After years as a manager, I have learned to live with impostor syndrome without becoming a bottleneck in my career. I will tell you what worked, what did not, and the challenges that remain
I will start by telling you a secret: I never got my degree in Linguistics. I left college in the last year, discouraged by the lack of job expectations beyond teaching. Today I still dream that I am in my last year, that I can get my degree and have a more linear life. But the reality is that this decision, although it complicated everything, forced me to grow in unexpected places, accept challenges that I would never have dreamed of, and co-found three technology companies. The latest one is Landbot: a several millions ARR company, with customers in more than 200 countries and a team of 70.
Although that decision made me follow a convoluted path. It took me almost ten years to jump from Linguistics to the startup world, and along the way, I worked as a philosophy books translator, ghostwriter, namer (yes, it's a profession), copywriter, designer, web developer, salesperson, and even musician. I acquired many skills, some of which were completely useless. Others changed my future forever, in the best way.
Clearly, the reverse is that I've been fighting almost chronically for twenty years, with one side of my personality determined to question every decision I make, to amplify every criticism I receive, which you may know as impostor syndrome. That strange guest (I like to call guest the syndrome after a Spanish poem by Jaime Gil de Biedma) wants to lock you in a room, take you out of all the parties, take you to a job without risk or collaboration or any sort of leadership. The more resignations you make, the more influential the guest becomes.
And that's why I chose the exposure path; I didn't want to let my life go to waste. However, the guest was always there. When things are going well, the guest just does not disappear, he is still there to tell you that it was because of other people, that you are just a lucky impostor, and that you always will be.
In recent years, my team has grown a lot, and I have promoted several people to managers. In doing so, I've realized that this syndrome is sadly prevalent in leadership roles. The types of managers that I appreciate the most are usually people with high doses of empathy, sensitivity, humility, and a creative mind: that is, cannon fodder for impostor syndrome.
The good thing: from my experience, in these years of exposure, I have developed strategies that work. In this article, I would like to share some useful ones. If you find yourself in a management position and struggling with insecurities, I am writing this article for you: I hope I can help you even just a little.
The first challenge for the new manager
Questioning yourself. You have just started, someone has entrusted you with that responsibility, but you haven't. Yesterday, nobody reported to you, and you performed comfortably as an individual contributor, where you had probably sharpened a series of skills that are not so useful today. You have people with more experience, more intelligence, or more context within your reports, and you just feel small.
Almost everyone feels this way at first in one way or another. The problem is that these emotions trigger unwanted side effects, which you must overcome as soon as possible to continue progressing in your career. Repeat with me:
Don't waste time proving you're worth the job
That insecurity can only harm you as a manager, leading you to waste your time on excuses or avoiding necessary challenges. Your team needs a person who makes mistakes, is assertive, and makes difficult decisions. Someone who is there when needed, something that I often did not do for this reason.
But how do you stop questioning yourself when you really know next to nothing about your new role? I will tell you some strategies that I've been developing over the years.
1. Accept the impostor
What you feel is common sense, you have no experience and you are exposed. In my case, the situation was aggravated because, in my role as a product founder, I had to do many things for the first time, in a language where I felt uncomfortable –English. Starting by accepting this situation releases the additional stress of fighting yourself.
Accept that you will not stop feeling like an impostor, but that with a little strategy, the syndrome will not harm you.
2. Show your vulnerability
I love the concept of controlled exposure. It's a tactic that has been working in psychology for decades to overcome cockroach or plane phobia, and it's based on gradually exposing yourself to the situation that causes stress, in a controlled and incremental way.
As a manager, acknowledging your vulnerability publicly, with your team, will allow you to release the stress of hiding your emotions while creating a connection of trust. If the manager recognizes himself as vulnerable, the report will also do so at some point. The message you are sending is that we can feel fragile and that does not mean we do not deserve to progress.
