500 Words a Week - Imposter Syndrome
Imposter syndrome is something I believe many of us within the S&C/ coaching world experience frequently. When I started my new role, the first month or so I felt it significantly. How did I get here? I don’t deserve to be here. When will I get found out?
It’s been a challenging process for me, but I think we need to re-frame from constantly thinking of the negatives associated with imposter syndrome (such as the thoughts above), and try to see the positives of this.
To me, experiencing some imposter feelings means you are pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. You are working at your upper limit. It helps you to ask better questions and listen to those around us, because we don’t believe we have the answer the everything.
I had the very fortunate experience to go on my first podcast this week. The week before I had regular feelings of doubt, feelings of I have nothing of use to say. The thought of should I cancel it must have entered my mind several times leading up to it.
The podcast happened, I stumbled, fumbled and dropped the ball on several occasions. I went past my zone of comfort and am grateful for the experience.
I wrote about in the past how we shouldn’t be afraid of looking like a fool at times.
“It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk consequent blindness.” – Jordan Peterson
Adam Grant talks about a spectrum ranging from armchair quarterback to imposter in his book “Think Again”. Grant describes the armchair quarterback as the type of people who are convinced they know more than the coaches on the side-line from their seated armchair position watching through the tele. The armchair quarterback’s confidence exceeds their competence, the opposite is true of the imposter. The ideal situation is to lie in the middle, where our level of confidence matches our competence.
Many of us are probably familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, which shows that when we lack competence we are most likely to be brimming with overconfidence.
The more your confidence brims and you believe in your superior knowledge, the less likely you are to learn and update your views and opinions. If we are certain we know something, we have no reason to look for gaps and flaws in our knowledge. The opposite it true if we regularly have imposter type feelings, we are always seeking to learn more and refine our tools.
The sweet spot between armchair quarterback and imposter, is at a place called confident humility. Here, your believe in yourself is secure, you are confident in your ability to do a good job while still having the humility to question whether you have the rights tools at the present time. We have faith in our capability while appreciating we might not always have the right solution. Don’t base your confidence on what you know, base it on your capability to learn. Confident humility is the sweet spot between blinding arrogance and paralyzing doubt.
