The Upside of Imposter Syndrome

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today, we're delighted to be speaking with Lisa Orbé-Austin, who is a licensed psychologist, executive coach, and organizational consultant. Her views about career management and advancement are regularly sought by the media, and she has appeared in various outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, NBC News, Refinery29, and Insight into Diversity.

She is the author of Own Your Greatness and today we're going to talk about Your Unstoppable Greatness, which is about imposter syndrome. And I will tell you, Lisa, I read the whole thing and I think I have a little bit of that, so we'll talk about that too. She's been honored by LinkedIn as Top Voice in the areas of job search and careers and mental health.

Dr. Orbé-Austin received her bachelor's degree in English at Boston College. Her master's degree from BC in counseling psychology and her PhD in counseling psychology from Columbia University. Oh my gosh, I am so excited. I am so glad we're doing this. It feels like everybody has a little imposter syndrome. Is this hyperbole or is it? Is it out there a lot? In fact, there was a question about that.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: It is pretty predominant. About 70% of people experience imposter syndrome over the course of their lives. So not everyone experiences, but a significant amount of us do.

Anita Brick: Okay. So maybe just so that we're all on the same page, you can give us your definition of imposter syndrome.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Yeah. So imposter syndrome is the experience when you are successful, credentialed, experienced, skilled, and yet you haven’t internalized those. And so as a result of not internalizing them, you fear being found out as a fraud. And as a result of that perceived exposure of fraudulence, you then either overwork or self-sabotage when you're engaged in that cycle.

We have trouble oftentimes being able to accept our successes, our accomplishments. We tend to put down compliments and ignore them. We can hyper focus on mistake-making, try not to ever make a mistake again because we can be very perfectionistic. It’s a constant cycle that sort of leads us into a regular system of kind of doing this no matter what happens, we're always kind of in that cycle.

Anita Brick: Here's someone, maybe we can help the student out a bit. So there's an MBA student and he said, I've experienced imposter syndrome since I was a child. How can I make a change at a fundamental level, rather than a mind shift that I know is going to go back and I'll feel imposter syndrome again?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: I really love that question. That question is such a good question, and I think it gets to the heart of the evolution of imposter syndrome. It gets reported in popular culture that like, oh, this boss maybe has imposter syndrome.

Typically we've had imposter syndrome usually since our early childhood. And the reason why is because the origins of our imposter syndrome usually start with our first system that we've ever gotten exposed to, which is our family system. And so oftentimes, because we've been put in one of these roles, the intelligent one, the hard working one, or the survivor.

So an intelligent one is somebody in the family who is seen as a smart one. Everything should come easy. But when things didn't come easy for you, you thought maybe something's wrong with me. Maybe I'm not as smart as everyone thinks I am. But nobody explained, even if you're super smart, you have to work. That's a normal part of development.

And the second one is the hard working one. Usually there's someone in the family who’s already been assigned to the smart one. Everything has to come for you through hard work, either to overwork or over function. We also see a correlation here between the hardworking one and people who have learning difficulties or learning disabilities. And oftentimes for you, it felt like you didn't have any natural talents or natural gifts that came easy.

Everything you get was a result of hard work. And so this is the way you functioned growing up. And the last one is survivor. The experience where you may not have had a parent or caregiver who was telling you were either one of those, there might have been abuse or neglect in the home. And so as a result, your successes, achievements are a way of getting out. And they often feel really fragile. Like if you make one mistake, one error, I could lose everything. Those early roles often set us up to kind of really believe certain things about our successes and achievements that set up a foundation. There are also family dynamics that are at hand that also create this. Either a narcissistic parent, a codependent kind of relationship in the family.

What I would say to the student is one of the things that happens in the Own Your Greatness, the first book, is we deal with all the interpersonal issues. It's not just a mindset shift that changes imposter syndrome. You have to do some of the deep work about how this all got started, and really work on understanding why it shows up, the way it shows up today. And perhaps also do some forgiveness and letting go and deciding that you want something different.

And we do a bunch of other pieces that are not just about mindset shift. They're really about skills and tools that we didn't learn early on that really helped change the experience of imposter syndrome.

