Imposter Syndrome & Office Housework [Video Interview]

I was so happy to reconnect with my friend Carolyn Bruna on her MMC show “It’s a Woman’s World” to discuss some of the challenges professional women face in the workplace, including the office housewife, the imposter syndrome and setting boundaries.

“InPower Women” on “It’s a Woman’s World – MMC”

[00:00:00] Musical Intro 

[00:00:16] Carolyn: Welcome to It’s A Woman’s World, where we’ll meet achieving women, making a difference in our community. I’m Carolyn Bruna. 

[00:00:23] Our guest is Dana Theus, the Executive Coach and president and CEO of InPower Coaching. 

[00:00:29] Welcome Dana. It’s great to have you on my show again. I actually had to look it up. You were on my show back in 2012, exactly 10 years ago.

[00:00:38] And you were also a speaker at the power conference that I started for business women in the greater Washington area to network and learn. Luckily we’ve remained friends through the years and somewhat connected. I follow you online and your business has thrived, and I hope you catch my show now and then. And truthfully, I invited you so we could catch up. 

[00:00:58] Dana: Well, it’s so nice to be back and it’s so nice that you’ve been bringing women’s voices to the world for this long. 

[00:01:03] Carolyn: Oh, thank you, Dana. Thank you. Actually, I’d like to ask you to please introduce yourself to our viewers who might not know you and tell you what you’re doing now and what are some of the exciting, new things that you’re working on.

[00:01:14] Dana: Well, I’m an executive coach and I work with leaders. I specialize with female leaders, who are looking to make a difference and achieve career success by being their authentic selves. I come out of a tech marketing background, so I have a lot of insight into various sizes of organizations and such, but my specialty is really working with women leaders.

[00:01:34] And the new exciting thing that I’m doing is bringing women together, women leaders together in community on my website and, and through my social media. So I’m really jazzed about that. 

[00:01:45] Carolyn: Yeah, that sounds exciting because right now, because of COVID and people being so isolated, the community is what everyone wants.

[00:01:52] That’s great. Mm-hmm. You know, you’re such a successful businesswoman, Dana, did you have models when you were starting out or who inspired you? 

[00:01:59] Dana: You know, I always struggle with that question because I actually did not have great role models. I had mentors who mentored me about how to do my work. But I didn’t have great role models. I didn’t work… I never in my professional career until the very end before I went out on my own. I never had a female boss or any women in the organization above me. So I really didn’t have female role models. And a lot of the men weren’t particularly role models. So I pretty much learned by doing and was just inspired by people who were their authentic selves in their work. I figured there must be a way for me to do it too. 

[00:02:34] Carolyn: Mm-hmm yeah. Experience is really one of the best teachers as they say yep. For our topics today, we’ve selected two, actually the office housewife, which I truthfully had never heard of and the imposter syndrome, which I do know a bit about, but have not delved into it in detail. You said also you’d bring in setting boundaries and you have takeaways, many takeaways that women can learn from right now. So how about if we begin with the office housewife. Please define office housewife for us and tell us its history and usage and business. 

[00:03:08] Dana: Well, this is a, it’s a relatively new term to me. I’ve discovered since hearing it, I think 2018 is the first time I read it in an article from the Harvard Business Review, but it was based on some research that was begun in 2010. So relatively speaking, it’s new, but the idea is what it was focused on. This research was focused on. What are promotable tasks or promotable work work, and what is non-promotable tasks and work.

[00:03:32] And is there a gender difference in who takes on those tasks and activities that put you up for promotion, and those who take on work that doesn’t put you up for promotion. And what they found is there are such things as non promotable tasks, work that is necessary to the business, but not mission critical.

[00:03:49] It doesn’t bring in the money or put out the product sort of thing or file the taxes, et cetera. And that women tend to volunteer or are voluntold to do these non promotable tasks two to three times more often than men. Sometimes this looks like just keeping the kitchen clean, the office kitchen or copy room clean, you know, so when guests come in, they’re not embarrassed to be shown those things.

[00:04:12] And sometimes it’s about onboarding new hires or going on employee listening tours. And women tend to do this more in the research more recently, they’ve also found things they call emotional labor, which tends to fall into this non promotable task category. And this can be spending time, mentoring employees, spending time with employees who are troubled, taking on and building employee wellness programs, all of which is really important.

