What if imposter syndrome is actually a good thing?

Seriously, I’ve been thinking about this a lot this year. When you work with brilliant people who are crushed by self-doubt it’s hard to see a bright side to imposter syndrome. Week after week, I work with groups of talented researchers who tell me how debilitating their doubt is.

One said they froze in front of anyone they admire and want to work with. They literally can’t speak. Another said that they couldn’t reach out to interesting people, because they felt their own work was too dull. They simply couldn’t bear to ask for anyone else’s time.

There is nothing liberating about this kind of doubt. It is debilitating and the lost opportunities are frankly heart-breaking.

But there’s a flip side.

In his latest book, Think Again, Adam Grant shows how people who doubt themselves actually have a huge advantage - their humility. I’ve seen this myself for years in exceptional researchers who, assuming they don’t know best, seek out other expertise and new evidence. When you are working on complex challenges, intellectual humility is a huge asset.

But…. not on its own.

Research shows that humility alone doesn’t make you successful. But neither does confidence on its own. The people that succeed most combine the two; they have confident humility.

Confident humility is where you have confidence in yourself and what you know and the awareness that others have more expertise than you in other areas. It makes you a better thinker, a better leader, a better team player. It sounds so simple, yet it can be hard to cultivate the confidence part. The vast majority of talented people I work with find it utterly cringeworthy to talk about what they bring, to claim any kind of expertise (even very senior people in very prestigious places).

Adam Grant reframes imposter syndrome as the basis for developing confident humility. I think this is empowering. It’s not an easy shift to make – self-doubt, as one client described it, is like a black shadow creeping over everything. But we can shed light on that black shadow and shift it. Three things I think make it easier to shift from self-doubt to confident humility:

Notice – notice how we speak to ourselves and notice what we do really know

Kinder self-talk – what would we say to a good friend when their doubt kicks in? Say that to ourselves.

Remember we are in it together – seriously, we really are. I cannot emphasis this enough. I can count on one hand the number of people I have worked with over the last 15 years who experience no self-doubt.

We don't shift from self-doubt to confident humility in a vacuum. It's not something that we can read in a self-help book and just change. The real power is in working with others to make the shift together. This is the basis of the Powerful Pause group coaching programme, which begins again on 19 September 2022. Previous participants call it “a truly impactful and life affirming programme.” If you’d like to work with others to overcome doubt and build resilience take a look at all the dates, details and testimonials here.

If you know someone AMAZING who deserves to have more confidence in themselves, tell them, or forward this to them...we need their voice.

If you just had this forwarded to you....congratulations - someone else thinks you are amazing!