Have you ever doubted yourself? Have you second-guessed your achievements? Do you look at other people’s work or achievements on LinkedIn and get depressed? If so, you may be experiencing the ever-pervasive imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is not a diagnosis, but it is a known psychological condition. When a person has persistent self-doubt about their accomplishments, it is accompanied by the fear of self-doubt despite ongoing success. [1] Unfortunately, the odds are that you actually will experience imposter syndrome, as 70% of people experience this feeling.[2] While I know from experience that this is a problem with creatives, it can show up in really any line of work. Before I get into this further, let me be clear that I am not qualified to give any type of mental health advice. I’m just trying to give you a little perspective and talk about a few items that have helped me through imposter syndrome. I’m not a mental health professional, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express prior to the world turning into a trash fire.
Types of Imposter Syndrome
According to Dr. Valerie Young, there are five different types of imposter syndrome.[3]
- The Perfectionist
- The Superwoman/Superman
- The Natural Genius
- The Soloist
- The Expert
Let’s look at each of these a little more in-depth.
The Perfectionist
The perfectionist is probably the most common subtype of imposter syndrome. The perfectionist is the type of person that needs to make sure that every last detail is taken care of to their standards. Notice that I pointed out “to their standards.” Since perfection doesn’t exist, what could tend to happen is the perfectionist is unable to relinquish any type of control to anyone else. They then carry a more significant workload, and when they make a mistake, the cycle of self-doubt starts to circulate, which creates the process of imposter syndrome over again. It’s also been found that treating intolerance of uncertainty of obsessions could lessen the distress of perfectionism.[4]
The Superwoman/Superman
In this type of imposter syndrome, the person tries to take on as much as they can in an effort to try and keep up with their colleagues. The term workaholic is often associated with this group. Think of the person that is the first one in the office and the last one to leave. They like to take on any and every challenge thrown their way. The problem that can occur with this type of thinking is that all of your validation comes from your work. You can lose your sense of self and get stuck in continual burnout because you don’t know when to stop taking on new challenges.
The Soloist
Are you afraid to ask for help? Maybe you feel like you can or would instead handle everything on your own. You might have trouble as a soloist. The problem with trying to take everything on your own is that you are likely to burn out. Also, as a soloist, your accomplishments are always only as good as your work. When you can work with others and delegate, your achievements are magnified by the amount of influence you have to effect change.
The Natural Genius
Do you thrive under pressure? Maybe you make great decisions in the moment with little research or effort into studying the problem. You might just fall into the natural genius category. A natural genius may have trouble when they encounter an issue or series of problems that do not fall under their area of expertise. They may not attempt challenges that make them look like they are struggling with a topic.
The Expert
Do you feel like your worth is derived by how much you know about a subject? Are you always trying to understand and learn more about that subject to try and justify your worth? While the expert is still incredibly knowledgeable about a topic, their insecurities lie in that they feel like they don’t and will never know enough.
I Hope My Continual Struggle with Imposter Syndrome is Relatable
Although I’ve drifted back and forth between imposter syndrome categories, I would describe my overarching feeling a little differently. I’d describe it as more of an underdog type of theme throughout my career. My marketing journey was unconventional, and I often get crippling instances of imposter syndrome, especially when I compare myself to others that started with a more traditional path. In undergrad, I studied music and was in a program centered around the music business. Not only that, but I entered this program in the worst possible time in the history of the world to join a music business program, right as Napster had launched. So Napster upended the industry, but I was stubborn and decided to go for it anyway. I applied to just about every internship that I could find, and in 2003, I found myself with two concurrent internships in Nashville. One of those internships involved helping Colin Hay’s career (yep, the guy in Men at Work). I wrote about that whole experience here.
Upon graduation, I used my experience to land a job at a small Bluegrass record label. I was 22 and thrust into a position where I immediately had responsibilities over the P&L, hiring, contract negotiations, and vendor relations. I had no experience in any of those areas and barely touched on any of these subjects during school. The only framework I had on how to run a record label came from a three-month unpaid internship. I did the best that I could, and I ended up hiring a couple of my friends from college. Somehow we made it work, won a couple of awards, signed new artists, and secured a record distribution agreement with Sony.
