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013: Struggling with Imposter Syndrome? 5 strategies to overcome
44 Plays10 months ago
Are you struggling with Imposter Syndrome? Are you questioning your abilities and wondering whether you belong? Are you struggling with self-doubt despite your competence? Then this episode is for you. In this episode, I go over what imposter syndrome is and contrast it with Imposter Treatment - which is where you're treated like you are incompetent or that you dont belong. Black professionals, women, people of colour and marginalized folks are often treated unfairly and their competencies are questioned, you're treated that you are a token or a "diversity hire". I share 5 strategies on how to overcome Imposter syndrome and get out of your head so you can fully occupy your role.
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Transcript
Introduction to Imposter Syndrome
00:00:00
Speaker
There is this tendency to relax and now think, well, I got the job, so I'm good, when really the interview begins when you get the job. You are hired based on your potential, based on your resume, based on your previous experience, but if you're working with a team for the first time, they don't know you. They don't really know the quality of your work. They've heard about it through your references.
00:00:23
Speaker
your first 90 days are really critical in you setting the pace and the tone for how it is that you want to position yourself and be viewed. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Curiously Talks podcast. My name is Brenda Dogby and in this podcast we center Black Canadian voices
00:00:41
Speaker
as well as the African Diaspora on all things, laying career, everything to do with your professional development.
Defining Imposter Syndrome
00:00:48
Speaker
Today, I want to talk to you about imposter syndrome and how I have grown through different seasons of feeling imposter syndrome and then share ways in which you can overcome imposter syndrome in your own career.
00:01:05
Speaker
So to get started, I want to talk about the definition of imposter syndrome and an article that I read on the Harvard Business Review by Anne Bury, written in 2021, so kind of smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, that really captures what it is we consider imposter syndrome to be. And then the fact that we need to stop telling women that they have
00:01:30
Speaker
imposter syndrome and acknowledge the systemic barriers that folks are actually facing. Imposter syndrome is loosely defined as doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud and it disproportionately affects high achieving people who find it difficult to accept
00:01:49
Speaker
that their accomplishments are, you start to question yourself and you start to question whether you're deserving of the accolades if you really belong to where you are in your career.
Personal Experiences with Imposter Syndrome
00:02:02
Speaker
And the first thing I want to offer is that imposter syndrome doesn't just happen early in your career. There's this misconception that somehow when you're new to the workplace,
00:02:13
Speaker
you're going to automatically feel like you don't have enough experience. I'll offer to you that I've experienced imposter syndrome at almost every single season of my career. And that part is frustrating because at some point I thought that you get to a certain level, you know your stuff, you know how to handle it. But I can confirm that pretty much at the beginning of every single rule that I've held, whether it was promotional or lateral.
00:02:42
Speaker
I've experienced some measure of imposter syndrome. I recently recorded an episode with Dr. Helen Ofosu, and she talked about something, a concept that I really latched onto, which was imposter treatment. It really resonated with me because imposter syndrome, the way it is defined, is pretty much internalizing. It's this self-doubt, questioning yourself, etc.
Impact on Black Professionals
00:03:12
Speaker
However, what I really appreciated about her framing is that there's imposter treatment where as a black woman, as a black person, as a person of color, you're being treated as though you are less competent, you're less qualified, that you're a quota or a token hire, or that you don't really belong in that
00:03:36
Speaker
Team or environmental place and that i found increases exponentially as you increase in your career as you advance in your career i found that that imposter treatment increases sometimes even quadruples,
00:03:51
Speaker
And that tends to generally be a very supportive context for younger people, younger women at the beginning of your career where you're considered high potential. You're not yet considered a threat. And so there's a lot of opportunities that are often shared with you because there's an understanding that you're starting out and you need to really grow.
00:04:18
Speaker
What I found as I've grown in my career, so when I was an analyst, there's certain barriers that you face. But again, part of that dialogue is probably more internalized than externalized.
Credentials and Expertise
00:04:33
Speaker
However, you have to kind of work through what it is that you're thinking, what it is that you're feeling.
00:04:39
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What I found is that as I get to that senior analyst, so when I was a senior analyst, it was a mix. On one hand, I have my whole internal dialogue that I'm going through about, do I know what I'm doing? Do I really belong here, et cetera? But I also remember when folks had to come to me as a subject matter expert. And they're like, you're the subject matter expert? And I'm like, yes, I am the subject matter expert.
00:05:06
Speaker
And I recall in my early days in government, I actually ended up putting my PhD in my signature block, not because I have to show that I'm kind of pompous or educated or whatever, but because I wasn't really being taken seriously except I put the PhD on there. And honestly, I saw a shift in tone when I had the PhD or PhD candidate at that time in my signature block, which is really unfortunate.