[00:04:35] And, and it’s not to diminish the value of it. But to point out that the way you get promoted into more and more senior positions is by delivering revenue and brand recognition and new clients and products out the door. That’s what you get promoted for. You don’t get promoted for these other things.

[00:04:51] And for women who have that task balance out of balance and struggle with why am I not getting promoted? This may be a reason because you’re taking on these non promotable tasks, which we, the media has put in this category of being the office housewife. 

[00:05:05] Carolyn: That’s so interesting. Right? I had never heard about that before in that label office housewife, but I guess I think a lot of women can relate to the idea of not getting credit for their emotional labor and having others expect them to do the cleanup work.That is so true. I think I actually did much in my early career now that you’ve mentioned it. 

[00:05:27] Dana: Yeah, I think we all did. And I will say too, this is also part of a larger trend of why women struggle to get into leadership positions if they want them, which is that in addition to taking on this kind of the less valued work in the office they’re often mentored into the kind of

[00:05:43] professions and careers that are less likely to get promoted into senior levels of leadership. For example, women are 45% more likely to go into human resources and CEOs are almost never recruited out of human resources roles. So there’s the task list of what’s promotable and what’s not. And then there’s also

[00:06:03] The work profile, you know, the career profile of the kind of person who’s more likely to get into leadership versus those that aren’t. So not every woman or man for that matter wants to be in a senior leadership position, but for those who do you know, they have to be thinking about. Not only the work they do day-to-day, is it promotable, but also is the career trajectory they’re on gonna get them promoted to the kind of work that they wanna do and lead ultimately where they wanna have the biggest impact.

[00:06:31] Carolyn: Oh yeah. Interesting. And I imagine that promotable work is different in different areas of business where women and men are working. Is that true? 

[00:06:41] Dana: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ll give you just a simple example from my own background. I came out of marketing, which is not typically one of those careers that get you into the, the, to the CEO’s chair anyway.

[00:06:51] But I learned early on that, you know, there’s digital marketing and then there’s brand marketing. And if I wanted to get ahead in digital marketing, I had to produce results that were measurable. If I were gonna get promoted, I had to be able to point and say, look, I got a 45% higher conversion rate than the other guy or than the previous campaign.

[00:07:09] But if I wanted to get into sort of brand and PR promotion opportunities. I had to come up with an idea that made the CEO and the board go, wow. You know, mm-hmm so, so like the, the, the, and that’s a specialty oriented thing, but, but in every industry, in every company and every role, you know, the things that could get you promoted is different. So you really have to understand for yourself and where you are in your career. What, what is promotable. What is less promotable. Let’s put it that way. 

[00:07:36] Carolyn: Right? Right. Well, how would one, you figured it out on your own or did you watch the men being promoted and see the things that they were doing? I’m just curious about this.

[00:07:46] Dana: That’s an excellent question for myself. I did start just watching really carefully. Like what got people ahead and what didn’t, but I’ll be completely honest with you. I needed a coach. I didn’t have a coach. I didn’t even have a great mentor towards the, you know, the, when I was a vice president, you know, and kind of getting up there, I didn’t really have a great mentor.

[00:08:04] I went out on my own. I became a, you know, a consultant that has a, yet a different yet. It’s not about getting promoted. It’s about surviving right. And getting business. And then I became a coach and when I became a coach, about 10 years ago, I started looking back on all these dynamics, not only through my own experience, but through my client’s experience.

[00:08:21] And that’s when I started to really see and read the research and, you know, kind of get smart about this, like, what are the dynamics in the workplace that can help you achieve your goals and, and what can’t and read research like this and such. I wish I could say I had it all figured out when I was in the workplace, but I had to come to it much later.

[00:08:40] Carolyn: Yeah. Well, I think that’s probably what all of us have, but I’m curious about, did you actually get a coach? Did you have coaches? Did you hire a coach cuz for other women who are in these positions, should they hire coaches? Is that something that you would recommend 

[00:08:54] Dana: Well, being a coach, of course, I’ll say yes.

[00:08:56] Carolyn: Oh, right, exactly. Forgot you are . Yes.

