Impostor Syndrome - What the hell is going on?

When I left the RAF last year, I wasn’t expecting to be doing research into the prevalence and treatment of Imposter Syndrome. It started when I began my new life in the civilian world. A part of my resettlement package as a happy refugee from Her Majesty’s armed forces was a coaching course, in which I was expected to guide a varied group of people through challenges they were facing.

By chance, I began with four women, all particularly high performing in their own fields: music, long distance running, literature, and business respectively. From this diverse set of people, I kept on coming across the same issue. Repeatedly I would hear phrases from the clients like “I’m not at that level really”, or “I’m not actually that good at this”. I was both frustrated and fascinated by the fact that these otherwise brilliant and seemingly confident individuals felt that they were less talented than their peers and lucky to be where they were. I mean, genuinely, what the hell was going on?

That phrase probably means more to me than others. Around 2008, I was a junior officer in the RAF, and I was attending the Defence Science Course at Shrivenham. Our cohort was assembled in an old fashioned lecture theatre, with tiered seating and long thin desks which were too narrow to take notes on, but plenty wide enough to make taking a seat a test of how to creatively overcome obstacles. It was as if they were built by someone who had seen desks, but never actually used one and resented the people who would.

The opening address was given by a small, grey haired lady in her mid sixties. The outside world moved far too quickly for her physically. Inside her lecture hall however, her ideas moved far too quickly for most of us to keep up. She was impressively clever and assumed she had retreated to academia to guarantee that at least someone would understand what she was talking about.

She began, “Ever since the beginning of time, since the first man struck flint against rock to create sparks, through to Plato’s ruminations on the world, and on to Newton’s ideas on gravity, right up to the building of the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have essentially been trying to answer one very complex question; What the hell is going on?”.

Right then I knew two things. Firstly, philosophy was cool. Secondly, I wanted to have a drink with this woman; she was worth listening to. What I didn’t realise was that words would shape my attitude to research, learning and study ever after.

Her words began two different studies in my life. One was in branding and marketing and how groups have used powerful tools to lead and control their customer base; I will be writing a separate serialisation on that sometime soon. The one I wish to talk about today though, began with a Masters dissertation study into the causes of what I found was called Impostor Syndrome (IS). There appeared to be a ton of books about it but were they any good? Additionally, could the interventions they recommended be applied in a coaching environment?

To answer these questions I assembled two groups of high performing women; a demographic that appear to suffer from IS most acutely. One group would be given a self-help book to read and asked to apply the interventions that they felt were right for them over six weeks. The other group were put on a coaching programme over the same period, incorporating the same interventions. The results were fascinating.

The first good news is that both groups improved significantly over the six week period. However, how they improved, and in what peripheral areas was particularly interesting. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about the interventions that worked for both groups, and some that perhaps worked less well. To kick us off, lets talk about the first thing that all the subjects did; without which none of the other interventions would have been possible:

They decided to take action.

By addressing that there is a problem, and that there may be a solution out there, you can make the conscious decision to take control of the situation. Your first action may not work. Many of the subjects did not get the best results with the first intervention that they tried, but by taking that first action you can at least eliminate one possible option and then try something else. It is easy to sit there and accept that you are just the way you are and that nothing will change it; failure is the easiest possible choice you can make. On the other hand, if you want to improve, actually taking action, however small, will be the first step on your own path to success.

This is something that I tell my clients regularly. We can sit and talk, come up with well thought out plans and create visions that would shame the great artists of history. But, if you are not going to put these plans into action, you might as well just set up a direct debit to my business account and use your coaching session time to watch Netflix; you’ll be more relaxed and the outcome will be the same.

The first message then is clear. If you are suffering from IS, you need to take charge and do something about it. Talk to your coach about some interventions. Read some books on the subject. Go and watch some Ted Talks on Youtube. Then, essentially, once you have the information, do something with it!

Take care, and please share this article with anyone you feel it might help. I will talk about another intervention next time.