Embracing Imposter Syndrome: How to Quiet Your Inner Mean Girl

“Am I good enough for this position?”

“What if my boss discovers my incompetence?”

“Should I have a seat at this table?”

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, you are familiar with imposter syndrome. It’s a condition that makes us question the role we’ve played in our own success. 

You could end up tying your success back to external factors that are out of your control like luck, the sympathy of a superior, or timing. 

Caption: There’s a fear of being “found out”

Imposter syndrome can leave you feeling like a fraud - that maybe you are a mistake or two away from being found out. You might fear that maybe your superiors or colleagues will yank off your mask one day; and instead of finding Superwoman behind the mask, they’ll find a fraudster. 

It can be a crippling feeling, often making us women overlook all signs that we achieved our success through our innate abilities. 

Imposter syndrome can leave you feeling like a fraud - that maybe you are a mistake or two away from being found out. You might fear that maybe your superiors or colleagues will yank off your mask one day; and instead of finding Superwoman behind the mask, they’ll find a fraudster. 

It can be a crippling feeling, often making us women overlook all signs that we achieved our success through our innate abilities. 

You are Not Alone

Caption: Everyone goes through periods of self-doubt.

High-achieving women have fought fraud-like feelings since time immemorial. 

In spite of her numerous awards and accolades, novelist Maya Angelou once admitted to feeling incompetent:

"I have written 11 books but each time I think 'Uh-oh, they're going to find out now.' I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out." 

Imposter syndrome among high achieving women was first recorded in a 1978 study by psychologists Suzanna Imes and Pauline Rose Clance. The study broke down the environmental factors and personality traits that contribute to imposter syndrome. The study also claimed that there was a lack of internal acknowledgment of the issue. 

Fast forward to the 21st century, and women have taken long strides in the workplace. We’re now key decision-makers, hold coveted positions in the c-suite, and have an even better career trajectory than ever before. 

But imposter syndrome still holds us back. 

A 2020 report by KPMG found that 75% of the 750 high-achieving women they polled had experienced imposter syndrome at some point in their careers. These were professionals who had an indisputable track record of accomplishments, and yet they faced some crippling self-doubt.

The same report also found that:

• 47% of the surveyed women attributed their self-doubt to them never having expected to attain their current level of success. 
• 56% felt like they wouldn’t live up to the expectations of others or that those around them don’t believe in their abilities.
• Some of the women felt that having a supportive performance manager (47%) and feeling valued (29%) could help alleviate their imposter syndrome. 

The Negative Effects of Imposter Syndrome

Unchecked imposter syndrome can be detrimental to your career progression. Some women will muffle their voices during meetings, never contributing out of the fear of ‘being found out.’ 

Others will try to drown their perceived incompetencies into more work and hard-to-achieve goals, which can easily result in them feeling burnt out. 

Others will second-guess their decisions, feel anxious about making mistakes, and even turn into perfectionists. 

I first learned about the effects of imposter syndrome on women in the workplace from Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s COO and author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. In her book, she mentions a meeting between her, fifteen silicon valley executives, and Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, and his team of four women.

Once the meeting was over, she encouraged everyone to help themselves to the buffet. While the men grabbed their food first and sat at the large conference table, the four women took their food last and sat in chairs to the side of the room. 

None of them joined the men at the conference table even after Sheryl urged them to do so. Sheryl points out that their refusal to take a seat at the table, even when they had every right to be at the meeting, is symbolic of how internal fears hold women back from thriving in their roles:

“It was a watershed moment for me. A moment when I witnessed how an internal barrier can alter women’s behavior. A moment when I realized that in addition to facing institutional obstacles, women face a battle from within”

Read: Escaping the Perfectionist Trap: How High Achieving Women Can Thrive Healthily

How to Embrace and Conquer Your Imposter Syndrome

Caption: Don’t sell yourself short

Learning how to tactically tackle imposter syndrome will free you from self doubt. It will help you exercise your executive presence in any room you walk into, feel comfortable with your decisions, and take more calculated risks.

Be Mindful of How You Think about Yourself

It’s human nature to focus on everything that’s wrong, a phenomenon referred to as Negative Bias. We’re drawn to what we aren’t doing right, the negative points in an otherwise positive performance review, and what we lack in comparison to others. 

In the real sense, we forget about all the great things that we have; our achievements, our network, our capabilities, and our opportunities. Looking at your career from a lens of negativity will increase your self-doubt. 

