Have you ever felt that you're a fraud at work? Perhaps there's a deep-seated fear, bubbling away just below the surface, that one day someone is going to find out that you've just been winging your way through your career by the seat of your pants. Certain situations may make this feeling worse - for example a meeting with the senior sponsor or a formal presentation to key stakeholders – triggering physical effects that you can't hide…sweaty palms, brain fog, racing heartbeat. Welcome to Impostor Syndrome.

The concept of Impostor Syndrome (originally called Impostor Phenomenon) was introduced in a 1978 article  by two U.S. psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. They defined it as "an internal experience of intellectual phoniness", and their research focussed on women in higher education and professional industries. This syndrome is characterised by persistent feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and fears of being exposed as a fraud. People who experience it tend to downplay their own achievements, think their successes in life are down to luck and/or chance, and have difficulty accepting compliments and praise from others.

Are you part of the 80%?

Although early research focussed on professional women, it's been found that Impostor Syndrome affects people from all walks of life and 80% of people will experience it at some point. Recent research by YouGov (and others) has shown that it's not gender-specific (although slightly more women admit to being affected by it than men) and age is a factor, however it does disproportionately affect high-achieving people.

The 5 Types of Imposter Syndrome

5 distinct types of Impostor Syndrome have been identified :

1. The Soloist – who prefers to struggle alone than ask for help.
2. The Perfectionist – who feels like a failure despite 99% of goals being achieved.
3. The Expert – who worries about never knowing quite enough about a subject.
4. The Superman – who works ever harder, seeing any downtime as wasteful.
5. The Natural Genius – who feels inadequate when they don't get things right first time.

Do any of these types resonate with your own experience?

The good news is that Impostor Syndrome is not a medical condition. A level of critical self-doubt is part of being human and is healthy. Self-doubt is a survival mechanism hard-wired into the brain, to ensure we STOP-PAUSE-THINK before acting in life-threatening situations. Which is helpful if you're being confronted by a hungry wolf, but less so when it's the CEO! Another survival mechanism is our need to 'fit in' with a group – to 'belong' – whose protection will maximise your chances of escaping that hungry wolf but can create major anxiety in work situations where we feel excluded from a group of colleagues, for example the board of directors.

What we need to tackle feelings of Impostor Syndrome is not therapy or medication, but effective strategies for managing it as the need arises. It's a fact that self-confidence is created not bestowed, and everyone has a choice whether they build it or undermine it. Neural pathways in the brain that connect us to unhelpful thought patterns can be replaced by more helpful ones by applying what are known as "cognitive reframing tools".  Here are two recommended by leadership coach and trainer Mandy Green .

Visualise Your Inner Critic

What do they look like, how are they dressed? Perhaps give he/she/they/it a name. Every time they start chattering on your shoulder, say out loud "not today!". Or befriend them "I know you're trying to keep me safe with all these doubts, but I'm OK today, thank you."

Get Others' Feedback

Invite a few people who you trust and respect to give you honest feedback on what they value about you, what they see as your strengths/greatest achievements, and what might be your areas for development.

Develop a Growth Mindset

Another strategy is to actively Develop a Growth Mindset. A growth mindset  is one that believes that your talents can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and input from others, rather than something innate (like IQ). Worry less about looking clever or being right and put more energy into embracing failures as major opportunities to learn and grow.

Just Do What BAs Do Best!

Or, just do as BAs do best, as explained by Jo Fahy in her article "It's Not You, It's Me – Impostor Syndrome" . Analysis is your BA Superpower, so use these skills to manage those impostor feelings:

1. Collect the evidence – did the meeting really go as unsuccessfully as you thought? Did you get the outcomes needed, meet the objectives? What was the feedback?
2. Analyse the evidence – discover the root cause. What was it that triggered the Impostor Syndrome feeling? What valuable learning did you obtain?
3. Avoid assumptions – remember confidence is often conflated with competence. Get to know the people who always seem to have the right answers, maybe they value your expertise.
4. Recommend improvements – based on your analysis, what can you do in the future to build your self-confidence and manage those feelings of self-doubt?

Finally, Jo says "Remember to BE KIND to yourself. Everyone has an off day." We couldn't agree more!

One last word on Impostor Syndrome. There are many solutions offered, but what's less explored is why people experience it in professional workplaces. We know that exclusion exacerbates self-doubt and low self-confidence. The original study didn't consider the impact of systemic racism, classism, xenophobia, and similar biases that can manifest in an organisation's culture.

We'll end with a quote from the Harvard Business Review:

"Feeling like an outsider isn't an illusion or medical condition – it's the result of systemic bias and exclusion… [impostor syndrome] directs our view towards fixing women at work, instead of fixing the places where women work… we don't belong, because we were never supposed to be belong. Our presence is the result of decades of grassroots activism and begrudgingly developed legislation."

Food for thought.

FURTHER READING

[i] Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). "The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention." Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), p.241–247.https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006

[ii]  Young, Valerie Dr. (2011) "The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It", Crown Publishing Group, Division of Random House Inc

[iii] More tools and resources available from Mandy Green at https://www.mandygreenleadership.com/

[iv] Dweck, Carol "The Power of Believing You Can Improve" TED Talk, available at https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?language=en

[v] Fahy, Jo (2022) "It's Not You, It's Me – Impostor Syndrome", BA Digest, available at https://heyzine.com/flip-book/a5dc676452.html#page/5

[vi] Tulshyan, Rushika and Burey, Jodi-Ann (11 FEB 2021) "Stop Telling Women They Have Impostor Syndrome", Harvard Business Review, available at https://hbr.org/2021/02/stop-telling-women-they-have-imposter-syndrome