Why You Feel Like an Imposter and How to Challenge It

My first Senate meeting did not go well.  I thought I’d arrived early only to find the room already crammed and noisy.  I recognised no one.  I squeezed through to find the last seat at the farthest end of a rather large table.  As I sat, I suddenly felt a huge sense of diminishment.  The emanation of power coming from the physicality and the sheer quantity of senior men in suits in that room absolutely floored me.  Who was I to be there amongst this august body?  I did not speak in that meeting.  Neither did I speak for several meetings further.  When I finally plucked up courage to say something I felt like a little girl squeaking some incoherence in the corner.   At the time I was a Professor and Head of Department.

Welcome Imposter Syndrome.

Imposter syndrome happens when you feel like a fraud because you doubt your abilities and your right to be in the role you hold.  It has many impacts such as stepping aside to the voices, opinions and suggestions of others because you think you have nothing to offer.  It means not putting yourself forward for a promotion or a pay rise because you don’t feel you deserve it.  It means not taking the credit for your work because your sense of your own value is so compromised.  

In that room that day I thought my feelings were a true sign that I wasn’t up to the job I had just been promoted to.  But these feelings are common.  They are also structured into our everyday experiences to such an extent that imposter syndrome is an inevitability just waiting to happen.  Take for example the statistics that more than 70% of the population have had ‘imposter’ thoughts at some point in their working lives.  Now consider how imposter syndrome affects women and men in different ways.  The more men are promoted the less they experience imposter syndrome as they see their progression as validation of their skills and experience.  The opposite happens for women.  The higher we go, the more we believe we are fakes.

As if to rub salt in the wound, the terminology ‘imposter syndrome’ is pathologizing and victim blaming.  Criminal fraudulence abounds in the word ‘imposter’ and the term ‘syndrome’ has medical undertones that speak to 19th century assumptions of female hysteria.  Not only do we feel bad in the first place.  We are also feeling bad because of how we are labelled, or are labelling ourselves.    

Diagnosing feelings of insecurity in this way creates a further problem.  Rather than working on prevention and fixing the system that causes imposter syndrome, all the advice is directed towards fixing the victim.  It is we who have to change by, say, adjusting our confidence levels so that fear and apprehension no longer hamper us.  Indeed, whilst pretty much every women’s development programme has a session on imposter syndrome, what has been less explored are the cultural conditions that are creating imposter syndrome in the first place.

Stereotypes and repeated questioning of our intelligence and capabilities are amongst the many reasons.  This includes the continuing myth that women’s brains are smaller than men’s and therefore women are less intelligent.  This is clearly why there is so much mansplaining going on – the chaps are concerned that our brains just can’t take it all in!  Our brains are not just thought to be smaller but different also.  Along the lines of women are from Venus and men are from Mars, popular ideas continue to push the idea that women have a dominant ‘emotional’ right hemisphere and men have a dominant ‘rational’ left hemisphere.  Or to use that derogatory and hierarchical terminology, women are good at ‘soft’ skills whereas men deal with the hard stuff.  We are therefore ‘naturally’ suited for doing ‘people’ work but not for running a multi-million pounds business.  Neither stereotype is true of course but their effect, and that of other stereotypes, continue to create barriers and insecurities.

We see this routinely in the workplace.  Women and minority groups experience daily battles with acts of micro-aggression arising from racism, ableism, classism and sexism.  Women also experience marginalisation because of how corporate cultures continue to believe the archetypal leader is masculine, direct and dominant.   The continuing lack of diverse role models in high positions means that it is hard to find someone with whom you can identify. 

The cumulative effect of this is that when you are directly or indirectly told your whole life that you are a lesser being and then you begin to achieve things, this goes against the very well-established narratives we hold in our minds.  Is it any wonder that imposter syndrome occurs? 

The truth is that we are trying to fit into structures and systems that were never designed for us.  Activism has enabled us to take our place but it has yet to undo the cultures that empower heteronormative, Eurocentric masculinity whilst simultaneously disabling any of us that do not fit that template.  It is for this reason that we need a holistic approach directed at changing the workplace cultures that create imposter syndrome in the first place.  This provides a focus on its structural causes rather than an approach designed to fix us. 

We can start by really valuing diversity and inclusion and evidencing that value in appointments and promotions.  Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency tells us that of 3600 governors in England and Scotland, just 75 people identified as black; male professors continue to outnumber women by three to one and, as a Guardian report put it, the vast majority of British universities employ between zero and two black professors.  By creating cultures that not only encourage but pro-actively validate a range of leadership styles and those who hold them, those experiences that give rise to imposter syndrome will begin to diminish. 

We also need to share our experiences of imposter syndrome and indeed even celebrate the fact that we are experiencing it in the first place.  It is evidence that we are succeeding in a world designed for others.  Hiding how we feel is not only bad for us as individuals, it also serves to perpetuate the myth that imposter syndrome is the result of personal failings and must be kept secret. 

It took me a long time to overcome my sense of imposterhood.  At that time I had no language to describe my feelings and no sense that they were common and indeed normal.  Now the terminology related to imposter syndrome has entered the lexicon, this provides a tremendous opportunity to start those conversations. 

with all best wishes,

christina

October 2022

Professor Christina Hughes is Founder and CEO of Women-Space Leadership Limited..

Further Sources

Clare Josa Ever Catch yourself thinking “Who am I, to”.  Then it’s time to ditch imposter syndrome, clarejosa.com

Alexis Kanda-Olmstead (2020) Why we feel like imposters (and what this means for women’s liberation), alexiskanada-olmstead.com

Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey (2021) Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome, Harvard Business Review