Why do many of us feel like we can’t do the job we’re doing? And how can you overcome that feeling? Let’s find out…
Neil Gaiman summed up the feelings that many of us have about our successes:
“I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard would be there to tell me that it was all over, that they’d caught up with me, and that I would now have to go and get a real job,” he said.
To be clear: that’s multi-award-winning, bestselling author Neil Gaiman, giving the Commencement Speech at the University of the Arts in 2012 – a speech that would later be turned into a book – talking about how his success made him feel like a fraud.
The obvious reaction would be to say, “Come on, Neil, look at your success! You clearly belong where you are.” Yet, for the millions of people who suffer from Imposter Syndrome, there’s no getting around those false feelings of inadequacy. (Millions? Make that billions. According to the International Journal of Behavioral Science, about seven out of 10 people experience it at some point in their lives.)
Perhaps you know the feeling: it’s the niggling sense that you can’t actually do the job you’re doing… or that the man with the clipboard is going to take it all away from you.
Under pressure
A recent study by Utah’s Brigham Young University examined Imposter Syndrome as it relates to university students. Study co-author and BYU Management Professor Jeffrey Bednar interviewed students in the university’s Master of Accountancy programme, to find out where those feelings came from and how they coped with them.
“Sometimes the pressure to be smart and capable causes some students to feel like they are frauds or fakes,” Bednar said.
The survey was anonymous – after all, nobody wants the whole wide world to know that you know that you’re a fraud. One of the students, using the pseudonym Lindsey, said: “I think a lot of people suffer from it and they don’t even know what it is.”
Another student, using the name Sarah, might not have known what to call it, but she knew exactly what it felt like. “You are surrounded by people who are all very intelligent,” she said. “There are just some people who get it naturally. How did I get in here? How did they accept me? I must have slipped through the cracks somehow.”
So, what can you do?
Fortunately, the study offered a cure – or, at least, a workaround. It recommended seeking out social support, but warned that you need to be very careful about who you approach for that support.
“The key finding from our research was that it really matters who you go to for support when you are feeling like an impostor,” Bednar said. “When the students in our sample sought help from peers within their programme, on average it made things worse. When they had people outside the programme they could rely on for support, on average it made things better.”
In other words, if you reveal your feelings of inadequacy to the people you’re (unfairly and inaccurately) measuring yourself against, you’ll only feel worse about yourself. But if you ask someone objective, you’re likely to get a more accurate – and helpful – response.
Maybe, then, the best way to change your thinking is to realise that pretty much everybody else feels the same way about themselves, too. Lindsey, Sarah, British National Book Award winner Neil Gaiman… Even Australian billionaire entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes has had to tweak his thinking about his own abilities.
In a 2019 TED Talk, Cannon-Brookes said: “So one of the things I’ve learned is that people think successful people don’t feel like frauds. But I think, especially knowing a lot of entrepreneurs, the opposite is more likely to be true. The most successful people I know don’t question themselves, but they do heavily question, regularly question, their ideas and their knowledge. They know when the water is way too deep, and they’re not afraid to ask for advice. They don’t see that as a bad thing. And they use that advice to hone those ideas, to improve them and to learn. It’s okay to be out of your depth sometimes.”
After all, if you’re not reaching or stretching, you’re not growing. And if you feel a little out of depth, it’s only a matter of time before you’re back on solid ground.
Leave a Reply