[00:08:58] Dana: But, but I will say so back when, before, you know, like 30 years ago, when I, when I was earlier in my career, the people really didn’t have coaches like CEOs had coaches, nobody else did right today. A lot more people do. And it’s becoming that people are beginning to understand that we all need somebody outside ourselves to be a champion for us.

[00:09:18] Not. The sense of going and getting us a job, although that’s great, those are sponsors, right. But we all need another voice that kind of balances we can think out loud with. And that balances the, on our voice in our head. Sometimes it’s too critical. Sometimes it’s too positive. You know, we all, we all need another

[00:09:35] voice to kind of help us figure out, well, what are we doing well, where are we growing? Where can I put my energy right now to get the biggest bang for the buck? You know, that’s what coaches do. So everybody needs one, I think. 

[00:09:46] Carolyn: Yeah, actually, no, I agree because I really feel I started when you did, or even earlier, I’m afraid and we didn’t have coaches back then.

[00:09:54] And I don’t think I had role models either, and I wish I did. And now I really feel it’s very important to have coaches. So let’s go on. We were talking about the office housewife and I was wondering, has a pandemic made things better or worse for women in the workplace worse.

[00:10:13] Dana: No question. The pandemic put greater expectations and requirements on women to, you know, be there for the kids that weren’t going to school to be there for, you know, family members that were struggling with illness, you know, the, the disconnections in the, in business and our world, you know, a lot of that

[00:10:30] pick up work fell on women and including the emotional labor in the workplace of employees who were struggling there are several studies that show that women at all levels, particularly leadership levels picked up a lot of that emotional labor to try to care for employees. Many of whom were, you know, Very stressed, if not traumatized in the early days of the pandemic in particular and the numbers show it, you know, women left the workforce at like twice the rate of men.

[00:10:54] And they are burning out even most recently, maybe six months ago. The last data I saw showed that women are burning out about 10% more often than men. And during the depths of the pandemic, it was much higher than that. So we have a bit of a deficit to come back from when it comes to

[00:11:10] pandemic recovery. And I think awareness of these kinds of issues I’m talking about can help women, you know, decide how do I wanna come back? You know, what is it that I’m gonna do to make sure my comeback is successful for me. And doesn’t lead me to more burnout. 

[00:11:23] Carolyn: Right. We have two minutes. So I want to ask about boundaries for this at the end of the first half.

[00:11:29] I think some women struggle with these boundaries and you have some information about that. How women can work through or make boundaries. We make them, and then we break them. I believe you were saying to me. So explain that. 

[00:11:43] Dana: Well that’s a huge topic. So I’m gonna try to contain it for the moment to this office housewife concept is that if you, if you realize that you, this may be you right, mm-hmm, the first thing you have to do is figure out, well, what is in my situation, what is promotable versus non promotable work?

[00:11:58] What is it? And get clear on what is promotable? And what you wanna be promoted into cause like I said before, depending on where you are and what you want, what you have to do to get promoted into what you wanna be doing is gonna be different. So find the place where those things overlap, that becomes your priority.

[00:12:14] Sort of like, okay, this is what I’m gonna do. This other non-pro promotable stuff, cleaning the kitchen or going on the employee listening tour. I’d like to do that. Many women do like to do these tasks and there’s nothing wrong with it. We all have to do some. But you can draw a boundary and say I’m willing to do some, but , A, I’m not willing to jeopardize the things that are the highest priority for me and my organization.

[00:12:33] And secondly, those non-pro promotable tasks. I will do my fair share and I will let other people do their fair share. If nobody else picks up that ball, I don’t take responsibility for it. So I draw a boundary and I say within that boundary is what I want to do and have to do not only to get promoted, but to do my job well.

[00:12:51] And I will do that with integrity. And beyond that, I don’t take responsibility for that. I don’t take responsibility outside this line. Boundaries like this are kind of magical. They create choices for other people. They say, okay, you can count on me for this. You can’t count on me for that. And we do it wrong

[00:13:09] most of the time, we usually say, I’m not gonna do that, but that doesn’t give anybody any choice. It doesn’t give them any information. It just tells ’em what you won’t do. But the minute you flip that around and say, here’s what I will do. You can count on me for this. Everything else is kind of up to you guys to figure out.