Anita Brick: And that's really very helpful. Another question related to this and maybe it'll just take us, you know, a little bit deeper dive there. And this is from an alum. And she said making a mistake is not fun and runs counter to my family's culture. How can I learn to make mistakes because I want to grow, and you need to experiment, without feeling like a failure?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Yeah, such a good question. One of the things that's really embedded in imposter syndrome is this fear of making mistakes, and that the mistakes are revelatory of your fraudulence or incompetence or shameful. Reorienting yourself toward what risk-taking and mistake-making means is so important to really recognize that everyone successful has made a lot of mistakes, whether they're talking about them or not. They have made typically a lot of mistakes. It's how you think about those mistakes and reframe them.

So for example, like we haven't talked about this yet, but I also have struggled with imposter syndrome pretty profoundly. In my early experiences of imposter syndrome, I often felt if I made a mistake, there was something incredibly wrong with me, or that I had really shown that I wasn't competent or capable. It was really, really painful and I would really focus on how do I correct that mistake so that it never happens ever again.

And nowadays, now that I'm on a very different side of it, I look at a mistake as like, where was the opportunities for growth? Where was the upside? What am I taking from this? How do I kind of learn from this? How do I see myself as human? How do I forgive myself for making the mistake? I'm much more caught up with those things that I am sort of harping about the mistake. Because one of the things I learned about myself when I struggle with imposter syndrome is that the fear of mistake-making kept me really contracted and stuck, and I made myself very small. And then allowing myself to make mistakes really allowed myself to be bigger and try new things. And having a more expansive view of what was possible for myself. And so I do think it really does sort of take challenging your family's norms around mistake-making. And, you know, my husband has a saying just because it's cultural don't make it right.

I think it's really important to recognize that culture should shift and culture should change, and that it should be adaptive and always providing a healthier outcome for the people involved in it. And if it's not, then you have to shift it.

Anita Brick: That's very insightful, because it's actually very comforting in a way that you experience this too, because you are clearly so accomplished. There's an alum who's in a situation right now a little unfamiliar to her. And she said, this is a little bit long, so bear with me. So recently there was a reorg in my company. Sadly, many people lost their jobs. In large reorgs, I am usually the person who was let go instead. This time I was promoted to report a level above where I was.

My imposter syndrome is so great. When they announced the new org tour and they mentioned my first name, I had to check to see who the last name was because I couldn't believe it was me. Would love to create a roadmap to take me to the next level of the company with confidence. What are a few things that you would advise me to do?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: So I would say that's a really common experience with imposter syndrome, because one of the other triggers related to imposter syndrome is a highly visible experience. And so being promoted in the midst of turmoil and all of this stuff makes your role pretty invisible. That can be really scary for us when we struggle with it because we're like, oh, if we make a mistake now, it's higher stakes. You know, it's really frightening. And so I do think one of the things I would encourage is to kind of really work on your imposter syndrome in this moment, to challenge yourself. We talk about this in Own Your Greatness, about taking up visible leadership and what it means to take up visible leadership when we're used to being a behind-the-scenes leader. Imposter syndrome people are often really like, just want to do good work and be behind the scenes.

But really learning how to take up that visibility with authenticity and humanity and really allowing yourself to be your full self, which is somebody who's going to do well and also might make mistakes. But still, that does not mean you're not deserving of that role. And really learning to kind of accept that.

I think the other piece that's embedded in that question is a survivor's guilt. So survivor's guilt is also really common with imposter syndrome. And so this idea that why did I get saved? I think it's really important to be able to reflect back on the strengths, your competencies, your skills. So you remind yourself, this is not an accident. This is not luck. This is not someone benefacting you something. This is because you have the skills and competencies to remain. You know oftentimes also important to recognize, look, so might the people who are fired. Both can be true. You can both be competent and still be in this position. And so I think it's really important to not look at this as a dichotomous lens.

And lastly, I would suggest The First 90 Days. The First 90 Days is such a great book to really kind of think about the roadmap to success within a new role or a new opportunity. It is such a good book and what I would do with it is I would read it and document and create your own roadmap from what you're learning from the book. But it's a fantastic book. I recommend it to anyone starting a new thing. The First 90 Days. It's such a great way to kind of create that roadmap.

