There was recently a wonderful article at HBR.com about competence vs. confidence and how people respond to both. How does this relate to imposter syndrome? As defined by an article in the New York Times:
Two American psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, gave it a name in 1978: the impostor syndrome. They described it as a feeling of “phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” While these people “are highly motivated to achieve,” they also “live in fear of being ‘found out’ or exposed as frauds.”
—Carl Richards, Learning to Deal With the Impostor Syndrome, New York Times
Imposter syndrome is that little voice in your head that tells you that you are a fraud, that you’ll be found out, that you aren’t good enough. If you hear it enough, it can impact your confidence. And that impacts how people perceive you.
What’s challenging about the fluid career is that you aren’t only making changes to your career or job on paper; you are also making changes that change you and your perception of yourself. You are changing how you define yourself too. If you are switching jobs every 3.7 years, you need to always be ready to make a move – networking and flowing. How does imposter syndrome stop that from happening?
You may decide that you need to have 100% of the qualifications rather than most before making the switch (read The Economist article for more information for how women have this challenge more than men). Or that you could never do the new job because you believe that you can barely do your current job. Or that work comes too easy for you versus other people.
We’ll be discussing:
- Imposter syndrome and how it impacts you – especially with a fluid career
- How a fluid career could magnify imposter syndrome
- How to view your accomplishments in the world of fluid careers
- Confidence vs. competence, imposter syndrome and fluid career
What’s a fluid career?
Dana Theus has been observing a new career trend – fluid careers. The average tenure of a job for professionals is 3.5 years. This means that someone could have up to 10-12 jobs in a lifetime and possibly 2-3+ careers. It is freeing, in that it gives people more control to design more work-life balance in their career over time, and anxiety-producing as it can feel less stable if one defines success as “a job that lasts at least 10 years.” This fluid employment trend takes into account the growth in both entrepreneurship and the Gig Economy, reductions in employee tenure, increases in employee dissatisfaction and increases in employee turnover.
About Vreneli Stadelmaier
Holding an MBA, registered coach, source of inspiration, speaker, entrepreneur, author, blogger and publisher. She owns the company SheConsult, which addresses imposter syndrome in women. You can get a copy of her book, Sure She Can to better understand her approach to overcome imposter syndrome. In 2015, winner of the prestigious Joke Smit Award for gender equality, awarded by the Dutch government. Divorced, married again (with another man), mother of three children and two bonus children.
She is working on a new book now, Yes She’s Smart. She wrote the book especially for new women graduates. They do well while at university, but after graduation lose their ambitions due to low self-confidence, not understanding what it means to be in a masculine organization, worries about combining a career and family, and other influences in their career choices.
Guide to Women in Leadership
Organizations with women in their executive suites regularly out-perform others. Yet rising female executives (and their mentors) are frustrated at how hard it is to break through the glass ceiling. In this extensive guide, Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel into higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
