men might be less willing to verbalize that feeling or use different terms to describe it when they do—describing it as not “measuring up,” “not making the grade,” or “feeling like a failure” instead of using the “I” word. However, if the anecdotal evidence from my own circle of male friends and clients is any guide, the underlying feelings of self-doubt are no less real.
Telling Better Stories
The important question isn’t who is afflicted by imposter syndrome or even what we call it. The real question is what those of us who face it from time to time can do to keep it from derailing us on our professional and personal journeys. The answer, it seems to me, is to start telling ourselves better stories.
Here are four key realizations that can help us do exactly that.
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1. What You Think About Yourself Matters.
When you look at the images to the left, which do you identify with most: the perfectly ripe banana that sees itself as going bad or the pawn that sees itself as a king among chess pieces? The answer to this question reveals a great deal about how you think about yourself, which is the first key to telling a better story.
The way we think about ourselves—our self-image—matters a lot as it turns out. Science confirms that the way we think about ourselves has a dramatic impact not only on our performance, but also on our mental and physical health. According to medical experts, thinking positively about yourself and the situations you find yourself in leads to:
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Increased life span
Lower rates of depression
Lower levels of distress
Greater resistance to the common cold
Better psychological and physical well-being
Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress
Who we see when we look in the mirror is influenced greatly by the mindset we adopt as our lens for seeing the world. In her book “Mindset,” Carol Dweck defines two basic mindsets: fixed and growth. A fixed mindset whispers in our ear that our talents are limited and unchangeable, which can lead to a feeling of unworthiness when we suffer a setback. A growth mindset, on the other hand, declares that we are works in progress capable of steady improvement and views momentary failures as opportunities to learn and grow.
A fixed mindset says after we stumble, “You can’t do anything right! Why even try?” A growth mindset says, “Nice first attempt! If you try even harder next time, you’re bound to do better!” The only imposter in the land of growth mindsets is the idea that we’re not good enough now and there’s nothing we can do to improve.
2. What You Say to Yourself Matters.
As important as the way we think about ourselves is the way we talk to ourselves, whether out loud or in our internal dialogue. If you don’t think you talk to yourself much, just ask your children or others who spend time with you in unguarded moments.
I confess to having a never-ending stream of dialogue going in my mind about what I’m doing, what I’m planning, and how I’m regarding the world around me, which sometimes escapes my mind through my lips. This pattern was so hard-wired in me, though, that I never realized I was doing it until my oldest two children pointed it out a few years back in a memorable way.
More specifically, I developed a habit over many years of engaging in negative self-talk as a way to motivate myself, typically saying something like “C’mon Mike, you big dummy!” (or something more profane) when I’d make a mistake. My tendency to lapse into motivational Tourette’s Syndrome was finally brought to my attention by my oldest two children, who created a song-and-dance routine called, literally, “C’mon Mike, You Big Dummy,” which they would spontaneously break into whenever they overheard me using my catchphrase.
Funny? Yes. Convicting? Most definitely—so much so that I intentionally shifted my catchphrase to “C’mon Mike, you can DO this!” when facing adversity going forward.
In a previous post, I mentioned a marvelous book called, “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It,” which is all about the impact of our self-talk on our state of mind and performance. Author and psychologist Ethan Kross explains that negative self-talk, which he calls “chatter,” causes us to ruminate and worry, contributes to strains on relationships and health, and makes it more difficult to perform under pressure. Sounds like a recipe for imposter syndrome, doesn’t it?
One simple but powerful way to improve our self-talk is by asking how the characteristic confronting you has served you well in the past, rather than focusing on how it has let you down. For example, instead of criticizing yourself for always overthinking things, what if you said, “I’m unusually thoughtful,” instead? Or rather than beating yourself up for taking longer to learn a new subject than others (which is one of my particular challenges), why not celebrate the fact that you’ve developed greater perseverance as a result?
If the way we see ourselves (self-image) determines our possibilities, the way we talk to ourselves (self-talk) determines our outcomes. Telling a better story requires a willingness to speak better outcomes into existence.
3. Bad is Stronger Than Good.
I love spending time with people who are smarter than I am for the same reason I enjoy playing tennis with players who are really good: it raises the level of my game.
For that very reason, I had coffee last week with a friend of mine who possesses a wonderfully inquisitive mind and four PhD’s, one of them in psychology. After we discussed the general topic of this post, he shared something powerful with me. “Mike,” he said, “while you live in a world with clear laws, psychology has only one law: Bad is stronger than good.”
The law my friend clued me in on comes from a well-known academic paper authored by Roy Baumeister and others published in 2001 concluding that “bad” or negative events, information, or feedback have significantly more impact on your emotions, thoughts, and behavior than an equivalent “good” or positive incident.
This law applies across the board to romantic relationships, other close personal connections, and workplace interactions such that bad impressions and stereotypes are quicker to form and harder to dislodge than good ones. The impact of bad interactions in close personal relationships is so much more powerful, in fact, that Baumeister concluded that unless positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by five to one, odds are that the relationship will fail.
The implications of this law of psychology on our interior dialogue are staggering. Every instance in which we think or talk about ourselves in a negative way requires five positive thoughts or statements just to balance it out. The lesson here is that telling a better story requires both limiting the bad and multiplying the good things we think and say about ourselves.
You Have the Power to Choose a Better Story.
While the realizations that what we think matters, what we say matters, and bad is stronger than good are important elements to telling a better story, the most important realization of all is that we have the power to choose a better story.
In his classic work drawn from his experience in a Nazi death camp, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor Frankl maintains that: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” This wisdom is as true for the internal stories we choose to tell ourselves about ourselves as it is for the external circumstances we encounter.
Bringing this full circle, Frankl’s message means when we are in a situation in which we feel underqualified or out of our depth, we don’t have to feel like an imposter and tell ourselves we’re a fraud. Instead, we can choose a better story, like:
“I don’t feel fully prepared for this role right now, but I’ve felt this way before, and I’ve always been able to figure it out.”
“While I may not have the same experience or have gone to the same schools as the other people in the room, I made it to the room anyway. Besides, they haven’t had my experience or education either.”
“Even if I don’t succeed in this initiative, that won’t make me a failure because I’ll use the experience to become better next time.”
American industrialist Henry Ford is credited with saying, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right,” which captures the power of telling better stories to a T (or a Model T, in this instance.) What story are you choosing to tell yourself about yourself?
If you’re looking for a coach who can help you tell better stories, contact me at mike.tooley@upstreamprinciples.com.
Mike Tooley is a Co-Founder with Upstream Principles LLC, a coaching and consulting firm dedicated to helping individuals, leaders, and teams go upstream to discover solutions for their leadership and employee development challenges. As a certified Leadership and Strengths Coach, Mike is committed to serve as a guide to help others discover, and live out, who they are designed to be.