Anita Brick: If you were thinking about a couple of things that she could do to start her transition from imposter syndrome to at least less of it, what would be a couple of things, in addition to having a roadmap for the role? What would be a couple of things you would include in a roadmap for her journey past imposter syndrome?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: So the first thing I'd recommend is to do my book, Own Your Greatness. The way that we developed that first book was really about the research-backed interventions that have been shown to actually overcome imposter syndrome. So it's not my thoughts, it's not my random musings. It's actually the research-backed steps. And we've been able to show that if you complete the book and you actually have to do the book, it's not a read, that you can reduce your imposter syndrome by like 30%. It's pretty effective because it's research-backed. The things that I'm talking about there are based on research over the 40 years that the topic has been researched in academic circles.

So that's one of the things I would do. And it's work you need to recognize if you've been in this and it's been really painful for you, it's going to be work. It's not working. You're going to always feel it's really, really hard. Eventually you'll internalize it. It will be automatic. It's really important to recognize, like they're going to put in some work, but you're going to benefit from it.

Starting a new job can be very triggering. And so I think it's really important to remember that you're not there to prove yourself. You're there to do the job you've been asked to do. Do not get caught up in the overwork and overfunction that can be so common in imposter syndrome when you're starting a new job, one that you feel excited about, but also feel like maybe I didn't deserve. And you get into an overproving mode. And it's super dangerous because it often leads to burnout and it leads to the cycle just feeding upon itself.

Those are two different things I would suggest. One, how to orient yourself, and the second one really about like you got to do the work. Because what we've seen is if you do the work, it does pay off in innumerable ways. But I think that's the hard part, is doing the work.

Anita Brick: Makes sense and it's very practical. There's a student who has been testing the waters and getting quite a bit of pushback. And you talk about this in the book, too. Here's what he said. I began to speak up and do so without being pushy. Yet my colleagues are not thrilled by the new me. In the past, I would rarely push back. I would take on projects even when I was already overbooked. What advice would you have for someone getting resistance for new self-affirming behaviors?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: I just want to say I'm super proud of you because changing behaviors and setting boundaries and recognizing that you're overfunctioning and wanting to change that is huge. And such a critical piece of overcoming imposter syndrome. But oftentimes when you change behaviors that used to benefit others and they're experiencing a new you, that doesn't benefit them as much, they respond to it often negatively.

And I do think it's a part of really having them acclimate to the new you. So part of that is a normal part of the resistance to the change, and really being able to tolerate the discomfort of not pleasing other people is really important, because oftentimes we're so caught up with external validation and people-pleasing. That's all we've ever known. So really not having someone pleased with us, it can be really painful, but such an important part of our learning and our process.

And the other thing I would suggest, and I talk about this in Your Unstoppable Greatness, in the new book, is don't do it alone. Build mentors, build other allies that are senior that support your boundary-setting. Make sure that you're not alone, because it is easy to target one person over targeting a group of people, or especially senior people. So you really want to think about strategically, how am I building relationships in this organization that are supporting the things that I'm prioritizing, including taking care of myself and valuing myself in this workplace so that I can be a better employee. I could be better for myself, better all around. Try not to do it alone because it's easy to get targeted and scapegoated in those moments. Find support. Find community. Find resources in your organization that support you.

Anita Brick: So here's a little bit of the dark side of what's going on in some companies right now. And there are two questions. One's from a student, one's from an alum. So let's start with the student. And she said, I feel there is gaslighting going on with my manager. There's a fair amount of you must have been mistaken to cover up her own missteps and failures. Yeah. This is happening so much that I'm questioning myself. Help! Yeah. You're caught up with the toxic manager.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: That is really difficult. You know, I just mentioned, and this is really true for us when we struggle with imposter and where we want to please the people that we work for and we want to make them happy. And so when they're saying we're mistaken and we're making mistakes, even if that's not true, it's still very hard to hear and to deal with. It's really important to think about what emotional boundaries are you setting for yourself so that you know that what she's saying is untrue, so that she might be gaslighting you, but you also know your reality and you trust your reality. When she does this, probably very hard to push back. She's probably super defensive and super vulnerable to this.

