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What’s imposter syndrome? How does imposter syndrome prevent you from performing your best?
Imposter syndrome is a mindset that makes people believe their success is undeserved, no matter how hard they worked for it. This phenomenon can cause episodes of self-doubt, shame, negative thoughts, and psychological distress.
Let’s dive into the effects of imposter syndrome at work, and how you can defeat it.
What Is Imposter Syndrome?
According to Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, imposter syndrome is a form of self-doubt. People who have this syndrome feel like imposters, as if at any moment they’ll be revealed as frauds. When praised, they feel undeserving and guilty, like a mistake has been made.
Despite her qualifications, even Sandberg has been affected by imposter syndrome. She arrived at Harvard unprepared for its academic rigor and soon felt lost, not as smart as everyone else—a fraud. Through hard work, she excelled, but she could never shake this nagging self-doubt.
Sandberg says that women are more likely than men to be affected and limited by imposter syndrome, often judging their performance as worse than it really is. In contrast, men tend to judge their performance as better than it is.
Contributing to imposter syndrome, women feel more lacking in intrinsic ability compared to men.
- While men see their success as a result of talents and skills, women are more likely to cite hard work, luck, and the support of others.
- When a man fails, he is more likely to point to outside factors, like, “I didn’t study enough,” while a woman is more likely to attribute an inherent lack of ability.
- When a man receives negative feedback, he is less likely to internalize it—accept it as his personal truth.
- In Sandberg’s experience, men bang down her door to be considered for new opportunities, whereas women are reticent and more cautious about changing roles and being challenged.
A woman is more likely to internalize negative feedback, letting it lower her self-confidence. Women are tough on themselves, but society mirrors this attitude. For example, Sandberg was the subject of an article that called her “lucky,” citing mentors and opportunities as reasons for her success. No one would ascribe a man’s success to these factors.
Although women are more likely to experience imposter syndrome, men can also be affected by it in the workplace.
How Imposter Syndrome Holds You Back at Work
Imposter syndrome makes you anxious about taking risks and trying new things. In Mindshift, Barbara Oakley says that those who feel imposter syndrome tend to be high achievers or women, many of whom are brought up to think that being modest about their accomplishments is a desirable trait.
Similarly, imposter syndrome at work can create beliefs about a difficult, complex experience—for instance, a failure—and turn them into a false conclusion. This experience creates a limiting belief, which Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins describes as a false, overly simplistic negative belief that holds you back from doing things that you want to do and that would benefit you.
For example, if you’re trying to start a business and you’ve failed at your first few attempts, your generalization may lead you to believe that you’ll always fail as an entrepreneur because you’re just not cut out for it. This belief doesn’t take into account the fact that entrepreneurs often fail before they succeed and that many goals can only be achieved after several failures, which provide the lessons necessary to ultimately succeed. Instead, your generalization focuses on the pain you’ve felt through your multiple failures, and it creates this limiting belief to deter you from trying and potentially failing again to protect you from more pain in the future.
Clinical therapists and psychologists have named additional effects of imposter syndrome at work:
- Procrastination
- Psychological distress
- Anxiety
- Depressive symptoms
- Lack of confidence
How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome in the Workplace
Imposter syndrome at work can be detrimental to your career. Not only do you need to do well at your job, you need to have faith in yourself. Without this self-confidence, it’s harder to overcome obstacles that can stop you from succeeding. Here are ways to prove to yourself that you’ve earned your accomplishments in the workplace.
Build Shame Resilience
Shame and imposter syndrome go hand-in-hand. People who feel like imposters tend to shame themselves for failing to meet their own unrealistic expectations. Shame prevents worthiness from growing because it tells you that you’ll never be good enough. It encourages you to reject and hide the parts of yourself that you think other people will dislike. It also convinces you that if you do reveal your flaws and struggles, they’ll come to define you. People will focus on your bad parts and ignore everything good about you.
To stop shame from damaging your sense of worth, you need to develop shame resilience. This involves identifying shame as it occurs and moving past it in a way that leaves your worthiness intact. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown has five steps to developing shame resilience and fighting imposter syndrome at work:
Step 1: Learn how shame manifests for you so that you can quickly identify and address it. For example, does your shame trigger any physical symptoms, such as a dry mouth? Does it trigger negative thought patterns such as “I’m not good enough”?
Step 2: Identify and evaluate the root cause of your shame. Does it come from not meeting expectations at work—for example, self-shame triggered by failing to meet a deadline? Does it come from not meeting expectations placed on you by your co-workers or yourself? Are these expectations fair, and should you really feel shame for not meeting them?
