Some Thoughts About Imposter Syndrome

I remember the first time I got up enough courage to go out and speak publicly about neuroscience and coaching. I joke that I was afraid the neuroscience police would come and arrest me. I wanted to share what I was learning, but had very little confidence that I actually knew what I was talking about. I was lucky in that the group I presented to was warm, receptive, fascinated — and appreciative. They loved what I had to share and encouraged me to keep going. This has been, indeed, a true privilege. My community, my system, has supported me, and with practice and feedback I was able to appropriately let go of feeling like I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. With time and further feedback and learning, I now embrace my own expertise.

Every time I hear the term “imposter syndrome” I feel like I have a stone in my shoe. Something in it rubs me the wrong way. I know the feeling exists, and, as I hope illustrated through my own story, have felt this way myself. But is it a syndrome? To me, calling something a syndrome makes it feel like it is, in some way, a disease. something internal, wrong, and damaging. So maybe I want to start there — using the term feeling rather than syndrome. An imposter feeling. Ok, but now what?

Well, I think there are two key ways this feeling occurs (and they can definitely be interrelated) — the personal and the systemic. The personal comes from the fear that we lack knowledge, skills, and/or experience. I deal with this a lot as a coach. Clients feel like they need the next level of certification or degree in order to be legit — and critically — before they put dare to put themselves out there. But it is “in the arena” (to use Teddy Roosevelt’s famous phrase) where we refine ourselves, we make the mistakes critical for learning, and get feedback as to whether we are on the right track or not.

If this is the main source of the imposter feeling (and it is distinct from the systemic impact mentioned below), the way forward is to be Roosevelt’s person “who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.” Neuroscientists who study neuroplasticity know this — mistakes and feedback and trial and error are how the brain “wires” itself.

So in this case, getting over an imposter feeling isn’t that complex, to be honest. You can activate the potent power of neuroplasticity by doing these two key things:

ONE: push yourself to the edge of your comfort zone, into the “learning zone” where you do make mistakes at times. In my early days of speaking about neuroscience, sometimes I was blessed to have an actual neuroscientist in the audience, who would point out these mistakes. This helped refine my knowledge and I am ever grateful.

(And of course, if you genuinely need knowledge and skills, go get them, just don’t use “I need more training” as an excuse not to be in the arena.)

TWO: Make sure you have a chance to reflect on your efforts with a supportive person (a coach is great for this). This is critical for your brain to bring into awareness what you are doing right, as well as the mistakes you may have made. Checking back on your growth over time is also critical, because the brain tends to take “now” as what is true. For example, if you reflect on how you have grown as a public speaker over a year, you will see that going from a 10 out of 10 in nervousness to say, a 6 out of 10, is movement in the right direction, not a condemnation that you “still aren’t there.”

But what if the feeling doesn’t go away? And what if you know you actually do have the skills and abilities, but still feel like an imposter? This leads us to the second way people get this feeling, which is the systemic, from the relationships and/or system they are in. As the brilliant 2021 Harvard Business Review article, Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome pointed out, imposter syndrome may be the internalization of systemic racism, bias, and other forms of oppression and abuse.

In my own work focused on relational trauma, I have seen that all too often people develop imposter feelings when they have experienced a toxic boss or workplace, a toxic family, and/or a toxic relationship. If you consistently get the sense that nothing you do or say is right, smart, or sensible, and have the tendency to look within rather than blaming others, you may well end up feeling like you must be a fraud, blaming yourself for everything, and even giving up in order to not be unfairly criticized.

As the authors say in the HBR article I mentioned “Even as we know it today, imposter syndrome puts the blame on individuals, without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests in both women of color and white women. Imposter syndrome directs our view toward fixing women at work instead of fixing the places where women work.”

So, for the second way an imposter feeling is created, we must address the system the person (male or female) is in. Rather than fixing the person, we need to fix the places and the relationships. What can the individual do? Here are a few thoughts:

ONE: Recognize abuse for what it is and be willing to call it out. In a toxic system, you need to stop blaming yourself and taking unfair criticism to heart. I know this isn’t easy, especially for sensitive people. but I do want to say that it’s no more spiritual, enlightened, or emotionally intelligent to take responsibility for what is not yours than it is to blame others for what is. Internalizing doesn’t change anything and just makes a person ill.

And if you have a coach or mentor (or god forbid, HR) who wants to focus on what you are doing to “co-create” a toxic situation, move on. This is not fair, true or helpful — it’s taking the coaching world way too long to see this, but it is another way of victim-blaming and shaming. If you are being put down and devalued in any relationship, whether workplace or personal, a coach should be helping you with boundaries and choices. You do not “co-create” abuse.