Stop it!

Focus on strengthening your grace muscle. Take a look at your current position in your career and life. What do you like about it? 

Be generous when listing your past achievements and what you love about them. Write down these achievements, and whenever your inner mean girl wants to drag you down, revisit this list. 

Even more important, avoid comparing yourself to other people in similar positions. You’re most likely only looking at their achievements and not the struggle behind their success. They too could be comparing themselves to you in the same manner.

Instead, compare your present self to your past self. What growth and achievements have you made in the past quarter, year, or half-decade? Find ways to be proud of where you are, and welcoming towards the opportunities ahead of you. 

“It (overcoming imposter syndrome) begins with recognizing that the people who really don’t feel like imposters are no more intelligent or capable than you or I. That the only difference between them and us is that they think different thoughts… The reason we have to pay attention to the conversation going on in our head is so that we can reframe it the way a non-imposter would.” 

Says Valerie Young, Author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women.

Grow Your Network

According to the same KPMG study, 45% of women agreed that it’s lonely at the top - the more successful they became, the smaller their circle of people in similar positions became. 

32% of them claimed that they struggled with imposter syndrome because they didn’t know people in similar positions they could relate to personally or professionally.

Find people in the same situation as you with whom you can connect. Growing your network allows you to relate with people from whom you can establish the norm in your position. 

With a strong network, you’ll learn:

• What success looks like in your position
• How to tackle specific challenges and failures
• How to handle corporate politics

Best of all, a strong network will offer you accountability partners, people you can share your current situation and worries with. 

You don’t necessarily need to grow your network from within your organization. Look for other women outside your organization that are in similar situations as yourself. 

Find male allies within your organization too - people whom you can count on for support. These allies can help you fight microaggressions, amplify your voice, and get invaluable feedback whenever necessary. 

Treat Failure as a Learning Opportunity

Caption: Failure is a stepping stone to your success.

Mistakes and failures are inevitable in the workplace, but for someone battling imposter syndrome, a mistake could suggest that they’re one step closer to being ‘found out.’

The truth is that mistakes represent learning opportunities. They reveal what we shouldn’t do. Some mistakes also come with extra insights. For instance, watching your marketing campaign fail to reach its target could reveal some insights into what the customer wants.

Welcome calculated risks into your professional life, embrace your mistakes, and learn from them. Accepting that you can fail gives you leeway to try new things at work. It also makes your successes feel much more monumental, which could help quiet your inner mean girl. 

Grow Your Confidence on the Go

Caption: a graphical depiction of the Dunning-kruger effect

Although counterintuitive to some, Adam Grant makes an argument that imposter syndrome can be a good thing. In his book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, he says that overconfidence can lead to complacency.

People that are confident in their role can easily fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a cognitive bias that makes people with little understanding of a role have an inflated confidence in their abilities. 

On the flip side, the more these people learn about a task, the lower their confidence in their abilities becomes. Their confidence only peaks again once they learn enough to make them experts in the role.

Your reduced confidence in your abilities protects you from being complacent. It should encourage you to seek ways to improve your confidence and competency. Adam argues that impostor thoughts can and should motivate us to work harder and smarter, while turning us into better learners:

“Feeling like an impostor can make us better learners. Having some doubts about our knowledge and skills takes us off a pedestal, encouraging us to seek out insights from others.”

Embrace a beginner’s mentality!

Turn yourself into a sponge and soak up every piece of information that’ll improve your understanding of your role. Put in the required work and collaborate with others to improve your abilities. 

Don’t wait for your confidence to rise to start tackling challenges. Build your confidence by achieving challenging goals. 

Create a Mantra out of the Two Most Powerful Words: “I Am”

In my podcast episode with Patricia Ithau - Leading from Within and the Power of Courage - we discussed the power of the phrase “I am” and the words that follow it. You breathe life into whatever words you put after this phrase. 

When I asked her what she would tell her 18-year old self, she said:

“You’re okay”

She said that she spent her early years seeing the flaws she had. In retrospect, she felt that she had been on the right track all along. 

The way you talk to yourself has a huge impact on your life. Create a mantra out of the power phrase:

“I am on the right track”

“I am comfortable with my decision”

“I am willing to learn from my mistakes”

Have you faced imposter syndrome in your life? How do you fight it? What would you tell anyone struggling with it today? 

Drop a comment below.