Imposter Syndrome or Growth Opportunity
Throughout my career, I’ve worked in roles I wasn’t completely prepared for — this is understandable given that my career path hasn’t been linear. Every few years I take on a new role very different from my past roles. I’ve worked in sales, marketing, communications, corporate affairs, I’ve been a waiter, barista and seller of all sorts of things in my younger years.
A consequence of a cross functional career path is that with each new role or challenge, you’re stepping out of your comfort zone, and doing things that your previous experience doesn’t fully prepare you for.
At my first ever corporate job, during a strategy session my new colleagues shared their ideas and I sat there thinking “what in heaven’s name are they talking about? I hope they don’t ask me anything because I don’t have a clue.”
And then it happened. Someone asked me “so what do you think?” My heart started pounding, the blood rushed to my face, I had difficulty breathing and knew she’d cooked my goose. After an uncomfortable silence with 16 eyes trained on me, I replied “I agree, makes sense.”
I left the meeting thinking I’d be fired before the week was out. What was I thinking to accept this job, what did I know about foreign direct investment promotion, I was serving coffees and sandwiches before this. Maybe I should quit before I embarrass myself further.
But I wasn’t fired, and I didn’t quit. Instead, I decided to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could. I was determined to become an expert, learn the right words, say the right things, do the right things and achieve success. I’d grow and while the process would be difficult, I’d learn, figure things out and excel. Almost three years later I was promoted to lead the team and after leaving the company was appointed to its board.
Of course I said and did many things that weren’t right and had my fair share of failures but I was no longer the same person who, in that first meeting, didn’t have anything to offer.
Since then, I’ve resolved to approach challenges and roles as a growth and development process.
A few years ago, I heard of something called “Impostor Syndrome.” I watched a few Ted Talks, read a book or two about it and it took shape in my mind.
Simply put, the impostor believes he or she is inadequate or incompetent, has succeeded only due to luck, and is going to be exposed as a fraud. It’s not uncommon to experience these feelings when taking a new role, and I changed roles often.
Impostor Syndrome explained exactly what I was feeling, and I labored to overcome it. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t. How I approached that first career challenge and the steps I took to overcome it served me better.
It’s rare that we will be great at something we’ve never done before, therefore we need to persevere with the work to become great and we need to be patient with ourselves through the process. A clarification is in order — being patient while avoiding the work will get us nowhere.
Pursuing new challenges, roles and ideas are opportunities for growth because on day one it’s unlikely that we’ll be experts, but with doing the work over time, in future we will.
The opposite of an impostor is an ace, adept, expert, maestro, professional, whiz. We don’t become these things without doing the work.
