What is Impostor Syndrome?
Impostor Syndrome, also known as Impostor Phenomenon, refers to individuals believing they are intellectual frauds and underestimating their competence and abilities, despite objective evidence of high achievement.
Those experiencing Impostor Syndrome may:
Set unachievable standards for themselves.
Seek approval from others.
Believe that they won’t be able replicate past achievements, removing pleasure from these achievements.
Attribute successes to having to work much harder or as resulting from charm, luck, error or the contribution of others.
Internalise mistakes or failure as evidence of being professionally incompetent, and over-generalise beyond that specific event to be representative of their overall ability.
It is a topic that comes up frequently with clients. As part of my MSc I conducted research into Impostor Phenomenon in management consultants, looking at the triggers and coping strategies used in this population, and how consulting organisations could help their people. Here, I provide more information about the findings of that research in the context of wider findings and understanding of the concept. While the research focused on management consultants, the findings are relevant for a range of organisational professionals and leaders.
Who experiences Impostor Syndrome/ Impostor Phenomenon?
Initially identified in female academics, subsequent research has found it to be prevalent in different professions, ages, cultures, ethnicities and genders. Evidence is mixed as to whether females experience it more, less or differently but it is prevalent across genders.
70% experience it at some point in their professional lives – but the frequency and depth of experience varies. Those with higher impostor feelings are at risk of detrimental personal and professional impacts, so it is important that we don't make assumptions that our experience of impostor feelings will be the same for others.
In my research 72% of respondents experienced higher impostor syndrome feelings which is a high overall response level. While females scored on average slightly higher than males, averages for both were in the higher Impostor Syndrome category.
What are the impacts and why does it matter?
There are personal and professional impacts from experiencing Impostor Syndrome.
Adverse personal implications can include:
Greater risk of depression, stress, emotional exhaustion and burnout.
Reduced mental health and wellbeing.
Reduced confidence and self-esteem.
Regarding professional implications, there are some potential benefits noted such as:
Working harder to get good results (with the caveat that this could lead to the aforementioned burnout if not closely managed).
Being good team workers and leaders due to being more empathetic and oriented to others.
Adverse professional implications however outweigh the benefits. Those with higher impostor feelings may experience:
Reduced career planning and progression due to feelings of inadequacy.
Reduced job satisfaction and motivation to lead.
Reduced ‘organisational citizenship behaviours’, i.e. the non-core extra work, due to focussing resources on delivering core tasks.
What are the triggers and causes?
Impostor Syndrome/ Impostor Phenomenon is a blend of negative cognitive self-evaluations, behaviours and emotions. Internal causes identified include:
Fear of failure.
Maladaptive or extreme perfectionism.
Low belief in ability to achieve tasks (self-efficacy).
A fixed mindset.
Comparisons with others, often not realistic because people underestimate their own competence and over-rate that of others.
External causes can be both positive and negative, large and small in scale. Such as:
Changing jobs, promotion or major achievement.
Working in highly visible roles, for example as people get more senior.
Expertise being questioned.
My research aligned with these and also highlighted the role of feedback with both positive and negative feedback being triggering. Positive feedback overall was as triggering of impostor feelings as negative feedback, potentially due to increasing sense of pressure to perform or work harder. When giving feedback, we can assume the recipient will feel good but as seen here, that may not be the case. Feedback is a whole separate topic but some initial suggestions in this context would be to:
Give positive feedback regularly that is specific, genuine and not delivered alongside negative feedback when it may be dismissed by the recipient as a wrapper.
Check in with the recipient afterwards on whether they have taken it on board and how they are feeling about it, then have an open discussion about the answers.
How do people cope with impostor feelings?
Wider research into coping and management strategies for impostor feelings is actually currently quite limited. In my research, a range of coping strategies was used – but those most frequently used were not necessarily the most effective, as shown below.
The strategy of 'Acceptance', where you just accept the thoughts as valid and live with them was the most used, especially by those with higher impostor feelings, but when ranking the same strategies by how effective they were, we see Acceptance dropped right down to 5th. This means there is a significant population who are experiencing higher Impostor Syndrome, not doing anything about it and it isn’t working for them.
'Positive reframing' on the other hand was the most effective – that is the ability to challenge your thoughts and find the good in your experience. This shows the importance of valuing our positive experiences and remembering them as we go so that we have this bank to draw on when negative impostor thoughts occur. If people are experiencing Impostor Syndrome however, it can be harder for them to objectively consider performance, so if you are leading a team, consider how you could help people to build their bank to challenge the thoughts.
'Emotional support', i.e. getting support from others for your feelings and 'Instrumental support', i.e. getting advice on actions to take, are social support strategies found useful in other research but not here. It could be tempting to assume that these aren’t useful strategies for this population, but we need to consider the organisational context. The organisational support sections of my research suggested a real appetite for more open discussion and support, so actually it may be just that, at the moment, organisations aren’t prepared or really understanding enough of the topic to provide effective support – and that’s something to consider in your teams and working with organisational leaders – how much is an environment created where this can be discussed openly?
The role of organisations
To thrive at work, people need to feel valued and supported by their organisation as well as feeling confident and capable.
In my research, four over-arching themes emerged that participants wanted their organisations to start or continue doing:
Taking action to help people manage their impostor feelings can have wider benefits to individuals in terms of their wellbeing, job satisfaction and career progression. It can also benefit the organisations themselves because enabling people to achieve their full potential will encourage greater diversity of thought and perspective at all levels of the organisation.
There is far more content within this topic than can be covered in one article. If you would like to discuss any of the findings further or if you would like to learn more about interventions you can do to help you and your team or colleagues to better manage impostor thoughts then please do get in touch at helen.brooks@brookscoaching.net.
Fascinating insight. It's interesting that the most common coping mechanism is 'Acceptance' even when most people recognise that it's not really effective. Sounds like some relatively simple interventions at an organisational level could have quite a profound impact on their people's self-worth and on their performance. Win-win.