[00:13:23] Now you’ve created a boundary that creates choices for other people, and that can be very empowering to you and to them. So you can put that in any context, you can use it at home with your family. You can use it in any relationship. You can use it at work but it can be really, really powerful.

[00:13:40] And when we stick to those boundaries, we train people. You can trust me inside this value boundary. I will deliver this outside of that. It’s not a matter of not trusting me. It’s a matter of, I never committed to that. So either somebody else picks it up or you and I negotiate a specific commitment outside that boundary.

[00:13:55] Otherwise. You know, it’s on you. Not on me. 

[00:13:59] Carolyn: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love your takeaways, especially the boundaries. That’s really great. Make these boundaries and stick to them and present them in positive terms. That’s great. 

[00:14:19] Welcome back to It’s a Woman’s World. We’re speaking with Dana Theus who told us about the office housewife in our first half. And now in our second half, we’re gonna delve into the topic of imposter syndrome and its boundaries. Dana, would you please define the imposter syndrome and as it’s used in business, tell us about that.

[00:14:39] Dana: This was the first evidence of it I found was in some research in 1978 which I remember by the way I was alive I was just graduating high school. And it was gender based research that found that women more often than men had a belief about themselves that was out of sync with their actual achievements.

[00:14:58] So women were more likely to have doubts. About their abilities that were out of sync with what they’d actually achieved in the world than men were. And it tends to lead to this. So they feel like I’m a fake, you know, the world thinks I’m this great thing, this vice president, this big accomplished person, but I don’t feel that good.

[00:15:18] And it, and it’s kind of fed by and leads to feelings of vulnerability, potential shame, if not shame feeling not enough and like nothing I can do can ever be enough. And these feelings are dangerous. , they’re not sustainable, particularly if you wanna keep taking on more responsibility and, and achieving more and making more money and having a bigger impact on the world.

[00:15:41] And, and, and a lot of women kind of get stuck in this mindset and they believe it’s who they are as opposed to men who also experience the imposter syndrome, but are more likely to feel like it’s related to their circumstance. And this is true of a lot of self-beliefs, but, but men are more likely to say, wow, I, I am in this new situation

[00:16:00] I’ve never been in before. I kind of feel like a fake cuz I’ve never done it before. Let me dive in and figure it out. And then they kind of get over it. Whereas a lot of women just think I am an imposter, no matter what I do and that’s debilitating and, and very, very hard mindset to get out. 

[00:16:15] Carolyn: That is amazing.

[00:16:16] And I had not heard of that. Well, I guess I heard of it, but I really didn’t know much about it. It’s really annoying that women have been labeled that too. And we have to learn how to handle these things and, and that… go ahead. I’m sorry. 

[00:16:30] Dana: Well, it is, and I think it’s. We all, men and women, internalize a lot of the messages we get from the outside world, particularly when we’re young.

[00:16:37] Oh. And women tend to get more messages saying, play it safe sometimes for very good reasons. There’s recents little girls need to play it safe sometimes, but we tend to get more messages that Are more judgemental than boys who tend to get more messages, like get up, you can do it, keep going.

[00:16:53] And you know, that kind of cascades throughout our entire life. And if we’re not careful, we don’t counter these messages. It can really lead us into a mindset like this where, you know, we’re, we’re constantly doubting ourselves. 

[00:17:04] Carolyn: Yeah. Yeah. Does the imposter syndrome make women more susceptible to taking on the non-pro promotable work that we were talking about in the first half?

[00:17:12] Dana: I, I think it’s probably part of the dynamic and, and I say that because a lot of the imposter syndrome is exacerbated by taking on risk and you know, men who experience the imposter syndrome, particularly experience it at high levels. You know, if you’re gonna be the CEO , if you’re gonna be, you know, take on a lot of risk.

[00:17:30] Man or woman there’s the possibility you’re the, the price of failure is higher. So, your self-doubt has to be lower. So imposter syndrome is facilitated by taking on high risk. Well, if women which many of us are kind of are programmed with some of these thoughts, right? From the beginning.