If you're going to stay, how are you going to manage her? What supports do you have in the organization to help you manage her? Because you're going to have to work on managing up in a way that's different and kind of helps to potentially alleviate her defensiveness, but not lead you holding the bag for whatever went wrong. And the other thing I think you have to look at is, is this a relationship that's going to be beneficial for you long term, for somebody who's always making you accountable for their mistakes, you then become doubly accountable. So you're accountable for your own mistakes, which you will make because you're human and you're accountable for hers. Is that a pathway to success? Are people going to see you as successful in this role? Are there other options for you? What should you be considering now? What kind of relationships should you be building? I often find that it's really hard to change someone else when they don't want to be changed.

I think it's really important to recognize that you only can have a certain impact. And will that impact be able to really help you to go where you want to go? And if not, then what do you do about that? So I do think it's really important when you've got a toxic manager to think about what your options are and how you can best support yourself to do what you need to do.

Anita Brick: Totally agree. The alum’s question was, what are a couple of things that you can do to protect yourself and mitigate the situation.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: In a toxic workplace, I know this very firsthand. If you've seen my TEDx talk, you know that I was in a very toxic employee relationship before I quit it and really decided to impact my own imposter syndrome. And we can have thoughts as a result of our position and make us feel like, oh, you know, there's no other place that I can go right now, I have to stay here. I have to put up with this and no one else will take me. There's nothing open. You have all these automatic negative thoughts that sometimes aren't very true, but have been reinforced by the imposter syndrome.

And I think it's so important to be able to really test those thoughts and challenge those thoughts and counter those thoughts to see what else is out there. If you feel like you need to leave and you're having those inklings to kind of test the market. For me, really challenging those thoughts really changed my life.

And I'll briefly tell you the story about my toxic manager, which is I had a toxic boss like a couple years after graduating. I was really very much prone to my own imposter syndrome and really feeling like I should just be lucky to be here. And he was pretty awful to me. He would scream at me in public and humiliate me for very minor things, like the coffee wasn't hot. I used to deliver events and education for faculty, which wasn't great. You know, being undermined by him in front of faculty didn't exactly help me hold my authority.

This went on for months and months, and I felt stuck and I felt like I couldn't leave. I felt all those things, like the job market wasn't good. I wouldn't get another job. I was on the senior leadership team and I was sitting with a group of women. All of the team was women. There's music playing in the background and someone asked, what is this music that's playing? And he said, it's music to soothe the savage breast. Yes. And in that one moment, it was like I just came alive. I was just like, oh my gosh, I am letting him treat me like this. And yes, you know, he is actually doing that. He's treating me like this. But I'm also allowing for it because I feel like I have no power. I'm out of here. I can't take this anymore. I will not take this anymore. And so I went back to my office. I closed my door. I called my husband and I said, I'm going to quit my job. And he was like, do it! Oh gosh, I've been waiting for this for months. Cleared out my office that weekend. I quit on that Monday without notice, which I wouldn't generally suggest as a coach, but I just felt he would treat me worse or abuse me in the weeks in which I had given him notice. I probably was right because when I quit, he threatened me. He said I would never work in education again. He cried. He yelled at me. It was, if you know about grants, my money was encumbered, meaning you couldn't spend it on anything else for my salary. So he was raging at me and it was really, really difficult. But I found a way to kind of give him the keys. And I walked out of there and left. And I was terrified. I thought all the worst things that you think about when you have imposter syndrome could happen. I would never work again. He would spread rumors about me, all of this. And he tried. But I had another job within two weeks and that job was making like twice what I was making in that previous role.

And it was the beginning of my road to working on my imposter syndrome. And so I tell the story to tell you that no matter how bad the circumstances is, you have skills, you have education, you have credentials, you have the ability to actually have better and you deserve better. Hopefully you'll find ways, other ways to kind of find support, work other places where people can actually value you.