TWO: Inclusion zones / inclusion people. I mentioned above that I was privileged to have kind, warm, supportive people around me as I developed my neuroscience expertise. This is huge. I wasn’t questioned at every turn. I was celebrated and encouraged. This is a blessing and one of the many reasons I love my profession — it’s an anti-imposter-feeling-inclusion-zone. The system was pretty much ok, so I just had to work on me. NOTE: this included doing some healing from other toxic systems in my past! And if the system isn’t inclusive and warm, then the question is, where can you find it? How can we be inclusion zones for each other? Even one inclusion person can be a helpful antidote to a toxic system as we work to move past an imposter feeling.

I honestly wish I could offer more advice here, because there are far more unhealthy systems than there are healthy ones. But at least these two ideas are a start.

A final thought — an occasional sense of not knowing or being able to do everything is not a bad thing. We can be curious knowledge- and skill-seekers without feeling like we must be frauds. It’s called being a healthy and appropriately humble human.

I Don’t Have a Magic Wand

In coaching, when the client is willing and able, it is amazing how almost everything works. But when the client is unwilling and/or unable, it’s amazing how pretty much nothing works.

One of the cherished roles I play in the coaching world is as a mentor to other coaches. I love helping them figure out what might be going on in their clients’ brains, how to apply coaching techniques more effectively, and what to do when things get a bit stuck. In these conversations, occasionally a coach will list off everything they’ve tried with a particular client and ask me what they are doing wrong. A percentage of the time I have ideas and new directions for them to try. But a percentage of the time, I don’t.

I remember the early days of my own journey as a coach. I was on fire with all my new tools, techniques, and understanding of how to help people. I was amazed at how much just listening deeply and asking open-ended questions enabled people to clarify things for themselves and move forward. I loved all the cool tools I had that helped clients have transformational breakthroughs. I felt powerful and that power was, well, a bit addictive. Nothing better than big WOW from a client. Or an “I’ve never thought of it that way before.” Yay me (pats self on back), I rock!

The problem with taking responsibility for this is that it works both ways. When nothing was effective with a client I was also certain it was me. I clearly wasn’t good enough as a coach (I tell beginning coaches that we often acquire a new coaching “saboteur,” who sits on our shoulder pointing out the myriad mistakes we are making), insufficiently able to help this client. And again, a percentage of the time perhaps I was right and was missing something a more experienced coach might not. But a percentage of the time, I was wrong. It was, in fact, not me. And neither was the transformation. It was about the client, their openness, their willingness, and their efforts.

So let me share that in my experience, there are a few types of clients where it just ain’t gonna work no matter what you do. Here are three that come to mind (and there may be overlaps).

ONE: The “I paid for this, now fix me” client. I’ve had some of these in my 20+ years as a coach, but luckily, not more than a few because they are incredibly annoying. This type of client seems to believe that their growth should be automatic once they have sent the money. Or perhaps simply that their responsibility is limited to paying the invoice. As if we, as coaches, were appliance repair people there to tweak a few gears and electrical connections while they sit there and kibbitz.

TWO: The “that’s not in my comfort zone so I won’t” client. Now, I have all the space in the world for a client feeling uncomfortable. If I am doing my job, that’s going to be part of the deal because I want to help them disrupt older neural pathways for the sake of creating new ones that lead in the direction they want to go. Most clients understand this, and the “I’m not comfortable” is something to notice while trying anyway, as they realize that this is the only way to change. But the “so I won’t” type of client says they want change, while not doing anything to push themselves. Then all too often they complain that “coaching isn’t working.” Ugh.

THREE: The “that won’t work” client. This client already “knows” what will or won’t be worth their effort and prefer to enroll us in all the reasons our coaching tools, questions, homework etc. are bad ideas rather than stretching themselves. They may argue they have already tried something to no avail, or that “that sort of thing doesn’t work for them.” As a coach, working with this type of client can feel like we’ve been cut off at the knees. I sometimes even find my own ideas and creativity becoming constrained as my brain buys in to the “that won’t work” conversation.

Ideally, we weed out these clients in a chemistry or sample session by making it clear a) what coaching is and isn’t and b) what we expect from them. But sometimes they sneak through, at first agreeing that yes, of course coaching is about their own effort but then sliding off into excuses. Or we are coaching through an organization and the person is doing so as part of leadership program, or they have been told they have to be coached for some reason, but haven’t had a sufficient chance to opt in with full understanding. In these cases, I have seen that pausing to educate about what coaching is may work, with the client realizing that they didn’t understand and seeing that their own effort = their own results.

But it also may fall on deaf ears, with the client still expecting you to do coaching to them. In this case, it’s very much ok to walk away. You weren’t issued a magic wand with your coaching credential.

One additional note: I think it also needs to be said that sometimes a client does come to coaching with every intention of making an effort and authentically engaging in the process, but finds that something is firmly and persistently blocking them, and/or that the coaching process is stressful or triggering beyond their ability to cope. Generally this is because of some sort of unhealed trauma. A coach with additional training in trauma may be able to help here, and/or the client may need to explore therapy.