After a couple of years, I wanted to get out of the music industry and grow my marketing experience. I had no idea how to do this and I just kind of turned into a loose cannon applying to any and every job that I could. That didn’t work, so I zeroed in on the idea that if I wanted to learn more about marketing, I needed to join a marketing agency.
I connected with an agency that was close to where I grew up, got an interview, and got a job selling their marketing services. I was 25 years old, and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. There were people at this agency that had deep relationships with some pretty big clients. There was also someone I worked with, who was super intimidating, that had a Ph.D. Here I was with an education heavy on subjects like ear training, recording studio techniques, and performance and I was expected to perform at the level of people with 10+ years of formal education. Every day I felt like a rudderless ship, so I tried to read every book that I could find on marketing techniques and leaned on other people in the agency’s experience. At that job, I had a major failure with a client that literally got me yelled out of the room. It made me want to quit, but somehow I was able to dust myself off and go back and win the business. Through it all, I felt like I was just faking it the entire time.
After my agency experience, I joined a company that distributed 6,500 different products. I was in charge of 11 different private-label brands and helped develop and launch a $20MM electronic cigarette brand that ended up being sold in Sam’s Club and Walmart. From day one, I had key decision-makers of the company asking me what we needed to do on everything from packaging design to pricing. I felt like I was completely over my head. I had zero distribution experience, zero retail experience, and the largest company I had ever worked for, to that point, was maybe $4-$5MM in annual revenue. Now I was expected to make critical decisions for a $200MM company with customers worldwide. I ended up working a lot of hours and trying to learn as much as I could from everyone that would give me the time. I always had a seed of doubt that maybe I wasn’t cut out for making big decisions throughout my time.
That brings me to where I’ve been for the past decade, leading the marketing for a company that sells and refurbishes private jets. When I joined this company, I was concerned by how technical the products are and how segmented and small the audiences were. Some of the key audiences only have less than 500 potential customers in the entire world. I was also expected to drive in leads pretty early after joining the company. I felt like I needed more time, that I needed to learn more, and I was afraid I would fail. The company participates in many more tradeshows than I had ever coordinated before this job, and many customers were influential CEOs of large organizations.
Imposter syndrome nags at you. If imposter syndrome nags at you as much as it nags at me, you never quite feel comfortable. You’re always chasing an impossible feeling of validation. As with any problem, you have to deal with it, and the first step in dealing with the problem is acknowledging that it exists. And as any student of design thinking will tell you, a well-defined problem is half solved, you can start to take steps to resolve imposter syndrome.
I am certainly no expert on managing these feelings, and I would never claim to know what can help other people manage through this struggle. I can only let you know what I have done to help mitigate the feelings of imposter syndrome.
Here’s what I’ve done:
Take well-defined breaks from work. Responding to your email in the middle of the night should not be how your employer measures your value. It should be more about how you create and add value to the organization.
Grow a network of like-minded individuals. Too often, many people go through different phases of their life and never hold on to the people that have made a difference in their life. I recently started an MBA networking group with people within my school that I enjoyed meeting. I’ve got another 25 years left in my career, and it’s easier to work through issues with the help of others.
Move on from mistakes. I hate making mistakes. When you’re in marketing, your mistakes are typically pretty amplified because you are the organization’s external (and sometimes internal) communications arm. It happens, and you letting a handful of mistakes get in the way of years of good work can lead to the toxic trap of imposter syndrome.
Exercise every day. I cannot emphasize the importance of exercise on my mental health and creativity enough. On a rainy day, I can feel the impact of not getting outside. Many studies link exercise and mental health, but the effect that it’s had on my creativity is something that I always use. Creatively solving a problem doesn’t happen spontaneously. It needs an incubation period, and exercise is a perfect time to let your mind wander and connect your neurons in a way that you wouldn’t just sitting at a desk.
