Imposter syndrome can make you feel overwhelmed or out of place, but don't let that feeling fool you. It is often a sign that you are on a path to great growth and opportunity.

Read on: blog.WednesdayWin.com​

Read time: 4 minutes

You've worked hard, mastered your interviews, and gotten that great new job. Suddenly, you find yourself unsure about whether you know what you need to know or are capable to pull off that presentation, close the sale with the customer, manage that experienced team, or whatever your new role requires.

Or maybe, you've just closed that new round of fundraising and your board is praising your skills at showing the amazing future you're leading your business into, but you are overwhelmed by the feeling that they must be mistaking you for someone else since you felt like the entire process was going to fall apart before that one investor 'magically' came through for you.

These feelings that despite your accomplishments and high level of achievement, you aren't really deserving of the praise and attention. In fact, you might have high anxiety that at any point, someone may figure out that you really are a fraud.

That is imposter syndrome.

I'm not a psychologist and this is not addressing clinical conditions, but this range of feelings of being mistaken for a more capable leader or at risk of being discovered as knowing far less than the people around you think is a common result from achievement.

It's not fun, but there is a silver lining to this feeling.

Here are four insights you can use to gain better perspective and move forward with confidence:

1. Avoid the Dunning-Kruger trap

Have you heard about the Dunning-Kruger effect? Dunning and Kruger figured out that the less knowledgeable you are about a given subject, the higher your confidence about your knowledge will be about that topic.

In other words, we tend to be far overconfident in the areas where we know the least.

Can you see how this runs directly counter to the imposter syndrome?

Extreme over-confidence can be helpful in some limited situations, but far more often it makes one look foolish in the face of those that actually know and understand.

D-K in action is far easier to spot in others than in ourselves, but some tools you can use to self-assess:

• Work to be well-informed on the topics you encounter frequently
• Back your views with data and anecdote and watch out for confirmation bias: underweight your confirming data until or unless it's overwhelming
• Being unreasonable in your goals is fine as long as you remain reasonable in assessing your knowledge and its gaps
• Even asking the question of yourself is a good start to avoiding this pitfall

The goal is not to relentlessly push your confidence forward, but to become more knowledgeable and able to express both your views and opposing views all with credible supporting evidence.

2. Stretch your comfort zone

Imposter syndrome is a clear indicator that you are pushing beyond your usual comfort zone.

To grow, we must learn how to address new and greater challenges and that means we won't have a ready playbook for how to address those new situations.

Imposter syndrome occurs when you don't feel you deserve the praise for the accomplishments you've achieved. But instead, you can turn that around and use that record as a sign that you'll figure out your next challenges, too.

• Comfortably own your past accomplishments
• Look for parallels in what you've done in the past to help you with today's challenges
• Look for examples in the work of others and find examples you can you leverage in your own work

Take full ownership of what you've done: your successes and your failures. Learn more to push forward into new levels of achievement.

3. Self-awareness & self-understanding are super powers

While you are busy doing all of this reflection on avoiding Dunning-Kruger and embracing your current achievements, you'll gain some useful skills to support your life.

Being able to recognize your emotional response to situations and respond in positive, thoughtful ways that are aligned with your values and priorities is a true super power.

We want to understand the source of our fears and directly address any genuine knowledge and experience gaps instead of being paralyzed by anxiety.

• The Stoics understood something useful here: we can't control the world around us, but we can control how we respond to it
• Don't stop at the fear, but look deeper at how and what you can learn to feel more confident in your role
• Ultimately, self-knowledge and controlled responses to difficult challenges are essential skills that will set you far ahead in most worthwhile pursuits

4. Lead with empathy

Self-awareness is great, but you can become especially effective when you learn to lead with empathy and compassion. Every person brings a unique mix of experiences, emotional responses, and lenses through which they view the world and its workings.

Be curious about others and watch your ability to lead effectively improve at a rapid pace.

• Every person is fighting a unique battle to achieve their goals whether understood or not
• Engaging with compassion will enable you to find the points of alignment with each member of your team; what you want may not be what they want
• Practice this emotional attention to better understand all of the people you encounter

Being a leader doesn't just mean you should push for your goals. You need to inspire each member of your team in the ways that resonate for them.

Action Summary

Imposter syndrome can drive even the most accomplished leader into fear and inaction. But, if you recognize it for what it is, you have an opportunity to redirect those thoughts and learn more about yourself and others and become a better leader in the process.

• Over confidence is likely a sign of being under-informed
• Growth only comes when you stretch your current limits so discomfort is inevitable and should be expected
• Self-awareness and self-control are true super powers
• Use your expanded emotional intelligence to lead better

Pushing through those moments of doubt can help you succeed for yourself and your team.

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How do you deal with moments of self-doubt? Reply to this email and let me know.

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To your success,

Christopher

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P.S. Like this one? You'll want to check out this earlier Wednesday Win essay on the path to happiness by minimizing regret, too.

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