Anita Brick: Thank you for sharing that. It sounds like it took so much courage because it almost sounds like his behavior was accepted and institutionalized.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Oh yeah. And actually they just got rid of him. This happened to me 15 years ago, and they just got rid of him. And apparently from what I hear, there were internal cases against him and there were legal lawsuits against him. And it took 15 years to fire him. And I think he was very well supported by very senior leaders in the organization. And that often happens. Organizations often protect toxic leaders. We talk about this, you know, in our writing and stuff about how institutions are also responsible for the behavior in which they support, because either sometimes, you know, sometimes a person's considered valuable because they bring in money, they know where the skeletons are buried, and it's an open secret that they're toxic.

This is what made us passionate about writing this new book is like, where's your agency? Where's your power? Where's your community? How do you find a way out of this? Be like, I'm not tolerating this. I don't have to. There are other options for me.

Anita Brick: Wow, you are amazing. By the way.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Oh, that's very sweet, I appreciate it.

Anita Brick: Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the upside of impostor syndrome. To really think about what kind of foundation we can build for our next dream. An alum said, she said, I wanted to be a founder forever. You know, I continue to listen to voices of reason by my family and from my friends. How can I keep my dream alive when it seems impossible?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Oh, it's not impossible. If you want to be a founder, you can be a founder. You're hitting on something that I love and I'm very passionate about. Because imposter syndrome kills dreams. One of the ways that it kills dreams is because we're so externally focused on what other people say, what other people want from us, that we often get disconnected from our dreams. And that's the whole piece of the second book, Your Unstoppable Greatness, because we want people to reconnect with their dreams because they can happen.

When I left that job that I just talked about, I was lost and I actually went home to have a panic attack because I was terrified of what I'd just done. My husband had said, you know, I really want to start our practice. And that had been his dream. And I was like, okay, with my free time, I'll work on that and I'll do that. And I didn't know this at the time, but deep down, buried deep down, it was my dream too. I was just afraid of it. I was terrified of it. My father had worked for the same company for 41 years, and my husband's parents also kind of worked for companies, and nobody we knew was entrepreneurial that had been successful. I didn't have a model for it, and so it was terrifying. All I knew around it was failure, economic instability. I knew all these negative thoughts about it. At the time, I knew Richard wanted it, so I tried to start putting it together. And the first clients came for me, and then I started to remember that this is what I've always dreamed of.

This is what I always wanted. This is a dream I had buried down deep inside, and I had just started living someone else's dreams. For me, the practice has allowed me to really reconnect to my dreams, and it reminds me of something that Richard has said to me when I was struggling with my own imposter syndrome, which is like when you learn to work as hard for yourself as you do for others, you're going to be unstoppable.

You want to be a founder, start working for yourself. Start showing how you are unstoppable to yourself, which matters most.

Anita Brick: And you don't have to do it full out.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: No. I was working part time.

Anita Brick: Yeah. This goes along with a question from another alum and he said in your book, you talk about a dream team, which certainly could support being a founder, any dream that you have, which is really great.

The question is, how do you advise your clients to select people for their dream team? And even more, how do you get those people to say yes?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: I often tell them probably don't ask directly. Like, do you want to be my mentor? I think it's much better to work on building the relationship and thinking about, you know, some key concepts like building trust over the time of the relationship, giving it in dribs and drabs, and seeing if this is somebody that actually would serve in that role for you.

We also talk about reciprocity. Oftentimes when we think somebody is going to help us, we think, oh, there's nothing I can do for them. But I think really thinking about how do you build a relationship with reciprocity at its core, what can I do for them? How can I support them? There are definitely got to be ways. You can also be cheerleading, supporting, offering things to them of support.

And I think also too really learning to kind of build new relationships. I have a colleague who talks about building adult friendships and building adult relationships, because oftentimes we feel like, oh, and you know, like how am I going to build these new relationships now that I'm 30, 40, 50? But there's always opportunity in so many different ways. I think it's really important to start to open ourselves up to new relationships in new ways.

And I think really what we do in the book is talk about what are the specific types of relationships you want to have. So we talk about multiple mentors, usually one within your organization and a couple outside. Having the action planner. Somebody who really helps you when you're stuck, take some action steps forward. The big-picture person, someone who can see the big picture, can help you figure out what are the steps toward the big picture. The impostor syndrome expert. Somebody who gets imposter syndrome just like you do, and helps you to kind of not fall back into old behaviors that are unhealthy for you.

