Typically, we use the term imposter syndrome to describe someone who is competent but feels like they’re not.
This person usually has a lot of self-doubt, worries about what other people will think of them, and is frequently indecisive and insecure even though they appear very accomplished and successful—they went to good schools, got promoted quickly at work, and even have senior positions in their current company or organization.
From this framing, imposter syndrome is a liar. And most approaches to handling imposter syndrome start from this assumption and encourage us to be kinder to ourselves, disprove the imposter within, or even to “silence your inner imposter.”
But what if this framing is wrong? What if your imposter syndrome is correct? What if you are an imposter?
Hi, My Name’s Nick. And I’m an Imposter.
My own experience with imposter syndrome is that whenever I felt like an imposter—inadequate, not as talented as the people around me, and anxious about them realizing it—I usually was.
Let me give you a couple of examples:
- When I first started working in a lab during graduate school, I felt like I didn’t belong. I didn’t know as much as other people, was slow to pick up new concepts and ideas, and often felt totally lost during lab meetings when we’d discuss how to design a new experiment or how to interpret the results of a recently-completed one. I worried a lot, compared myself negatively toward others, and generally felt inadequate.
- When I left my clinical practice to co-found a consulting company, I really felt like an imposter. I had zero experience in the corporate world yet I was advising people on how to run their companies! I regularly worried that people would think I was a fraud or that I wasn’t qualified to do the job. And I often looked over my shoulder enviously at colleagues with lots of business experience and worried that I’d never be able to keep up given what a big head start they had.
But here’s the thing: Despite feeling like an imposter at many stages in my life, I never considered it a bad thing. It was just… normal.
You can’t be ambitious without feeling like an imposter.
If you are in any way ambitious, high-achieving, or hold yourself to high standards, you will by definition feel like an imposter at least some of the time because you’re constantly trying to learn and grow—which means you’re not as good as you want to be.
The problem with imposter syndrome is that people frame feeling like an imposter as a problem.
But you can reframe those same feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt as signs of ambition and opportunities for growth. You feel like an imposter because you’re striving to be better than you are. All those self-doubts and worries and anxieties are just your brain reminding you that there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be; they’re signposts guiding you toward opportunities for growth.
In my own experience—personally and as a coach—people with imposter syndrome almost always have very real competency gaps. What we call imposter syndrome is just their brains registering that and letting them know they have work to do.
So hard as it is for our fragile little egos to hear, maybe the best way to “overcome” imposter syndrome is to assume it’s true and get to work.
A couple years ago this is exactly the approach I started taking with my coaching clients who wanted to work on imposter syndrome and self-doubt. And the results have been way better than when I took the standard approach to imposter syndrome.
Here are a couple mini case studies of what it looked like…
CEO Jack
Jack was the CEO of a mid-sized logistics company. He’d never been a CEO before and was under a lot of pressure from his board to turn things around for the company which had been flailing ever since the pandemic. He started coaching with me because he wanted to feel more confident in his role as CEO.
Mid-way through our first session, after listening to all the ways in which Jack felt like an imposter, I said:
Jack, you are an imposter. The question isn’t whether you’re qualified enough; the real question is what do you need to do to get better.”
After that, we spent a session or two getting hyper-specific about gaps in his competency as CEO. For example: Jack had almost no background in marketing. So he started reading a couple classic business marketing books, asked the head of marketing if he could sit in on the marketing team’s weekly meetings to listen and learn, and called up an old friend from college who worked for a marketing agency and had a series of conversations about what other companies were doing in the marketing space.
After a few weeks of this, Jack was by no means a marketing expert. But he had started learning a lot more about marketing. And the more he started learning, the more he felt his confidence slowly but surely rising.
I still remember something Jack told me in our last coaching session:
I was stuck in imposter syndrome because I was trying to do something about my imposter syndrome. I feel much more confident now because I started doing something to learn and get better instead. I stopped trying to get rid of imposter syndrome and started using it.
Novelist Miranda
Miranda started coaching because she was struggling with imposter syndrome and procrastination. After her first book became unexpectedly successful, she was struggling to make progress on her second book. She worried a lot about writing a book that was good enough now that people were “taking her seriously” and “expected bigger things.”
Just like in my work with Jack, Miranda and I had an early “come to Jesus” moment when she asked me why I thought she was struggling so much. I told her:
Miranda, what you’re calling imposter syndrome is just your brain adapting to this new identity of professional novelist. You wrote your first book on the side while you were still a teacher. But now that you’ve transitioned to this new career as an author, I’d say it’s pretty normal to have some self-doubt and insecurity. Was it any different your first year of teaching?
This reframe that her imposter syndrome was more a function of a new phase of life than some underlying defect really resonated for Miranda. In addition to her first year teaching, she also listed her first couple years of marriage and her transition to boarding school when she was 14 as similar inflection points that all had their associated insecurities. But just like she figured out how to be married and how to do boarding school, she could figure out how to be a full-time writer.
We did a bunch of experiments and exercises, but the thing that really worked for Miranda was joining an online writers group that provided a lot of role models in the process of growing into becoming a professional writer.
By the end of our work, Miranda still wasn’t blazing through chapters of her first draft as quickly as she did in her first book, but she was moving. And more importantly, she wasn’t nearly as concerned about her slower pace, which ironically led to writing more and procrastinating less.
A few months after our coaching work ended, I got an email from Miranda with the following line toward the end of her message:
I started coaching thinking you’d teach me how to overcome imposter syndrome, but I ended coaching being okay with it because I realized it was normal.
Wrapping Up
The title of this essay, Maybe You Are an Imposter? is deliberately provocative because we need a paradigm shift in how we think and talk about confidence, self-doubt, and insecurity—especially in our professional lives.
Feeling like an imposter isn’t a problem that needs to be fixed; it’s a normal part of striving to be your best.
So the next time self-doubt creeps in and you start feeling like an imposter, embrace it and ask yourself:
What growth opportunity is my imposter syndrome trying to show me?
Because the less time and energy you spend fighting with your imposter syndrome, the more time and energy you’ll have to use it productively to learn, to grow, and to develop into a better and fuller version of yourself.
Next Steps
If you enjoyed this essay, here are a few more from me that might be helpful:
Work with Nick
If you’re interested in working with me directly, I run a semi-annual emotional resilience masterclass called Mood Mastery. I also have a small private coaching practice.