[00:17:48] In part, because you know, the outside world is saying, well, appropriate feminine behavior is not to take compliments to push it away. Right. Well, if you’re not taking compliments, you’re not letting it in. Well, of course you feel like, well, that’s not real. That’s not really me. They don’t know me. They don’t know how bad I am.

[00:18:01] Right. We get into these kinds of habits. Well, then we don’t feel comfortable taking on risks. We don’t ever learn how to take on risk, particularly when we’re younger. And so we are more likely to wanna go into a career field or take on work tasks that are lower risk, and we go back to promotable versus non promotable tasks, promotable tasks

[00:18:20] are promotable because they’re higher risk. They have a bigger impact on the business. I can get promoted if I make my sales quota or I achieve my business development goals. And there’s a higher risk if I don’t. So I do think that there’s a relationship that women who are kind of caught in the imposter syndrome mindset are, are more, are less comfortable taking on risk.

[00:18:41] But when they learn to manage risk and they learn to stay in their stretch zone and, and learn to, to, to, you know, live into their possibilities and their potentiality. Then they, they, they learn how to manage the imposter syndrome becomes part of their success. And this is true for men too, as we get outside of being trapped by the imposter syndrome and learn to let it stimulate us to grow and to change and to, to learn how to manage risk and succeed.

[00:19:07] Anyway, that’s when it becomes a skill and it becomes an ally in, in our quest, you know, to become our best. 

[00:19:14] Carolyn: Yeah, I like that a lot. So, my next question is a little follow up on that basically. I guess I want to ask you how can women handle the imposter syndrome? And I do agree with that. Not taking risks when we are younger, right?

[00:19:27] Dana: Yeah. And, and I do think that’s changing a little bit, the younger generations, you know, I think are willing to take on more risks, which I. All in favor of but I, but I think, you know, the way to handle it, regardless of where you in your career or how much or little you are encountering, this is to the extent you feel like your self-perception is out of sync with how the rest of the world sees you, which is a lot of where the imposter feelings come in.

[00:19:48] You know, the first thing to do is do an audit. What does the rest of the world think of you? try to find out, ask mentors, ask people you trust, get a, a, a trustworthy view. Of your reputation and yourself. And then this is the, this is the key part. This was a critical piece for me. When people are willing to give you compliments and say, well, you should take credit for X, Y, and Z.

[00:20:08] You gotta let that in. You can’t push those compliments away. You have to say, okay, they believe it. To tell them they’re wrong is rude. And to ignore it is denying myself important information about who I am and what I am achieving. So I’m not gonna push away compliments anymore. I’m gonna let them in.

[00:20:26] I’m gonna, I’m gonna believe they’re true and feel like, what would it feel like to believe those compliments are true? And when you do that on a regular basis, you will become more confident. It really does help but then you’ll also get some information about judgements people make about you that are either, you know, part of their biases or part of their personality, quirk, or maybe you’re in a toxic environment.

[00:20:47] I had a client who did this, who, who, you know, she was so organized and some of the people in her organization said, oh, she’s an alpha cuz she’s still organized. You know, And a bunch of other people are like, no, that’s actually a good skill. And she just had to say, you know what? I’m not gonna listen to that feedback.

[00:21:02] That people who think that, because I’m organized, I’m an alpha and trying to dominate them, cuz I’m not, you know, you just gotta screen that stuff out the stuff that’s, it’s just not true about you. And then there’s something left. The things that are left are places you aren’t growing. Maybe you’re not so good yet.

[00:21:16] Maybe you’re still figuring out. Maybe you’re not even sure you wanna do. And in that space, that’s left. When you’ve taken credit for what is due, you’ve screened out the stuff that you don’t want is not true. It it’s, it’s not relevant. You’re left with a basket of stuff you need to be working on and it, and maybe you have legitimate self doubt there, but then you gotta start working on, well, how do I get good at this?

[00:21:37] So I’m not doubting myself, you know? And then you build confidence in that zone. That’s your stretch zone. And when you just keep working on your stretch zone, you just keep taking things. You don’t know how to do and learn how to do ’em and that makes room for more things. You don’t know what to do.

[00:21:51] And pretty soon that’s your skillset. You are comfortable in your discomfort zone and you now have a skill that will help you grow in your career. But also as a person and to me, that’s where, you know, that’s the, that’s the butter zone. That’s the place to be all the time and the skill to learn both for career and just for personal fulfillment.