3. Feedback loop
There is nothing that generates more anxiety than the lack of control, uncertainty. The problem with impostor syndrome is that it often results in voluntary feedback deprivation. Our guest terrifies us so much with corrosive criticism that any negative comments towards us resonate with thunderous impact, and we avoid them.
That is why it is so important to find a space for exposing feedback, of the highest possible quality. In my case, what works best is:
- Expose yourself as soon as possible. Both to give it and to receive it. If the feedback arrives in its context, it is much easier to understand its dimension, although the natural tendency for many of us is precisely to slow it down, soften it or hide it. That's why you have to:
- Ask for it proactively. So that our team knows that we feel comfortable, that there is a place for trust where they can express themselves immediately. This is the best way for that feedback to come in a digestible format, from appreciation.
- Contextualize and relativize it. This is critical. Your mind's adherence to self-criticism will want to validate any judgment that questions you, and will unrealistically amplify it.
But you must understand that reality is subjective: two people can live in the same circumstances in a completely different way, and both will express their experience as The Truth™ because for them it is, on the mental plane. And unfortunately, there is no other plane.
An effective way to distance yourself to filter feedback is by following these simple rules:
- Don't be too quick to judge feedback, especially if you think it may outdo you.
- Be transparent with this person about this fact. Tell them you're going to think about it and you can even express your feelings in a non-hostile way –“it's a bit hard for me to judge this topic now”.
- Get your thoughts in writing.
I do the latter in a certain order, following four steps:
- Labeling your emotions. If the topic is critical enough, I usually start by describing how I feel. This will help you break the loop and see yourself from the outside.
- Framing the problem. Analyze who gave the feedback, with what intention, in what personal and professional circumstances.
- Sizing the problem (my favorite step). I usually ask myself two questions: How important will this be in four weeks/months/years?
- Define action items, if you determine that the problem is a priority. In my case, things that I can carry out myself to solve or delegate, generally in the short term.
And finally, one last recommendation: create this culture of open communication with your team. Things are much easier when you work with people who share this point of view. You can get started today by sharing this article with them and asking for their feedback.
The culture of error
A very well-known product adagio: you don't know what you don't know. As much as you prepare for the future, the unknown challenges will eventually reach you, and you can feel overwhelmed: there is nothing wrong with that.
The only advice I can give you is to maintain an attitude of continuous learning towards challenges. Embracing your mistakes –very easy to say but really difficult to apply– can radically change your perception of yourself. My generation was educated in a system that promoted unhealthy competition, where school failure was synonymous with marginality and exclusion. However, today, everything is starting to be different. New parents and educators want another future, and we strive to educate our kids in self-care and respect. The culture of error has been operating in our technological ecosystem for decades and it’s probably one of the best legacies we can leave to society.
But I insist, the road will not be easy. I am 41 years old and just yesterday I fell apart again in a meeting, unable to help someone on my team when he needed it. For the rest of the day, I felt defeated. I didn't understand why that conversation had affected me so much. Probably a hidden wound broke through the chaos of unthinking thoughts that come from toxic self-criticism. I did not apply any of my own advice and continued to become immersed in my routine while ruminating about guilt without conscience. Error.
By night I had practically forgotten the incident, but shortly after going to bed, I woke up agitated. It was hard for me to breathe, and I felt anguish. There was no way to fall asleep, and I sat up in bed. Therefore, I connected all the dots. I went back and remembered the details of that conversation, and how it had taken me back to my early days as a manager, and even further, to the moment I left college and the feelings of failure. I kept joining the dots and decided to throw myself on my computer keyboard to bring you these learnings that have helped me move forward despite the guest.
Probably, now that the sun is beginning to dawn and I feel much more relaxed, this article has already helped me more than it has to you. I hope that also, at some point, it will happen the other way around too –tell me in the comments, I'd love to read you.
Illustrations: OpenPeeps by Pablo Stanley | 🇪🇸 Lee este artículo en español