If you want to address imposter syndrome, create opportunities for people to share their struggles.
I was on a call earlier today with Matt Heinz’s CMO Coffee Chat, and he shared that they had a conversation about imposter syndrome last year where 90+% of the participants responded to poll that they felt imposter syndrome, and almost everybody in the discussion thought they were the only one.
One of the challenges of imposter syndrome is that when we are struggling, most of us go inward and suffer in silence. We think we are alone in struggling. But everybody struggles, and so creating opportunities for people to share their struggles is a way for everybody to feel less alone.
I read about an intervention in Claude M. Steele’s book Whistling Vivaldi where a college wanted to address high dropout rates for students who were the first in their family to go to college. Those students struggled as freshmen, and thought they were struggling because they didn’t deserve to be there. When the college put them in facilitated groups with other college freshmen, they learned that everybody was struggling, and realized that transitioning to college is just hard and they weren’t alone.
Imposter syndrome leads to loneliness, so creating opportunities for connection is a way to address it. talk. Brene Brown once wrote: “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”
Who can you safely share your struggles with? If you have more privilege or success, how might you share your struggles to let others know they’re not alone?