Breaking the Chains of Imposter Syndrome
A Systemic Approach for Women Leaders
My Imposter Syndrome Workshop: Lessons Learned
Last night, I facilitated a Matria Coalition discussion on imposter syndrome. Inspired by a member who was feeling like a fraud ahead of starting a new gig, I curated an intimate workshop on imposter syndrome. Fast forward less than 24 hours later and I’m left cringing at the content. We’ll call that ‘growth.’
During our call, we each shared a time when we experienced imposter syndrome and then created mantras to build our self-worth and confidence. Here’s a behind-the-scenes view of our workshop, using my personal experience as example:
Step 1: The Situation | The year was 2019 and I finally received the VP-level promotion I advocated for. Despite the promotion, I was feeling like a fraud and over time, experienced a complete decline in my self-confidence. I dealt with internal consternation and stress which led to wasted time and missed opportunities.
Step 2: The Facts | Once we established the scenario, we grounded ourselves in facts to remind ourselves of our qualifications and capabilities. I jotted down:
My boss supported my promotion
My tenure and broad functional experience gave me a unique & valuable perspective
I had strong relationship skills and facilitated complex problem-solving with ease
I had a clear vision for the future and a strategic execution plan to get there
Steps 3 & 4: Create a Mantra | Armed with facts, we were ready to create our mantras. We imagined our best friend in this same situation and wrote them words of encouragement. By replacing “you” with “I”, we landed on our own mantras. Here’s what I came up with:
Mantra: “My unique perspective paired with my relationships skills make me the perfect person to drive successful transformation”
Voila! A mantra that could have built back my self-confidence in 2019. While I saw the merit of this exercise, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the story.
The Full Picture
Turns out I wasn’t the only one questioning the simplicity of the exercise. At the end of our call, one of our members mentioned women are over-diagnosed and overburdened with imposter syndrome. Our conversation was brief but it got me thinking: Are women being over-diagnosed with imposter syndrome? Is ‘imposter syndrome’ masking the real issues in our workforce?
With my auditor background guiding me, I set to explore what is truly causing imposter syndrome.
The internet is inundated with articles explaining imposter syndrome, and I trust you can use Google to find them. [But also, after talking to my sister, I was convinced to include a quick definition… So, imposter syndrome is when people doubt their capabilities and fear being exposed as a fraud, despite objective evidence of being competent].
Women and marginalized communities are often diagnosed with imposter syndrome to explain feeling like a fraud and like they don’t belong. These feelings create psychological distress and lead to low self-confidence and self-worth. Those suffering from imposter syndrome procrastinate, overwork to prove their worth and sabotage their success.
The studies that coined this phenomenon were published in the 1970s and society latched onto the team. But even though the study called on environmental factors such as underrepresentation and gender stereotypes as causing imposter syndrome, our culture has relied solely upon those suffering to solve the problem. In almost every article about imposter syndrome, you’ll find a familiar list of self-help tools for women to regain confidence. Here are a few common examples:
Read off your accomplishments in the mirror
Write down your wins daily
Strike a power pose to regain confidence, and (like our exercise above)
Create a mantra to replace negative self-talk.
While these solutions may be helpful on a micro level, they unfairly put the onus solely on the individual to solve a systemic problem.
Environmental Roots of Self-Doubt
The first step to understanding the over-diagnosis of imposter syndrome in women is recognizing the role of environmental factors, particularly within the context of Corporate America. Corporate America upholds traditionally masculine traits such as self-interest, profit-driven motives, and intense competition. It is, after all, built on patriarchal and capitalist principles. Many workplaces are structured and designed to reward traditionally masculine leadership styles, emphasizing assertiveness and task-based approaches. As women began entering the workforce, the prevailing definition of leadership and success remained unchanged, compelling us to conform to male norms – hello 80s power suits! Beyond the clothing, women mirrored masculine behaviors often suppressing valuable feminine qualities just to belong.
