Leadership Insight Series
Imposter Syndrome
Emotional Intelligence
I have written eleven books, but each time I think, 'uh oh, they're going to find out now.'
In 1978, psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes identified a pattern they called the imposter phenomenon: "a persistent internal experience of intellectual fraudulence despite external evidence of competence." In plain language this is the feeling that you don't actually deserve to be here, and that it's only a matter of time before someone notices.
Clance and Imes first identified it in high achievers, and it appears with particular frequency in people who have risen quickly or operate in high-stakes environments. It is why so many leaders carry it quietly and alone.
The Natural Genius: Judges competence by ease, not effort. Anything that requires struggle is proof they're not truly capable.
The Superhero: Works harder than everyone to compensate for feeling less than everyone. The effort is the cover.
Every promotion, every stretch role, every new level of responsibility creates a new gap between what you've done before and what's now required. For most people, that gap is temporary and they grow into it. For someone with imposter syndrome, the gap is permanent evidence that they were never qualified to begin with.
Carol Dweck's research on fixed mindset is relevant here. When competence is experienced as a fixed trait rather than a developing one, each new challenge feels like a referendum on whether you have it or you don't. The high performer who has always had it is most threatened by the possibility that they've finally reached the edge of it.
Imposter syndrome is exhausting to maintain. The constant monitoring, the overpreparation, the reluctance to claim credit, it consumes cognitive and emotional resources that belong elsewhere. Leaders carrying it tend to play smaller than their actual capability, avoid visibility, and undersell their teams' work along with their own.
The quieter cost is that it keeps the leader in their own head. Someone preoccupied with whether they belong has less capacity to focus on the people they lead. The internal noise drowns out the signals that actually matter.
When the thought arrives — I don't belong here, they're going to find me out, I'm not qualified for this — ask: What is the actual evidence for this thought? This is not to dismiss the feeling but to examine it. Imposter syndrome confuses internal experience with external reality. The feeling of not belonging is not proof of not belonging. It is merely a thought and thoughts can be examined. Maya Angelou wrote eleven books and still felt it. The feeling is not the verdict!