Your Career Fear Cycle Ends here

Imposter syndrome is the Gray Hair growing in your 40s

I’ve been going gray since I was 30, my colorist gasping in the chair the week of my 30th birthday. It’s an relatively quick fix for me, the highlighting and gray coverage coloring I use to mask a silver fox look I’m not ready to embrace. I have accepted that it will pop up every few weeks and I make an appointment to get it back to my (natural) color.

What if imposter syndrome is that gray hair of your career, inevitable for 90% of us after 40? Are you willing to find a way to mask it even if you know it might get louder from time to time?

In our careers, we hit peaks and valleys at different stages and ages. In midcareer, we often look around at peers and wonder how we all got here and withstood the various points in our career evolution. Like the new gray hair that pops from our head, we are surprised we are at the table but should we be?

True examples of leadership can feel evasive, as it did during the pandemic. I craved anyone, in any industry to help us make rational sense of the global shut down and help us see a future vision. It took longer that I liked to see true leaders step up. Luckily, my 2023 newsfeed was all about the women who are stepping up. The Wall Street Journal and Time and recent Hollywood awards gave homage to the power of the female voices rising to the top. To name a very short list of popular female icons that tend to cross the boundaries of politics I love watching the leadership styles of Taylor Swift, Michelle Obhama, Melinda Gates, Maria Shriver, Oprah Winfrey, Gwenyth Paltrow and Elise Loehnen.

Political landmines aside, there is a pull to draw female leaders into the issues on a global scale. It’s not shocking to me when Forbes reported the president of the European Commission asked Taylor Swift to assist in helping get to the polls for the 2024 European Parliament election given horrible voter turnout rates.  Talk about a broad reach, TSwift.

Female leaders can come in all industries and levels. They focus on healthcare, disrupting pay scales, economics, business, art, investing, sports, film, writing and on and on.  The underlying theme for these powerhouse women is values based work, a clear mission, working on projects despite their own imposter. They keep going for their own why, making big and little steps, angel investing, donating and traversing unchartered territory. Even if I don’t agree with everything about them, their energy is palpable and one to watch. 

Boldly, they all mention one other common denominator in their documentaries, books, podcasts, tv appearances: imposter syndrome. 

It’s a term that started in 1978 by two psychologists when women entered the workforce in droves for the first time.  Per research, this mental swirl comes when women (mostly women) know the most we’ve ever known, had years of experience managing teams, working and grinding, yet women don’t think we are ready.

Imposter syndrome brings up concerns like:

• Do I really deserve this job

• Do I know what I’m doing (even though the resume says you do)

• Am I qualified for all that is on my plate?

• I’m a fraud at work.

• I cannot speak up unless I’m perfect.

• Working on small details instead of at the leadership level, fixating on small items, losing perspective.

• Others should get credit for your work or offering self deprecating replies to praise to avoid feeling braggy 

Imposters are like a virus that eat away at rational experiences and flip towards the emotion of careers where it’s a sea of barracudas. This can trigger low self esteem, perfectionism, paralysis, fear of failure, changing towards people pleasing instead of decision making with leadership data to back them up. 

Fear is the ultimate emotional response to that pesky doubtful voice in our head, when women should be at one of the peaks of our careers. Listen to almost any podcast to hear everyone from female business owners to actresses to major athletes notice this new imposter-like wave of thoughts, often triggered by a transition or major change. As we navigate the next phase, shifting to rational steps to avoid it from taking over. These milestones can shake our nervous system up enough to upend our patterns of confidence we used in early career.

Just like financial decisions have an emotional response, promotions or roles need a few checks and balances to reframe the imposter.

My Imposter Syndrome Checks and Balances:

1-Inactivity: If you find yourself unable to decide, take action or motivate yourself, ask what is allowing that imposter voice to be so loud?  Why are you feeling this way? This can look like staying in a job way too long. 

2-Overly communicating: when you are in a self-doubt space, you often ask others for advice at every level of the organization.  Asking your Starbuck’s barista for advice is the extreme of this when everyone’s opinions makes more sense than your own mind and heart. This is supposed to help us find agreement and a backbone. However, this has your colleagues doubting you as much as you do yourself. Before you ask for help, check in. Is this a collaboration (keep going) or a imposter asking this question (then you already know your own answer).

3-Comparison: often there is a person in your workplace or social circle who seems to have it all together. They create a comparison loop and allow your inner critic to chirp the loudest.  Notice when and who you are with when the comparison kicks in. If you cannot avoid the comparison trap (stop use of social media scrolling), work to notice what that person does that you wish you could radiate. 

If everyone has imposter syndrome, quieting it to a low hum, using rational data and avoiding overly emotional responses is the key to slowing down the doubt.  Just like I have learned to change my hairstyles to cover up my gray hair, you can also learn to quiet that voice.

If fear is a guide to avoid being eaten by the sabretooth tiger

or looking bad in a critical meeting, use the fear to prepare (not overly prep) for that meeting.

Use the inner critic to see how far you’ve come from that place where you might have been young and made a few mistakes. Take a minute to see the progress

Give yourself a pep talk because the guys are not sitting around in paralysis, they are at the table speaking up, getting the budgets and getting the title.