Imposter Syndrome

Article By Ross Johnson

Women Wearing a Comedy Mask

Are you a relatively high achieving professional that can’t help but think that you don’t deserve to be in the position you are?

You’re certainly not alone. In 2014 Roger Jones, of Vantage Hill Partners, undertook a survey of 116 CEOs and other executives to determine their most prevalent personal anxieties, and the detrimental effects it has upon their business and working relationships. “While few executives talk about them” said Jones, “deep and uncontrolled private fears can spur defensive behaviours that undermine how they and their colleagues set and execute company strategy.”

The results of this survey are surprising, especially given that these are people who have excelled in their relative career paths. Jones found that the biggest fear among executives was being found to be incompetent, also known as the ‘impostor syndrome’. A term first coined by Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes, Impostor Syndrome (or Impostor Phenomenon) can be defined as ‘a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success.’ Chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence can override any feelings of success or evidence of a person’s competence. It appears to be prevalent in high achieving, successful individuals, and so cannot always be equated with a lack of confidence or low levels of self-esteem.

Research has often linked it with perfectionists, particularly in women and among academics, and Jones’ survey was the first to highlight the syndrome and its detrimental effects within a specific business context. Carried out across a diverse cross-section of different positions (a third being CEOs or presidents, a third being business unit heads, the final third being senior managers reporting to division heads) and sectors underlines the frustrating irony of impostor syndrome—it affects high achieving individuals the most. And, worse than this, becoming better at your job won’t curb those feelings of self-doubt; the more you excel, the more reason you have to feel like a fraud. The more knowledge you gain, the more acutely aware you are of what you don’t know. In terms of success, like altitude sickness, impostor syndrome only gets worse the higher you climb. It is, as Ann Friedman says, “for many people, a natural symptom of gaining expertise.”

Whilst impostor syndrome is not a gendered phenomenon, it is particularly common among high achieving females. Research centred on female academics and their reasons for downscaling ambitions for high-level posts found it was nothing to do with work-life balance, but was instead down to their feeling like impostors. It is, perhaps, one of the contributing factors to the fact that only 27% of the CEOs surveyed by Jones were female. Men, despite impostor syndrome, remain far more likely to be able to internalise success, rather than explaining it away in terms of external factors such as good timing or luck.

Whilst it is perhaps a contributing factor towards the continued, albeit shrinking, gender disparity in leadership roles, what Jones highlights is the negative impact it can have on businesses, if such fears remain in the shadows. “Organizations should value emotional intelligence as a key executive attribute. One financial services company’s business unit CEO has great emotional intelligence, and in running the company over the last four years has created a healthy group dynamic to debate the unit’s strategy and ongoing decisions. The unit’s revenue and profits have grown.” The key here is to talk, and to create a company or team culture in which honest communication is encouraged. The example cited is an engineering company’s executives who, having shared life experiences both good and bad, trusted each other far more and were able to make better decisions afterwards.

On a personal level, Christian Jarrett suggests strategies such as learning to be a healthy perfectionist, striving for yourself and not for others, while not worrying excessively about mistakes. Another effective strategy is to adopt counter measures, to go for the promotion anyway, and to always look for new opportunities to excel. “Soak up the self-doubt and then take the leap anyway” recommends Jarrett.

It may be difficult, but overcoming impostor syndrome personally, and the negative impact it can have upon team dynamics and business generally, is possible—the next time you have those feelings of self-doubt, remember that everyone else is probably feeling them too. If nothing else seems to you as though it is, impostor syndrome in itself is almost certain proof that you are a high achieving individual.