In these environments, women and marginalized groups are often dismissed, their ideas are questioned, and they must work twice as hard to prove their abilities. Every day is a fight to be seen, heard and valued. An unsupportive environment chips away at one’s self-confidence and opens the door for self-doubt to mosey on in.
In a 2021 Harvard Business Review Article entitled “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome,” authors Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey brilliantly articulate that imposter syndrome is not an illusion, but a result of systemic bias and exclusion:
“Even if women demonstrate strength, ambition, and resilience, our daily battles with microaggressions, especially expectations and assumptions formed by stereotypes and racism, often push us down. Imposter syndrome as a concept fails to capture this dynamic and puts the onus on women to deal with the effects.”
The environments we work in are doing us no favors. For my Succession fans, the Roy children are perfect examples of what happens when the environmental pendulum swings in the other direction. In “What the Succession Finale Reveals About Impostor Syndrome,” journalist S. Mitra Kalita points out:
We are a product of our environments, and we must recognize that our work environments are contributing to imposter syndrome among women.
Women leaders are as likely as men at their level to want to be promoted and aspire to senior-level roles. In many companies, however, they experience microaggressions that undermine their authority and signal that it will be harder for them to advance.
— McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2022 Report
If we expect to achieve gender equality in the workplace, then it’s time to make giant leaps to create inclusive environments that encourage everyone to show up authentically.
Corporate America’s Role in Perpetuating Imposter Syndrome
Women-led companies have repeatedly been proven to be the best-performing companies. Yet women are leaving the workforce at the highest rates seen in years.
Thank you to Julia Boorstin for bringing together all this research in When Women Lead.
When women lead, we all win. And if we want more women leaders, we need to create environments that embrace women showing up authentically.
Revisiting My Mantra
So, let’s revisit my experience with imposter syndrome and consider how the environment contributed to the scenario:
My story is more complex when considering the environmental factors:
Half of the leadership team did not support my promotion, which I was made aware of
The leadership team I was joining was ~20 people; I can remember only three women
Key members of the leadership team did not support the transformational team that I was being promoted to build and lead
My boss, who supported the promotion, was unexpectedly pulled onto a strategic initiative, making him unavailable to support this role
As part of a reorganization, I was required to “adopt” two employees who did not want to be on the team
The story is more complex through this lens and exposes multiple root causes. This promotion was an uphill climb – from the non-existent executive influence to the lack of leadership buy-in – the cards were stacked against me. My ideas were dismissed and my voice was not heard. Slowly but surely, I found myself in a very unproductive and disheartened state.
Speaking my mantra daily may have helped. Power posing in the bathroom may have turned things around (best believe I tried), but it barely tipped the scales. By ignoring the environmental factors, I was left with the wrong tools to manage the situation.
One very important note before wrapping up: I fully believe in taking responsibility for your situation and not transferring blame when things don’t go well. Looking back, I also examined the individual root causes that contributed to feeling like a fraud: I was new at operating at the VP level and there are tools that I would have offered myself and anyone taking on a new challenge to better navigate that transition. But this is not imposter syndrome, it is actually just being new a something! I’ll share more about that in next week’s post.
Cause & Effect
So, had I been facilitating this workshop tonight, I would have approached imposter syndrome differently. Rather than jumping in with a generic solution, I would have encouraged our Matria Coalition members to search for the root cause of what is so often labeled imposter syndrome. We would have considered how system bias, the environment, our internal thoughts and our own skill level may be contributing to the ‘imposter’ feelings.
Imposter syndrome is a nasty roadblock and one that we need to learn to manage through. Yet the responsibility shouldn’t fall solely on the shoulders of those suffering. We must challenge the status quo and improve our work environments to be more inclusive and supportive of everyone involved. We also need to equip women and others dealing with imposter syndrome to recognize it and use the right tools to navigate through it, as the system won’t change overnight. Only by understanding the true root cause of each scenario can we expect to develop genuine, long-term solutions to this over-diagnosed syndrome.
Thanks for reading, and as always, share your thoughts in the comments below.
Cheers
Michelle
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