00:05:33
Speaker
but that's just the way it is and I remember reading becoming at such a pivotal point in my career because I was just going from that subject matter expert into management and one of the things that I took away was that if the Obama's like Michelle Obama Barack Obama president
00:05:55
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Obama at the time were still facing questions about their credibility about their abilities despite having proven over above beyond that they were capable
00:06:10
Speaker
It just showed me that this is not going to end anytime soon. And so that was really eye opening for me because it made me really realize that it's not something that's ever going to get better. In fact, it gets worse. And that soul mindset shift was really pivotal for me because rather than waiting,
Managing Expectations and Perceptions
00:06:33
Speaker
you know, I've proven it already. I have the education, I have the degrees, I have
00:06:37
Speaker
the experience that shows it so there's no question about my right to be here and having earned a right to be at the table. It helped me manage my own expectations and in that regard, I'm actually, I expect imposter treatment and then I counter it in my own way. So when I went from a subject matter expert to manager,
00:07:02
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Again, I found that as a leader, I do experience a lot of that imposter treatment because, again, while you might have earned the right to manage people, not everybody in your team regards you as a leader or as a manager. And so you get that treatment both from your colleagues as well as your employees and your direct reports.
00:07:25
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Unfortunate, but reality that a lot of us as women, as women of color, black women, black people have to experience in the workplace. Some of the things that I wanted to talk about are the ways in which we need to work through that and some of the ways in which we can overcome and counterbalance that imposter treatment.
00:07:49
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So step one, I think, is really landing on your internal dialogue. Imposter syndrome, in my view, is very much an internalized conversation. And the key thing that I would like for you to remember is that you are not responsible for your colleagues' views of who you are. They own that. That's their responsibility.
00:08:16
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Your responsibility is to do your job to do it well and to meet your requirements as you need to do it because the challenge with trying to convince your employees that you're not an imposter or that they shouldn't treat you like an imposter.
00:08:31
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is that you get into this trying to please people who've already formed a very narrow view of who you are and there's just no winning because you're trying to counter ignorance from people who are not really willing to deal with their ignorance and so i think one of the first things is to really.
00:08:49
Speaker
not get caught in the trap of performance where you're trying to please your workmates, trying to please your employees, you're trying to show. I've been there. I've done that where you have to be twice as hard and we hear that all the time. You have to be twice as hard to get half of what you get. The challenge with that narrative is you get into this performance mode
00:09:08
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that you could never fully overcome. It burns you out and it will frustrate you because the end goal for the people you're trying to convince is not that you convinced.
Owning Your Professional Space
00:09:20
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So that's the first thing I'd like you to remember. The second thing is that you are in your role for a reason. Almost always when a black person
00:09:29
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gets into a leadership role gets into that role as its senior analyst subject matter expert or whatever that title is you are often that much more qualified than your counterparts and it goes back to the first point that i shared where you should get outside of that performance mode
00:09:47
Speaker
The counter to that is not just about getting outside of that performance mode, but it's that you've already proven yourself. You got hired into that role. You probably were already hyper-qualified for that role, if we're really honest. If you were not getting those opportunities through your job, you've probably been volunteering. You've got a side hustle where you built your leadership experience, your project management through so many other ways.
00:10:16
Speaker
you're in that role for a reason and it's really important for you to just look back at your track record and think about the qualities that you already had if you didn't have those qualities you wouldn't be in that role and this is not the time to question yourself on whether
00:10:33
Speaker
you are a token higher even if you were a token higher for you to be hired you had to have been that much stronger and i guarantee you that the mediocre. People who are not of your background who are around the table are not sitting there questioning whether they are they really deserve to be there if they're a token higher so.
Building Supportive Communities
00:10:54
Speaker
Take your space and own that space to the max. That being said, the third thing I want to keep in mind as you are battling between this imposter syndrome and imposter treatment is the importance of community. Community, community, community. And here I'm not just talking about your community in terms of like your friends and your family, they're important.
00:11:15
Speaker
But you need a community of people who understand what you're going through in your workplace. And a couple of episodes ago, a few episodes ago, I spoke with Chris Cipio. I think that was our third episode around building Black leaders. And in a lot of the conversations I've had in this podcast, we talk often about the lonely only.
