Published October 11, 2024 in Coaching Corner • 9 min read • 
Audio available
As a leader, you face complex and intricate challenges every day. At times it can be hard to pinpoint or even articulate these challenges. But until you can fully address and resolve them, they have the potential to stall your professional and personal growth, your career, and your team’s success. This is where professional coaching comes in.Have you been in a meeting and felt you didn’t belong in the room? Looking around, it struck you that your colleagues were better informed, more capable and assertive, and somehow more legitimate. Or perhaps you’ve found yourself working on a project and doubting your ability to get it done. And, despite it working out, you said to yourself that your success was down to luck more than ability?
Sound familiar? If so, you have likely grappled with “imposter syndrome”: those feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, and self-doubt.
US psychologists Suzanne Imes and Pauline Clance coined the term in 1978, likening it to a feeling of “intellectual phoniness”. High-achieving women seemed particularly affected. While imposter syndrome doesn’t equate to a clinical diagnosis, the term has passed into the popular lexicon. In its 2022 Mind The Gap report, KPMG estimates that 75% of female executives in Fortune 1000 companies have grappled with imposter syndrome. A research article by Jaruwan Sakulku and James Alexander, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science in 2011, suggested up to 70% of all executives will experience “the imposter phenomenon” at some point in their careers.
Imposter syndrome could become even more prevalent in an era of major shifts in the codes of leadership – from power to empower, IQ to EQ, and authority to empathy – and at a time when leaders are expected to question themselves and their decisions.
But is it a purely negative phenomenon, something to be shut down and silenced, or could there be something to learn and gain from it?
We know from a huge body of research that the syndrome can manifest in ways that make us feel uncomfortable and ineffectual. It can show up in the form of fear and self-limitation as well as constant doubt and inconsistency in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It can present itself as a form of perfectionism or a tendency to overthink, paralyzing our ability to make meaningful progress. Worse still, it can lead to procrastination, a place where we can hide from attempting tasks that feel beyond our capabilities. All the negative self-talk feeds into the self-sabotage that fuels our inner monsters.
So, how can you address your own imposter, and what can you learn in the process? The good news is that coaching can help.
“The first important step is to realize that experiencing self-doubt is OK. It can even be healthy to pause and sense-check yourself and your abilities from time to time.”
The first important step is to realize that experiencing self-doubt is OK. It can even be healthy to pause and sense-check yourself and your abilities from time to time. So, before trying to shut down your inner monsters, take a step back and observe how you feel: reframe imposter syndrome as imposter feelings and be conscious of them. If the inner tension remains, a coach can support you in going about this methodically:
From here, you are in a position to start a healthy dialogue with your inner monster.
Routinely make time to look back and be conscious of what you have accomplished. Be intentional about recognizing your achievements.
Institute rigorous reality checks. Find clear evidence to distinguish what is true and positive from what is not true and negative.
Avoid making comparisons in your thinking. Accept that you are good enough right now and as you are, and embrace that feeling. This is how to turn judgment into curiosity and offer yourself the freedom to try and to fail, allowing room to explore new ideas and possibilities.
Nurture your uniqueness. Dig into your individual experiences, your own personal story, and extract the things that make you different from anyone else.
Seek out feedback from trusted friends, family, or colleagues and speak candidly about your feeling of imposterism. It’s very likely you will then notice others have theirs too.
Challenge and reframe your thoughts. Make it a priority to recognize your accomplishments and keep in mind that your doubts and uncertainties can be used as fuel for growth. You can then develop a more positive narrative and self-fulfilling prophecy around success.
Mikey feels stuck. For a few months, he has not been happy at work. His relationships with his colleagues and boss are satisfying. He is good at his job but gets bored quickly and frequently. After almost a decade in the same role, he is eager to expand his horizons. However, although his organization identified him as a high-potential talent and future key-position successor, Mikey is hesitant about moving forward. He is struggling to overcome lethargy and a tendency to procrastinate while increasingly overthinking his position and options. Meanwhile, his friends and family are finding his hesitancy and attitude hard to comprehend.
Perusing a job site, Mikey comes across his dream role. This is an opportunity with more responsibility in an interesting environment, with the scope to deliver serious impact. The role is a great match with Mikey’s competencies and experience. Yet, instead of firing off his CV, Mikey hesitates. He falls into a familiar cycle of overthinking and procrastinating. Exhausted and frustrated, he reaches out to an executive coach.