And thinking about who in your life already serves these purposes and who else do you need? How do they fit into these particular kinds of helping roles? But I think one of the things that happens with imposter syndrome so commonly is that we're often lone wolves, or we're very good at doing things by ourselves. And what we have to learn is never again.

Always with community, always with support. We are much more powerful when there is a variety of us, and you have a variety of support than you are doing it alone. Building that team and really kind of thinking about who you need in it and how you're going to find those other relationships. How you can expand yourself to expose yourself to new people is so, so critically important throughout your career.

I'm like, sort of a reminder not to ask people, Will you be my mentor? I think it puts a lot of pressure on them, and they are more likely to say no, that they're too busy or they than if they were just mentoring you and not saying anything about it. It's something I've seen along the way.

Anita Brick: I agree. What does that mean? Does that mean that I have to help them for the rest of their career?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Yes.

Anita Brick: It's a lot of pressure.

Lisa, do you have time for one more question?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Sure! Absolutely.

Anita Brick: This has been amazing. Your Unstoppable Greatness is actionable, practical, and has a lot of substantiated content. And I love all of those things. And you shared a lot of things. And probably the most important thing for me is that you shared yourself. You're there with us. And sharing your story was very powerful.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: I think that's what I'm so passionate about. I don't ever want anyone to have to deal with what I had to deal with, and I want to free as many people as I can from it, you know?

And like you said, from research and not just from random thoughts, but from like a really substantiated background, I do think that's really important. I am very passionate.

Anita Brick: I totally get that. So what we like to do is give our listeners three practical, actionable things that they can do. What are the top three things that you would advise someone to do who wants to use impostor syndrome to create something of positive value?

Lisa Orbé-Austin: You know, a lot of people in the popular press say that imposter syndrome is good for you and that it makes you successful and motivated. It's not true. The research has shown there's a lot of negative outcomes that come from imposter syndrome, and the reason why you're successful and motivated is because of you, not because of imposter syndrome.

What you should let imposter syndrome do for you is getting over it. Like the getting over it will change your life. Some of the most powerful interventions that I've seen really change the game is in the first book there's an exercise called The Expressive Letter. It is notorious in my book. It's where most people get stopped in the book because it is a very hard exercise.

So the first thing I would say is you have to deal with how you've got imposter syndrome in the first place. You have to dig out the roots, because if you don't dig out the roots, you just take out the top of the weed, the roots grow back. Really understanding how you got here and what are some of the family and childhood origins stuff that is getting in the way and then learning The Expressive Letters of Forgiveness exercise.

It is the hardest thing to do. But every time I've seen someone do it, something changes in them and it's really profound. And if you struggle to do it, get a therapist to help you do it with you or with a friend. Don't do it alone. If you can get over that moment in the book, everything changes. And then I would say the other thing that's really big, two other things that are really big that are sort of game changers, although I would say you have to do all nine interventions, but other two ones are challenging your automatic negative thoughts, learning to recognize what an automatic negative thought is that's triggering the imposter syndrome, and learning to challenge and counter it, and developing a rational response to the trigger. So that's another really significant piece that really changes things.

And then the third thing that I see that is really powerful, you know, we often have burnout, often chronic burnout because we overwork a lot, is the self-care, learning how to structure and use self-care in a way that is filling to us, and learning to care for ourselves in a way that we often never have, and to treat ourselves with respect and dignity.

Those three things are probably the top three things, but all the other things matter too. But those are probably the top three things. Great. Thank you. Any other final words of wisdom? I would just say, if you’ve experienced this, that make this the moment in which you actually commit to changing and building the skills. I don't think you'll ever regret it.

Anita Brick: Wonderful. Thank you. What a treat. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This was really wonderful and I can only imagine how many lives you're going to make better when people listen to this and actually read the books.

Lisa Orbé-Austin: Thank you so much, Anita, for having me. It's been wonderful.

Anita Brick: Thanks again. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.