Step 3: Reject the idea that if you make mistakes or have flaws, this automatically makes you “not enough.” Making mistakes or failing to meet expectations shouldn’t be a source of shame. Nobody is perfect all of the time.
Step 4: Tell someone trustworthy about how you’re feeling. Discussing shame gets it out of your mind and into the world, where you and others can address it and combat it.
Step 5: Avoid unhealthy reactions to shame. Some people react to shame by distancing themselves from loved ones, obsessively people-pleasing, or lashing out and shaming others. If you’re tempted by these unhealthy behaviors, stop and think before you act. Consider whether such a response will really reduce your shame or make you feel better.
Don’t Let Failure Define You
It’s hard to shake self-doubt, but knowing this feeling is a distortion of reality is a step toward conquering it. Lean In advises you to make an emotional and intellectual adjustment when interpreting successes and failures. For example, when feeling headed for failure, Sandberg learned to remind herself of past successes, thus challenging her natural instinct and undistorting the distortion.
Lack of confidence is a self-fulfilling prophecy and it’s important to fight it. One tactic is to fake it. Research backs up the “fake it til you make it” strategy. Even a change in posture can boost testosterone and lower stress hormones, making you feel more in charge.
The most important opportunities are seized, not offered, and being confident (or faking it) allows you to go for it. Confidence allows you to create opportunities for yourself.
Keep Your Hand Up
This piece of advice aligns more with women in the workplace since they likely experience imposter syndrome more than men. But this tip, as written in Lean In, still applies to anyone of any gender if they’re suffering from imposter syndrome at work.
No one is noticing and trying to make up for women’s reticence at work. For example, after giving a lecture on gender issues, Sandberg took questions and then announced “Two more questions only.” After two were answered, the women put down their hands, but the men kept their hands up; she continued to answer their questions.
Later, a woman said the biggest thing she took from the talk was to “keep her hand up.” You earned your spot at this job, and you have the right to say your peace. Prove to others that you’re confident in yourself, and they’ll start to show confidence in you.
Break Free From Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs can become self-fulfilling prophecies, as they inform your decisions, which dictate your actions, which shape your future. For example, your limiting belief about your potential as an entrepreneur could prevent you from trying again to launch your startup, which means you’ll never realize your dream of owning your own business.
To break your limiting beliefs and pursue your goals despite your past failures, Awaken the Giant Within says to rely more heavily on references of imagination rather than experience. In other words, instead of basing your beliefs on experience-based references that provide evidence of you failing, focus on imagination-based references and vividly envision yourself accomplishing your goal.
Fight Perfectionism
Perfectionism is dangerous because it’s founded on completely unrealistic expectations. No matter how hard you try, you’re never going to be perfect. We all make missteps and struggle at times. Consequently, cultivating an image of perfection is impossible. None of us can hide our mistakes and imperfections all of the time. Likewise, you’re never going to be able to fully avoid shame, blame, or judgment. We all experience these emotions at some point.
However, the perfectionist mindset won’t concede that it sets unrealistic standards. Instead, it makes you believe that you didn’t manage to project perfection because you weren’t good enough. You didn’t work hard enough, please people enough, or hide your flaws well enough.
This attitude causes you to blame, shame, and judge yourself. You end up experiencing the painful thoughts and emotions that you thought perfectionism would repel; thoughts and emotions that are going to do real harm to your sense of worth.
It’s clear that to truly overcome imposter syndrome at work, you need to be able to fight perfectionism. To do this, you need to take the two steps written in The Gifts of Imperfection:
Step 1: Accept that you, like everyone else in the world, will always be vulnerable to shame, judgment, and blame. Accepting that these emotions are universal and unavoidable takes away perfectionism’s power. After all, perfectionism is rooted in the idea that you can avoid these emotions. Once you realize that you can’t, it becomes pointless.
Step 2: Practice self-compassion. Being kinder to yourself can help you embrace your imperfections, rather than punish yourself for them or work desperately to hide them. When you think or talk about your flaws, mistakes, or struggles, try to do so without a tone of shame or criticism. For example, try to avoid such thought patterns such as “making this mistake makes me a bad person” or “if I didn’t have this flaw, I’d be worthy.”
Wrapping Up
It’s hard to let go of the feeling that you’re a fraud, especially if you’ve had them a long time. Even if you’re the best candidate for the job, your feelings of shame and inadequacy could manifest in your work. At that point, you’re getting in your own way of success. Take a look in the mirror and tell yourself that you deserve this job, and get rid of imposter syndrome at work once and for all.
Have you ever had imposter syndrome at work? Let us know your experience in the comments below!
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