[00:22:10] Carolyn: I like that a lot, the skill to learn. And I do know that I, as well as you, were taught not to learn to accept compliments, I’m only slowly learning through the years. I’m trying now to believe the people who say that they believe something about me is positive. Right, right. Yep. Exactly. And you try, fail, succeed and believe.

[00:22:31] Great takeaways. Mm-hmm . Yet, if it’s easy for women to struggle, why do they, why do we still struggle with the imposter syndrome? But you did mention some things, but just a quick little summary there. 

[00:22:47] Dana: I think that’s a $64,000 question. And I don’t know the real answer.

[00:22:51] Other than that, I don’t, I do think a lot of it is internalizing those external voices that wanna tear us down and there are a lot of women out there who are just rewiring that dialogue in their head, you know, like we all have an inner critic, but we also have an inner champion. You know, we have inner voices, especially when we let in those good compliments, we have inner voices that can strengthen us.

[00:23:12] We just have to start listening to them and put them in dialogue with each other. Believe it or not, the voices in your head are just sit ’em down and have ’em talk to each other and you’ll learn a whole lot and get a coach and you’ll really learn a whole lot. 

[00:23:22] Carolyn: There you go, promote yourself. Of course you should.

[00:23:27] actually, you’re a wonderful coach and I see amazing things about you online and your work. So I believe it. 

[00:23:34] Dana: Thank you. 

[00:23:34] Carolyn: Is there something else that I should ask you that I haven’t yet? 

[00:23:38] Dana: I don’t know that this is a question you haven’t asked, but I will put it this way. You know, we all are in, we work and succeed and fail in relationships with other people.

[00:23:47] And going back to that kind of core concept of boundaries we own part of that and other people own part of that. And for all of us, whether it’s on the office housewife or imposter syndrome or anything else, when we kind of, when we own our part of our contribution to the success and the failure of, of everything that we’re part of.

[00:24:04] And we take responsibility for our part of it. We really do give other people a gift and empower them to take responsibility for their part. And that’s, you know, our part is what we control and when we really commit to ourselves to do that and draw the boundary and don’t take responsibility beyond that.

[00:24:21] Carolyn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:22] Dana: It can have a very powerful effect for ourselves, professionally and personally, and, and re kind of naturally reorder relationships that we have with the people around us in a way that’s very healthy for us. So, okay. Take that principle and put it into effect. 

[00:24:36] Carolyn: Yeah. Dana tell people how they can get in touch with you.

[00:24:39] Dana: So you can go to InPowerCoaching.com, That’s the easiest way. 

[00:24:46] Carolyn: Okay, great. And is there something else you’d like to highlight about your own business and InPower Women? 

[00:24:51] Dana: Well, I mean, I do one on one coaching, but I’m also, I’ve launched an InPower Women Mastermind Community for women on the leadership track in upper middle management and beyond.

[00:25:01] And I would invite anybody who’s, you know, knows a woman in leadership or who wants to be in leadership or is a woman in leadership to come check it out at InPowerCoaching.com. 

[00:25:09] Carolyn: Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I love masterminds, they’re relatively new to me as well, but I’ve been in a few and I think they’re fabulous.

[00:25:17] Dana: There’s actually research that shows that men benefit career wise from broad networks, women benefit from broad networks and narrow networks, deep relationships with other professional women, because we don’t have enough role models. 

[00:25:30] Carolyn: Ah, yeah. Great. Well, thank you. We’re just about to end now. I hope you’ve enjoyed meeting our guest, Dana Theus, as much as I’ve enjoyed catching up with her.

[00:25:39] What did you learn about the executive housewife and the imposter syndrome that you’d like to share? Let us know. We’re womansworldtv@aol.com. Remember, it’s a woman’s world. See you next time. I’m Carolyn Bruna.

Here’s something fun. I found the original video I made with Carolyn ten years ago, about power, when I’d just started my InPower Women initiative. I still like 100% of what I said!

Here’s how to find Carolyn and Montgomery Municipal Cable along with their Youtube channel: Montgomery Municipal Cable Cable Television – Channel 16 MMC-TV