You’ve put in long hours and hard work to earn a leadership role. Instead of feeling like you deserve this responsibility, you feel plagued by self-doubt and worries of inadequacy. This experience is incredibly common among new leaders. In fact, an estimated 70% of people grapple with intense feelings that they are undeserving frauds at some point in their careers despite evidence to the contrary.
Psychologists call these nagging thoughts and profound anxiety around competence “imposter syndrome.” Though not an official disorder, imposter syndrome can be extremely damaging to leadership capabilities and emotional well-being when left unaddressed.
By better understanding common factors that can trigger imposter syndrome as well as intentionally reframing thought processes, new leaders can overcome feelings of fraudulence. With courage and perseverance, you can move into your management role feeling confidently capable rather than haunted by self-doubt.
Triggers Behind Imposter Syndrome
Though imposter syndrome can subtly plague all upwardly mobile high achievers to some extent, rapidly transitioning into leadership comes with distinct pressures that often exacerbate feelings of inadequacy:
Lack of Training and Preparation
Oftentimes, promising individual contributors take on management roles without structured leadership development or clearly defined career ladders. They expectedly feel underprepared to smoothly grow into responsibilities like overseeing strategy, making impactful decisions, and managing teams. Being thrust into accountability without preparation is a prime trigger for imposter syndrome.
Perfectionist Tendencies
Effective leadership requires comfort with ambiguity, experimentation, and unknowns. For ambitious managers used to excelling through individual work characterized by clear measures of success and perfectionist standards, leadership can feel destabilizing. Adaptability, not perfection, becomes imperative. Anything short of flawless execution activates harsh self-criticism and nagging doubts on capabilities.
Playing Catch Up
When transitioning from individual contributor to people manager, there is often a steep learning curve around topics like influencing organizational change, understanding group dynamics, and coaching direct reports for growth. Despite domain expertise, having less knowledge in key areas than reports can severely undermine confidence in the credibility needed to lead.
Impact on Leadership Capabilities
Feeling like an ineffective fraud is an exhausting and lonely psychological state that breeds professional paralysis without intentional efforts to reframe thought processes. New managers wrestling with imposter syndrome often:
- Second guess or overly question decisions
- Avoid opportunities and visibility
- Overprepare trying to get everything perfect
- Seek external validation constantly
- Micromanage teams to overcompensate
In the long run, intense feelings of self-doubt lead to burnout, lack of engagement, turnover in roles, and missed career trajectory timelines.
Steps to Overcome Imposter Syndrome
Recognize that some self-doubt stepping into vastly increased responsibilities is healthy and grounded in reality about the learning curve ahead. However, also know that imposter syndrome will resolve with time and experience. In the meantime, here are proactive tips:
Own Your Experience
Intentionally identify and record examples of your proven leadership competencies, unique contributions, and previous wins to reference when feeling inadequate. Repeat to yourself that your hard work and talents got you here.
Adopt a Growth Mindset
Rather than rushing to prove yourself or avoiding failure, recognize capabilities strengthen through challenge and development opportunities over the long-term. Imperfections and missteps are inherent to the leadership growth process at all levels.
Enlist a Mentor
Verbalize feelings of self-doubt to a trusted mentor able to impartially provide reassurance on accomplishments. Everyone struggles with confidence at times. Discussing fears helps alleviate their control and gain perspective.
Detect Perfectionist Pressures
Reflect on when disproportionate self-criticism arises. Does a small mistake really undermine significant progress? Challenge tendencies to hold yourself to unrealistic expectations before fully growing into a role.
Fake Confidence When Needed
Even if you have to “act as if” in the beginning, stepping confidently into uncharted leadership activities builds genuine competence over time. With increased exposure, self-assurance follows.
Trust that imposter syndrome lessens with competence and experience. Meanwhile, know that courage, self-compassion and vulnerability – not perfection – pave the road to authentic, fulfilling leadership at all stages. You deserve to enjoy your accomplishments thus far while thoughtfully building capabilities at your own realistic pace from here rather than relentlessly doubting yourself.
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