The coach asks Mikey to explore his feelings related to his current job. When asked what is stopping him from changing roles, Mikey gets stuck in a loop of “yes, but…” responses. The coach asks Mikey if he would agree to a deep journey in visualization that will bring him face-to-face with his interior saboteur or inner monster. Mikey agrees.
After a few deep, mindful breaths, the coach asks Mikey to close his eyes and ground himself into a comfortable position. The coach asks Mikey how he feels about his job. Mikey responds: “I feel like a prisoner.” The coach then asks Mikey to locate this feeling; is it internal or external, inside his body or in the room with him? Mikey responds: “The feeling is inside my body, in my belly.” Prompted by the coach to describe an image or shape that concords with the feeling, Mikey says: “I see a blackbird in a cage.” Asked to commit this image to paper, he draws a birdcage with a sad-looking little man on the swing inside. Mikey’s coach invites him to give this inner monster a name, and Mikey dubs his saboteur Tweety, like the iconic cartoon bird.
Having visualized and named his inner monster, the coach invites Mikey to reflect on any messages or information he believes Tweety is trying to share with him. After pausing to listen and consider these, Mikey starts to write things down. Among the phrases that emerge are: “Be careful! This opportunity is not for you! It’s too much for you! This is not your place!” The coach asks Mikey to articulate how these messages make him feel and their impact on his emotions and behaviors. Reflecting on this, Mikey shares that they prevent him from sleeping well at night. He reveals that Tweety tells him that even if he gets a promotion at work, it will be a product of luck rather than talent and that, in due course, his colleagues will see that he is not a good fit and be fired.
Mikey’s coach asks him to question Tweety: why is he here, and what is his purpose? Mikey responds that Tweety is here to protect and shield him from failure and rejection. Tweety’s role is to alert him to what might happen if he lost his job: how would he fend for himself and his family?
At this point, the coach asks Mikey what he would like to reply to Tweety. Mikey says: “I would like to thank him for his protection and good intentions, but I don’t feel I need to be shielded in this way. I want to tell him that everything will be OK and that I am good enough not to be fired. And if I am fired, I am good enough to find another job to feed my family.”
Mikey’s coach asks him if he would like to reconfigure his relationship with Tweety. As Mikey continues to visualize the bird, he has a moment of clarity. He would prefer Tweety to respond to feelings of threat and danger by singing and not by stopping him. After a few moments of silence and deep breaths, Mikey’s coach asks him to share his feelings. Mikey responds: “I am feeling lighter and free.”
And has the image or shape of Tweety changed? Mikey confirms that the cage is now open, and the little man inside has wings to fly to freedom. Invited to anchor these new feelings into his body in some way, Mikey stands up and throws open his arms, extending them like wings. This is the new image of Tweety that he goes on to draw:
Following his coaching session, Mikey has become aware of how his unconscious fears of not being seen as good enough have been sabotaging his confidence and standing between him and fulfilling his potential. Having a healing dialogue with his inner monster has helped him understand the well-intentioned messages coming from his subconsciousness – the questioning of his abilities and how others will perceive him – and to externalize and reconfigure those messages in an empowering, not paralyzing way.
Mikey applies for the new job. He has just learned that he has made it to the shortlist and is preparing for his forthcoming interview with confidence and enthusiasm.
Imposter syndrome is common, but it is manageable and not unhealthy. It is normal to experience feelings of self-doubt and to question your abilities as you go through life and progress in your career. The key is to bring out the inner monster within and build a healthier dialogue with it.
And remember this: If you ever ask yourself if you are an imposter, the answer is that you’re not. A true imposter would never even pose the question!
Joanna's fear that setting boundaries would make her unkind cast her team adrift. Chloé Christopoulos says clarity and accountability are not departures from care, but expressions of it ...
Audio available
Elizabeth faces a career crossroads and works with a coach to clarify her ambitions, negotiate her future, and harness the power of constructive disagreement...
David learns to see conflict not as an end, but as a cycle of renewal - embracing tension, repair, and trust to transform his work relationships...
Striving to be a superhero has backfired professionally and personally for ambitious Frances. It’s time to ease her foot off the gas, says Qi Zhang...
Audio availableExplore first person business intelligence from top minds curated for a global executive audience