While “faking it” doesn’t actually help, let’s figure out what does
Q: I was just doing a career development conversation with my boss and we were talking about how I could/should take on a “bigger” operational role. He felt I was ready, and while I agree on some level, I’m also not sure that I am actually ready. Is this what they mean by having imposter syndrome? Is this what I am experiencing? I saw your tweet, and the few times you’ve linked to articles on this topic so I can tell you have an opinion but not specifically what it is.
Dear Ready,
Just recently, I read some research of how, in the 1940s, the best experts of the day warned that “coddling” children would result in needy and insecure children. Parents were told to not “lavish attention”, and to let babies cry for hours, and to only let them eat on a strict schedule vs when the kids were hungry. These “experts” thought that neediness could be eliminated, by not meeting basic human needs.
<le sigh>
Before those folks, John Broadus Watson, in the 1920s, warned of giving children — get this — “too much” motherly love. This was to ensure that children “didn’t grow up with an attachment to any place or person.”
No attachment. To any place. Or person. As if the goal is to raise robots.
“Cray-cray.” That’s my note in the margins. (pssst, Human beings are social beings.)
And I wonder …how it might have felt to live in those times and see ALL those experts saying something for decades that defied ALL THEIR lived experience? Well, that’s how I feel about “Imposter’s Syndrome.”
Just think about it.
How can you be “an imposter,” a fraud, of your own life?
But it’s the related “solution” to I.S. that irks me. The prescribed antidote to “imposter syndrome” is to “fake it till you make it,” which seems, um, deeply unhelpful. Nearly all the existing body of research and data says that ignoring, suppressing, denying an inner reality actually eats away at one’s sense of self, identity, purpose. And asking people to imitate what others have done won’t lead anyone to tap into one’s source of new ideas, onlyness.
(And, before you quote me Amy Cuddy, god bless her lovely little heart, with her 60M-views-TED-talk, the book saying you shouldn’t “coddle”—i.e. love— your child was a best-selling book of its day, too).
JUST WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?
But, let’s talk about that part of you that wonders if maybe you’re un-Ready.
What is behind that?
Are you worried you won’t know what you need to know?
Think about something you just own today. And then remember back when that wasn’t so true? Sometimes we want to feel completely ready for big things as soon we show up, like moving into an apartment that is not only painted but decorated with all our favorite things, day 1.
But how we become who we are becoming… doesn’t work like that. We grow into a new job like building a new room in a house; we first put up girders and spans. First 2x4s, then drywall, later painting etc. New roles involve new people and new context, which makes it both unplannable, and non-linear yet… as lyrics go, one thing leads to another. And isn’t that the joy of it all? Who would want a job where you knew everything already? You’d be bored!
I often say to myself, if you want to become more, you can let yourself be partial.
Are you worried you don’t have enough social support to be successful?
If that’s it (and you’re right to be worried), you could name and notice that. (Goes for anything else, name and notice the specific lets you then solve for it.) So then you recruit for folks on the team, or get a sponsor in place to help you succeed.
Is it that you’re not up to doing the hard work?
If you’ve maybe read Power of Onlyness, you might remember how I wrote about Imposters’ Syndrome in a story of some entrepreneur kids at Stanford? Every time they got advice from their profs (yo 🤚🏽), they ignored it. Instead, they kept trying to tell us what they thought we wanted to hear. It was so hard to witness. Later, one of the kids wrote a confessional post about failing Y Combinator (which he did after the course he did at Stanford).
He claimed, “I had imposter syndrome.”
Because I and my fellow profs had seen him up close we knew that wasn’t it at all; we could see the little dude just didn’t know what he cared about enough to actually do any of the work. He seemed to want the brand (Hey, ma, I am an entrepreneur, yeah, look at me!) to serve his “I”, his ego, not to actually be an entrepreneur that makes an idea, “it”, real.
(I seriously doubt this is your situation if only because of what your boss said.)
So…
I wonder, Ready, if the question in your heart is as clear as “am I ready?” or maybe “how can I be as ready as I can be?” and you’re interpreting that sensation as “am I an imposter?” Not because it’s the right question, but because that catch-phrase is on repeat, all around you.