Try the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique is a way of time blocking that keeps you focused on completing one thing for 25 minutes and then gives you a purposeful 5-minute break. This is the only way that I’ve been able to get through grad school with a baby while working full time and writing 3,000-word articles every other week. If I can find 25 minutes, I’ll take it and try to apply it to something on my to-do list. This has also allowed me to focus on my daughter because I don’t have one eye on her and one eye on work or school.
Don’t compare yourself with others. I don’t know any other way of saying this that doesn’t sound cliché, but your life and career journey are unique. They’re part of your overall life story. In most instances, the best part is that the journey’s not over yet. You might have many years to continue to write this story, and all good stories have twists and turn within a plot. A problem that arises when we compare ourselves to others is that we’re not typically comparing ourselves to one other person. With social media, we’re comparing ourselves to everyone. That’s an unwinnable mental battle.
The Social Media Trap
Remember the days where you had to go to someone’s Facebook page to find out what they were posting? Social media, really any type of social media, is a highlight reel of people’s personal and professional lives. The problem gets compounded when not only are you viewing someone else’s highlight reel, but you’re viewing EVERYONE’s highlight reel. Go ahead, pick a social media platform and start scrolling. Unless you’re getting into many arguments on Facebook or seeing many people “double-tapping the image” on LinkedIn (PLEASE STOP DOING THIS), for the most part, you are seeing things that everyone that you’re connected with want you to see. It’s sort of like talking to someone that is a compulsive gambler. They’ll always tell you about all of the times they won and never tell you about the times that they’ve lost.
Many of our mentors challenge us to make sure we’re not the smartest person in the room. If you follow this advice and you’re ambitious, you may be connected to many people on LinkedIn: CEOs, heads of departments in large companies, or successful entrepreneurs. If so, your feed will be a highlight reel of people you aspire to be, which could ultimately harm your mental health and well-being. Studies have shown that comparing yourself to others who are seen as “doing better” than you on social media leads to envy and depression.[5]
So What Can Be Done?
Again, I’m not qualified to give advice, and I’d never claim to know what could help, but I can reiterate what I did that has helped me over the years. I am the type of person that feels empowered by knowledge. Before I knew that imposter syndrome existed, all of these emotions would just really be fragmented in my mind. Now that I know that this is a problem, and not only that, it’s a prevalent problem that many different people struggle with, I find it easier to walk away from the feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and frustration that tend to accompany imposter syndrome. Again, it goes back to design thinking and fully understanding and defining a problem. Just defining imposter syndrome allows for efforts to solve the problem.
The other difficulty is the way that imposter syndrome hits creative people. I’m not necessarily talking about people in a typical “creative” field like graphic design or advertising; I’m talking about real creative people. Creativity is all about connecting the dots between problems and solutions. Creativity can be found in just about every field, except maybe accounting. That type of creativity is called fraud… When you are creative, you take risks. You step outside of your comfort zone. You are not afraid to lead the way and offer your opinion on how to go against the status quo in an effort to make your organization a better place. When you do this, you are invariably going to make a mistake.
As a creative person, your mistakes will be more public than others that are comfortable just doing what they’re told to do. Making decisions is mentally challenging. Because you are not always going to make the right decision, you are probably spending more time reflecting on yourself and your abilities than non-creatives. Although self-reflection is typically healthy, it is also an opportunity for imposter syndrome to creep in through self-doubt. The next time this happens, realize that it’s more than likely just imposter syndrome trying to derail you from your path forward.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impostor%20syndrome
[2] https://so06.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/IJBS/article/view/521
[3] Young, Valerie. 2011. The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It.
[4] Reuther, E.T., Davis, T.E., III, Rudy, B.M., Jenkins, W.S., Whiting, S.E. and May, A.C. (2013), INTOLERANCE OF UNCERTAINTY AS A MEDIATOR OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERFECTIONISM AND OBSESSIVE‐COMPULSIVE SYMPTOM SEVERITY. Depress Anxiety, 30: 773-777. https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1002/da.22100
[5] Wei Wang, Mingzhu Wang, Qian Hu, Pengcheng Wang, Li Lei, Suo Jiang,
Upward social comparison on mobile social media and depression: The mediating role of envy and the moderating role of marital quality, Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 270, 2020, Pages 143-149