Would you bet £250,000 on yourself?
During my first year at university, I attended an info session by some consultancy looking to hire the best and the brightest. According to the spokesperson, a quarter million pounds was the price tag for a new hire: the training, the hours spent on bringing that person up to speed, the actual salary, and so on. “It’s a huge investment,” they said, “so we want to make sure we recruit the best! I mean, would you invest that much money in yourself?” they chuckled.
I’ve always disliked these scare tactics employed by authority figures. I remember the first lectures of several courses at university where the lecturer welcomed us by stating that five percent of us will drop out before end of the first term; or that “we will hit the ground running and it’ll be incredibly hard,” only for that course to be among the least intellectually stimulating I ever had to sit through.
I got to thinking about the above instances in connection to impostor syndrome. My social media feed kept showing me videos of both reasonably successful people with senior positions who said they still felt like impostors and of young women ‘crying’ at their laptops, with the caption “I accidentally girl bossed too hard and now I have more responsibilities.” The latter I thought funny; the former quizzical, if not annoying. How can you value yourself so little?
“Fake it ’till you make” it is a piece of advice many have heard and perhaps relied on, too. It’s a counterforce to impostor syndrome where the fear that you’re not competent enough can debilitate you. But how do you know you’ve made it? How do you know when you’re competent enough? There’s more and more professions in the world that don’t require a specific education or track record, so it’s difficult to know what the requirements are. Just look at job openings: two vacancies with the similar title may require completely different skillsets and years of experience. Sidetrack to follow in another blog post: measuring experience in years is a bad measure for many jobs.
“Fake it ’till you make” it is a piece of advice many have heard and perhaps relied on, too. It’s a counterforce to impostor syndrome where the fear that you’re not competent enough can debilitate you.
Before entering the corporate workforce, I genuinely revered executives. They all looked wise and well-dressed in their headshots, their comments in newspapers the voice of authority (“the economy is not doing well at the moment” – the wisdom!). And then I got to meet them. My world shattered. Not because they were stupid, or rude. Most executives I have met have been perfectly neutral in the brief encounters I’ve had with them; the ones I’ve gotten to know better have had a sense of humour. My world shattered because they were so normal. There wasn’t an aura of omnipotence around them. They weren’t confident with technology. Their kids got sick at school.
This was a healthy observation, and one that cured me of any inkling of impostor syndrome. I’ve felt underqualified at some points in my life, but I have always relied on the one thing no one else in this world has, my secret weapon: I know myself. I know when I’m in over my head. I know what I can achieve in any given time period. I know which inconveniences I tolerate and which ones I do not. I am my own hardest critic and therefore the only one who can call me out on incompetence. Others can critique me and offer great insights (which some people have done, and those have helped me a lot), but I hold myself to such a high standard that if I truly felt that I couldn’t perform at the level expected, I would put my hand up and call myself out on it. I have given up fancy titles because I felt I could not hold them without losing my sleep over my own sense of incompetence.
The longer you work, the more you encounter people who aren’t competent. Some of them know it themselves; others don’t or don’t want to face it. Above, I asked if there’s a way to know if you’re competent. One way to start is by observing the people you find are incompetent. Why do you feel that they are? Do you do the same? As an example: one of the most destructive things is when you ask someone to share their plan and they cannot. Maybe they don’t have a plan; maybe they’re too insecure to share it; maybe they aren’t team players; maybe they aren’t open to suggestions. All of these are problems. Another example: do you answer questions? If you don’t, it’s possible you’re incompetent. Not knowing the answer to something is not a sign of incompetence; not admitting to not knowing and not trying to find out are.
I like motivational posters. I should put some up on my walls. And I thought to myself: those who have impostor syndrome should become their own motivational posters. Impostor? No. I’m the Poster. Be the inspiration you need.
Have you experienced impostor syndrome? How have you overcome it? What do you think are the root causes of this phenomenon in your case? Leave a comment!
Sidetracked 
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