Imposter Syndrome: where high-achieving individuals are marked by an inability to internalise their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud.”
Imposter Syndrome was first identified in the late 1970’s as an experience that affects over 70% of highly successful people at some point in their lives. It’s characterised by feeling like a fraud and that you’re fooling everyone into thinking you’re successful, and by a fear of finally being found out.
The cost is high, as it is a significant emotional stress added to already busy lives. Unhelpful behaviours resulting from Imposter Syndrome include workaholism, procrastination, reduced creativity, becoming risk-averse or taking excessive risk, stress-related illnesses, burnout and depression, absenteeism and, ironically, lowered job performance.
Initially, the search for a cause was based upon gender, and that turned out to be not the case as it affects men and women equally – although men are generally more reluctant to admit it. So as a significant workplace stress that reduces the performance of the star talent in businesses everywhere, an understanding of the cause can potentially help us to reduce the effects of Imposter Syndrome for good.
What Imposter Syndrome is NOT
Imposter Syndrome has become a more commonly used term in recent years, but is often used somewhat imprecisely.
Firstly Imposter Syndrome is not a diagnosed mental condition or imbalance. ‘Syndrome’ has a specific meaning in the world of psychotherapy as a diagnosed mental condition. ‘Imposter Phenomenon’ is the more accurate term. However popular culture prefers ‘syndrome’, and so I’ll use that here too.
Imposter Syndrome is not low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is where a person feels worthless or incompetent in all areas of their lives, and they struggle with goal setting and achieving as a result. People with Imposter Syndrome are highly capable and competent in their lives, and set goals, meet deadlines and produce results. The difference is the ‘Impostors’ don’t feel like that success truly belongs to them. Also, Impostor-related doubts centre on just their work performance or intelligence and not other aspects of their lives.
Additionally, Imposter Syndrome is not a lack of confidence, and this may be a subtle point. Successful people with Imposter Syndrome do have an idea that they can achieve. They can admit at some level that they’re good but have a sneaking feeling that they’re not inherently good enough. This often means they make more effort to be successful than they think they ought to. Similarly, the perfectionist element of Imposter Syndrome carries with it a feeling that whatever is produced ‘should be’ perfect. So again the results are good but not ‘good enough’ i.e. perfect, leaving the ‘Impostor’ with a fear of being found out not to be perfect.
The Three Elements of Imposter Syndrome
Three essential conditions combine to create a feeling of being a fraud in over 70% of highly successful people;
1. Significant Stretch
A stretch is a situation where we are challenged to go beyond the familiar and try something new for us. This can be a new project, a promotion or a new role, championing new ideas or working in a new team. This is why Imposter Syndrome shows up most in high-achievers, as their work naturally challenges them to continually go further. The tension here is that in stretching we are going to learn new things and that will necessitate making mistakes. The fear of being seen to make mistakes is a key component in Imposter Syndrome.
2. Critical Environment
A critical environment is any situation where we can be publicly criticised, punished or even shamed for making mistakes. It’s easy to see how performers, writers and artists can feel like Impostors, luminaries such as Meryl Streep and Maya Angelou among them, as we have professional critics in theatre, film, art, etc.
Academia is another highly critical environment where your work is peer reviewed and your standing in the academic community is dependent on academic community opinion.
Business is often a highly critical environment too, as mistakes are frequently not well tolerated. This depends upon the culture of the business and typically the leadership style of the boss, naturally. Competition within the business and between companies also serves to increase the critical nature of business.
Furthermore, anyone who is in a non-traditional role or a minority of any sort within the business can feel an element of being scrutinised and potentially criticised too, and believe there is a further demand to prove themselves to be competent.
3. Conditional worth
‘Conditional worth’ is the core belief that our worth as a human being depends on our actions and performance. It was identified as early as the 1950’s by Dr Carl Ransom Rogers, one of the 20th Century’s most eminent psychologists and one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research.
Dr Rogers showed that as a society we unwittingly teach our children that when they do well, are clean, tidy and obedient they are approved of, loved and will be taken care of. When they make mistakes, are clumsy, noisy or inconvenient then that approval disappears, replaced with combinations of disapproval, anger, criticism, punishment and withdrawal of affection.
Depending upon our childhood circumstances, the degree to which we receive approval and disapproval varies, naturally. However, even the mildest-seeming disapproval will still create this core belief that our worth depends on our actions and performance. Only maybe one person in 100,000 will grow up without forming the belief that their worth is conditional, so we can consider that this is all of us.
The belief of conditional worth is so deeply held because as children our physical survival depends on us being taken care of, and so being worth taken care of seems to be literally a life and death issue. We are biologically programmed to learn survival issues very well, even if we’re never conscious of them.
In terms of Imposter Syndrome, conditional worth means a need to prove your worth (and often intelligence) through high achievement. However any sense of worth gained from success is fleeting, because you will now need to prove yourself again the next time. Potentially not being able to reproduce those great results creates anxiety, and people will find out that you’re not really as good (worthy) as they currently think you are.
In fact people praising you for your success may help briefly, if at all. ‘Impostors’ then compare how they are feeling on the inside (worthy only if you prove you’re good enough) with other people’s outward appearance of competence, success and ease. This leads to a sense of being a fraud because you don’t feel that successful inside.
The conditional worth belief also means that mistakes make you worthless and a failure, which is why it leads to perfectionism and not feeling good enough.
Variability
Imposter Syndrome affects 70% of people at some point in their lives, but it is not a constant. The exact combination of what amount of stretch, the nature of the work environment and the degree to which our worth depends on our work performance (and often intelligence) differs between individuals. Additionally Imposter Syndrome will come and go at different points in someone’s life, depending on other stress factors around them that may also challenge their sense of worth.
What can be done?
The fastest ‘solution’ for Imposter Syndrome is not one I would ever recommend – don’t stretch. This is one consequence of burnout, however, where someone leaves the business temporarily and possibly returns in a reduced capacity. It’s also the reason that some people will quit their jobs when stressed out by Imposter Syndrome, simply to alleviate the anxiety of being found to be not good enough.
The cost of not stretching is high in business, as it is the creative, innovative and daring approaches that can lead to breakthroughs in all parts of business. Companies hire star talent to do brilliant things in the first place, so not stretching to avoid Imposter Syndrome is not a good plan. Furthermore, there is a tremendous personal satisfaction in achieving something significant – provided we can claim that as our own. Playing small is no solution at all.
The core belief that your worth depends on your actions may seem to be too deeply embedded to be changed. It’s not something that you can talk yourself into, resolve with positive affirmations, willpower, a pep talk or a weekend workshop. It’s too fundamental to our thinking and identity. However there are ways to permanently change the core belief of conditional worth, and solve the problem identified by Dr Rogers 40 years prior. Such work takes time, commitment and effort, as you can imagine any significant overhaul of your worldview and core beliefs would entail.
Business culture can be more readily modified to create a working environment of ‘unconditional worth’, and is a very promising strategy. This would manifest as mistakes being accepted rather than punished, and mistakes used as a tool for further learning and teaching not only for the individual but also for the benefit of the business as a whole.
There is a trend in cutting-edge companies to move towards such creative and supportive learning environments, and it’s a change that I’m delighted to see in business. It leads to the success of the business, reduces stress and absenteeism, brings relief from Imposter Syndrome and gives a boost in creativity, productivity, job satisfaction and overall well-being of its employees.