00:11:35
Speaker
the single black person around the table in that leadership room or in that you know the senior analyst or in that senior executive who's alone. So it's really important for you to seek out community and community can look different depending on your context. So if you're an executive seek out a community of other black executives
00:11:55
Speaker
other women executives who are going through something similar it's really going to help you get out of your head and get out of the questioning whether am i seeing things is this real was that racist was that not racist was that sexist was that not sexist and it's really really key because without that you will be playing all sorts of mental gymnastics
00:12:18
Speaker
and you're really going to have to suffer it alone. The other thing is that you can get solutions and there's a lot of wisdom when you've got people who've been through what you've been through or who are going through what you're going through and who can really share in that experience. And so I really encourage you if you're in that situation where you're going through imposter syndrome and or imposter treatment to really tap into
00:12:46
Speaker
folks who've gone before you, folks who've dealt with this before, if you need to seek out a coach and I'll
Career Coaching and Mentorship
00:12:54
Speaker
get to that. So we really need to step into folks who've been there before you and folks who are going through it, who can really mentor you and guide you through it. The other part that I wanted to share in terms of how to manage imposter syndrome versus imposter treatment is paying for a career coach.
00:13:14
Speaker
because there's strategy that a coach can really bring to you, especially if you're dealing with solutions. And I found as a leader, one of the key things that the mentor space is great because people volunteer the time and they share with you how it is that you can make things better. However, you do need sometimes
00:13:36
Speaker
a coach who can help you work through very specific context, specific circumstances, and scenarios. And again, in this case, an executive coach is somebody who's perhaps a retired executive who is offering, again, insights who really, they know how to read between the lines. They're able to understand the context, and they're really able to give you the guidance that you require. And so,
00:14:01
Speaker
Community is extremely important, but also having a paid coach who could really help guide you through the various circumstances that you're dealing with, whether it's as an individual, those challenging conversations that you need to have with your manager, or you're negotiating for a new job and you're trying to figure out how to really leverage yourself in the most competitive way. Paying for coaching services is really a worthy investment.
00:14:29
Speaker
So the final point I wanted to share is the importance of really making sure that the first 90 days that you're in a role are really, really critical and that you show up and you show out in those 90 days. So this sounds a little bit counter to the advice I gave at the very beginning where I said, don't perform for people. However, I have seen a lot of situations where someone gets hired
00:14:55
Speaker
And those first 90 days, they're just slacking. They're not really showing up. They're not showing their best foot forward. They're not delivering on what they were hired to do. And there's this tendency when you get a new job to, especially if it was a journey and you had such a hard time kind of applying online and getting the job, you know, you competitively got into the position, went through rounds of interviews. There is this tendency to
00:15:23
Speaker
relax, and now think, well, I got the job, so I'm good. When really the interview begins when you get the job, you are hired based on your potential, based on your resume, based on your previous experience. But if you're working with a team for the first time, they don't know you. They don't really know the quality of your work. They've heard about it through your references.
00:15:45
Speaker
Your first 90 days are really critical in you setting the pace and the tone for how it is that you want to position yourself and be viewed. I've seen people not bring the excellence, not bring the rigor, not bring the professionalism that is required. A caveat here that I have to state is that
00:16:06
Speaker
I'm not talking about unconscious and conscious bias. There are people who regardless of how much effort you put, they will always have these biased perceptions towards you. That being said, I think that should not absolve us of our responsibility to really bring our best foot forward in whatever role that we're
00:16:25
Speaker
playing and so it's really key for you to erase any doubt now if the people continue to have questions around you despite the fact that you've done your part you've gone over and above that's where you need to really balance out whether do I want to continue trying to please people who will never be able to be pleased
00:16:44
Speaker
Or do I seek out an environment where I will be celebrated? But the key take-home message that I want to say and underline here is that it is extremely critical for us to use the first 90 days in any role that you're in to really confirm and validate that you were indeed the best candidate and leave no doubt. Because once you do that, I think it sets really the tone and the pace.
00:17:09
Speaker
for how things go forward and that can really help you mitigate that imposter treatment and also minimize your imposter syndrome. So one of the things that you would be doing is you're proactively silencing the internal voice that says you can't. Remind yourself that you did get the job which means that you can, however, bring your vest foot forward, slay in that position and make sure that you are really
00:17:34
Speaker
Re racing any question or doubt about why you were indeed the best candidate for that role and if it becomes a perpetual problem and that's a green light for you to say this is not the right position or role or organization for me and i'm gonna take my talent and my skills and my abilities to a team that is able to celebrate them and value them.
00:17:55
Speaker
I hope you found this helpful. Today, I really wanted to underline that tension between imposter syndrome that's internalized and imposter treatment that's kind of externalized and how to work through
Conclusion and Audience Engagement
00:18:08
Speaker
that. At the end of the day, though, I think you really have to know your value. You really have to know that you are worthy, you are worth it, and that any team that has you, especially as you bring that best foot forward, is privileged to have you.
00:18:24
Speaker
And then it's important to know how to market yourself and take yourself to the various places and heights that your career has in store for you. So I'm so glad you listened to the episode. Please make sure you like and rate this episode, whether you're listening on Spotify, on Amazon, and Google, on Apple. Please rate the podcast. And of course, let's continue to slay together.