How To Get Good At Imposter Syndrome

After one of my first promotions in the corporate world, I started in a new role and did pretty well very quickly. After 6 months to a year I was feeling very confident in this role and thought that I knew everything. 

Then weirdly as I continued to grow in competences, my confidence levels actually dropped. The more I started learning about the intricacies of my job, the more I realised how little I knew… 

… income Imposter Syndrome. 

Turns out this is very common and often referred to as the Dunning-Kruger effect: a type of cognitive bias, which makes people believe they are smarter and more capable than they actually are in areas they know little about.

Then once we learn more about the topic, we realise how little we know and this can lead to us feeling inadequate and questioning our own capabilities. 

When has your confidence about something dropped once you realised how little you actually knew about it?  

Maybe you were confident about applying for a role but after reading the job description decided you didn’t meet the requirements… Maybe you thought you were getting good at a language until you actually had to speak it… Or maybe you thought you were good at your job until you joined a new company where everyone else seemed to know more than you… 

While it may seem easy in these cases to lose hope and fall victim to our imposter thoughts, one of the alternatives is blind confidence.

And when we think we know everything, it stops us from considering other opportunities or other points of view. It makes us complacent. 

So even though confidence might help us start something that we might have never tried, it can actually be detrimental to us in the long run, especially given the highly volatile and ever changing environments most of us work in. 

Feeling like an imposter on the other hand, can make us more empathetic and respectful. We become better at collaborating and asking other people for their opinions. It makes us work smarter because we are more likely to re-think our own strategies. 

Even though other people knowing more than us can lead us to feeling inadequate and questioning our own capabilities, it also pushes us to work harder in order to “keep up”.

So maybe Imposter Syndrome might not have as bad of a rep as we might believe… instead of seeing it like a disorder, maybe we could learn to embrace it.

Maybe instead of getting rid of it, we could just get good at it! 

If we learn to get comfortable with the fact that we don’t know everything… This gives us way more opportunities to learn and to grow. 

Adam Grants puts it very well in his latest book Think Again: “We can thrive off the growth that comes from self doubt”. 

Realising how little we know is the first step in becoming someone that actually knows stuff.

So next time you are feeling like an imposter, instead of trying to get rid of the feeling, try to embrace it. See it as a blessing that makes you aware of your own shortcomings and gives you all the space you need to grow. See it as fuel to learn more, try more and do more. 

You’ll also find that confidence often comes as a result of taking action. So the more you take action the more your confidence will grow. 

What’s your best example of how embracing your own ignorance led to something great?