It’s okay to admit to ourselves when we’re not ready. Not YET anyway. In fact, it’s more than okay. We need to name and notice where we need to offset our skills or resource ourselves effectively, so the work has a chance of being successful. But, let’s do it constructively.
So, can I give you better names to call this sense, and thereby you? Learning. Resourcing. Building. And you are a Learner. Resourceful. Builder.
YOU TOLD ME SOMETHING WRONG, I KNOW I LISTEN TOO LONG BUT THEN …
And, who knows, maybe I’m the one who is super wrong about imposter syndrome.
After all, loads of really smart, talented, and gifted people argue for the validity of imposter syndrome. In this one article alone, Tina Fey, Michelle Obama, and Maya Angelou are each quoted as believing they have it.
But I just wonder if anyone’s gone down history lane with them. How it was a term coined in the 70s after studying 150 really high-performance women. Women who were likely told when they got their ivy-league education that they were taking a place in the class that “should have” gone to a man. Put their experience in context; it was a time when women couldn’t get a credit card in their own name. Back when they could be legally fired for just getting pregnant. Back when most workplaces only allowed them to wear skirts (pantsuits were not considered work appropriate wear for women). Back when “marital rape” was considered legal, as was sexual harassment in the workplace, etc., etc.
So gosh, someone asked those pioneers in the workforce if they felt like they didn’t belong. And given the decades they’d likely been told, shown that …. their answer was no big surprise.
It would be like asking someone who’s been beaten repeatedly, have you been hurt?
Um, yeeaaaah.
But why did no one ask the next logical question, which was what context was causing them to feel that way? Because that would have lent some real insight on what needed to change. It would have let us stop blaming the women, and instead fix the systems they were facing.
It could be that Imposter Syndrome is just an earlier version of Lean In.
One has choices to make, sure, but those choices are done in context. Context is the limiting factor, which enables (or not) folks to offer the value that only one can. Hence the 2×2 we keep returning to.
One’s capacity is always there, simply by standing in that spot only one stands. To see and be seen for oneself is how we can each add value. But you cannot do that by oneself (i.e. it’s not a psychological stance but a sociological dance). It’s the interweaving of voice and belonging that lets one have an impact. So we must address people and systems, simultaneously. Not blame the people for when the system fails them.
THE WRONG ANTIDOTE IS LIKE A BULGE ON THE THROAT
In the book, in that story of the Stanford kid, I shared my specific worry wrt the imposter’s syndrome antidote: It leads you astray.
A remedy for imposter syndrome, “fake it,” invites exactly the type of behaviors that only make it worse. Instead of focusing on what you can contribute, it asks you to compete. And I’ve seen far too often how the fake it advice drives people to puff themselves up, to project even more bravado than they feel. It tells them to lie to themselves, or deny their truth, or imitate someone else. It’s no surprise then when they slowly start to tell slightly embellished stories, and, bit by bit, they create an illusion of someone other than themselves as they really are. They walk away from their own source, which is, by definition, the power of place that is Onlyness. Where only one stands. Like Amanda Gorman said this week about our country, we’re not broken, but simply unfinished.
As I wrote in the book, there’s an easily accessible antidote to imposter syndrome. It is simply to be yourself, to live in one’s onlyness. And, of course, to be so deeply committed to what matters that you stop wondering how you appear to others but use your commitment to do the work.
And so, let’s do the work.
Let’s name and notice clearly, because no problem gets solved without naming it well. It’s like naming the monster in a fable, or in a Calvin and Hobbes story. All of a sudden the monster loses its big, dark, larger-than-life shape and returns to normal size, losing its power over you. Run from the demon and you live in fear. Name it, befriend it, and it becomes a clue. It’s okay to not know things as you go into a new role. That is not being an imposter, that’s being a learner. This is why you want the role. To grow. To feel your aliveness. And to contribute what you distinctly have to offer.
Which is what onlyness is all about, isn’t it?
