I was really excited to listen to this episode of Adam Grant’s podcast, WorkLife because it featured comic Taylor Tomlinson. The topic of the conversation was imposter syndrome. You have to have a lot of confidence to be a stand-up comic so I was surprised to learn that Tomlinson struggles with it. Volumes have been written about imposter syndrome since the concept was introduced in the 1970’s. How is it still a thing?
Old Assumptions
From its inception as a theory, imposter syndrome had a negative connotation because it induces sabotaging emotions like mistrust and fear. It is a mindset of self-doubt that plagues high-achievers. You think you don’t deserve your current level of success and any minute now you’ll slip up and be exposed as a fraud. But is that belief always bad? Can that fear be employed as motivation to become as competent as you want to feel?
New Data
Basima Tewfik is an Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In October 2021, she released her study on imposter syndrome. She hypothesized that people with imposter syndrome have a gap between the perception of their competence and how competent they actually are. She worked with three different test groups in three different situations. In all three groups she found that the imposter-syndrome sufferers performed their jobs just as well as, if not better than, the test subjects who did not experience imposter syndrome. She concluded that the imposter-syndrome sufferers put additional efforts into their interpersonal skills.
Apply It
How could this new knowledge work for you? For example, you’ve probably heard that women apply for jobs when they meet 100% of the criteria in a job description, while men apply for jobs when they meet 60% of the qualifications. If women saw jobs they wanted, decided to acquire more of the skills listed in the description, and applied for the job anyway, then they demonstrate curiosity, continuous improvement, and problem-solving skills. Hiring managers crave these characteristics.
Thought Experiment
Imagine someone exposes you as a fraud. Picture the scene in your head with as much detail as possible.
- Who is it?
- What expertise do they claim you don’t have?
- When in the process do they call you out?
- Where are you when they challenge you?
- Why do they say that you don’t know what you’re talking about?
- How do you respond?
Your answers empower you to acquire knowledge, learn new skills, and practice emotional intelligence. These enable you to bridge the gap between what you perceive and what is real. You can feel like you earned your success.
Imposter syndrome involves both how you see yourself and how you think others see you. Here’s something else you can try: Ask three people you trust what they think your strengths are. If their feedback does not match how you want to be perceived, you now have information to plan your next goal.
How will you use this new research to make imposter syndrome work for you? Please share in the comments.