So this came up today and it's something I see ALL the time and, transparently, have fought it myself my whole career, so figured I'd share my 2 cents...
For the 101 level - Impostor Syndrome is essentially when people feel they're being celebrated or rewarded for something they didn't really earn or qualify for. For me - this blog post is a very minor example: "I'm not an expert, why would anybody want to read what I think?" If I approach it logically, the experience I have and the work I've done to ensure I know and understand the topic inside and out actually DOES mean people should value my opinion. It's a short-cut to all the effort I've put into learning it. BUT in matters of emotion, logic is rarely welcome. Does it matter? For a blog post, nope. Not at all. Worst case that happens is it doesn't get written Where it *does* matter, and transparently, I see this far more in women than in men, is in issues such as:
- salary negotiations
- applying for jobs, especially stretch roles
- accepting stretch opportunities (even if in the same role)
- taking credit where credit is due (and / or the closely related ability to own and sell why and how you're a superstar)
Signs I see regularly than can reflect this -- see if you recognize yourself in any of them:
- "thanks but, it was nothing / it was easy" <-- sure, easy for YOU. Maybe not easy for the other 84,000ish RBC employees who did NOT do whatever you're being praised for.
- Related is "anybody could've done it" <-- challenge yourself, is this REALLY a true statement? If we brought in a random teenager off the street and said "go" could they have done it and done it as well as you did? Was there any career or life knowledge applied? Something you only know cause you did that thing once.... Is there something you have a knack for that smoothed the way? It's *really* easy to undermine skills that come easily to us, that for others are a real challenge. Two examples of these types are skills that I see often are:
- an ability to instinctively understand how things work (be it machines, computers, cars etc) -- people who can do this just "know" what's wrong and often how to fix it. And "anyone could do it" - you know, except everyone who just stares at it frustrated cause it doesn't work.
- strong empathy skills. People with exceptionally strong empathy skills often can diffuse a tense situation, present things in just the right way to get buy-in, negotiate between two parties and have both feeling like they "won" at the end, etc. And for them, "anyone could do it" - after all, all they did was talk to people. But how many other people - equally or even more skilled at speaking - would've made the situation worse rather than better?
- only applying for roles that you're fully qualified for. There was a stat out a while ago that men will apply for any job if they're ~60% qualified, women, not unless they're 100% qualified. Follow-up studies have shown that there are many influencers to that - Impostor Syndrome, which can be experienced by both genders, is only one of them (click here if you're interested in some of the others).
- when preparing for mid-year or end-year reviews: "I did my job", or listing tasks rather than accomplishments. This is sometimes seen on resumes too. I'll give a personal example on this one -- when I was a junior PM in a very large PMO, this task used to really annoy me. I did everything a PM was supposed to do. Just like the other 100 PMs here. Even though I was getting exceptional feedback, I didn't actually internalize that that meant I was doing something differently. Something important. And I certainly didn't know how to tell anybody else about that. Which meant when the time came that I was bored and looking for the next role, I had a real challenge to face because I had not yet learned to own my strengths, because to me, they were just "part of the job".
- not looking for or accepting stretch opportunities because "I'm not ready" or "I don't know how to do that" or "I only know how to do part of it" -- honestly, the opportunity probably wouldn't have been offered to you if at least ONE person didn't believe you were ready. Examples: "I'm not going to be on the panel; why would anybody want my opinion?" (despite being literally asked specifically for your opinion) "I can't lead the project, I've never lead anything before" (despite being the one who cares passionately about the project and is the leading expert in the thing the project is going to accomplish)
- choosing to not do something you either want to or think you should do, because you won't be "good enough". Is there someone else out there who's better? Probably. But does that person have your unique combination of skills that make it so your lesser, but still existing, knowledge is super-helpful in the current situation? Unlikely. This comes up over and over again when someone is considering learning a new skill that is tangentially related to their work (or real life for that matter! How many times have you heard "I'm too old to learn that?" Spoiler alert, unless the doctor tells you that, you're probably not). Examples: project execution people learning about strategy, developers learning a new coding language or a different tech, literally anybody in a fully functional agile lab learning the basics of someone else's area of expertise)
Okay - this post is getting very long, so I'm going to stop now, and leave you with a much better example, that is 100% not mine, AND goes to show that this does, in-fact, impact men as well:
From best-selling and award-winning author Neil Gaiman, officially ranked one of the top-ten living post-modern writers and definitely NOT an impostor:
(link to original post: https://journal.
