The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It

by Valerie Young

  The idea that if you win, someone else has to lose reveals itself in subtle ways. There are women, for example, who will remain with an employer even when it’s clearly in their long-term interest to move on. You may be staying in your comfort zone to keep your impostor fears at bay. However, it’s also possible that you stay because you believe they “need” you. Loyalty is admirable, just not when it’s always at your expense.

  Competitive success can be especially loaded for females because winning violates the code of caring. Sports psychologists tell us that boys will battle their best friend tooth and nail, beat them, and then shake hands. But if relationships are central to your life, competition can be fraught with inner conflict. It certainly was for National Spelling Bee contestant Zoe Londono, who at age twelve was called “the Human Dictionary.” In an NBC Dateline segment Zoe went head-to-head with her best friend, Sheila, and beat her. The victory was bittersweet. “We’re best friends,” said Zoe. “I just beat my best friend. I’m sorry.”4

  Obviously, there are women who thrive on competition, and you may well be one of them. Yet even seasoned competitors and epic tennis rivals Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert struggled to strike a balance between competition and connection. The two would share bagels an hour before a match, go out and battle tooth and nail, then return to the locker room, where the winner would console the loser. Not because the winner was sorry she’d just trounced her opponent. But because each knew what it felt like to lose.

  Martina especially struggled to figure out how to care and compete at the same time. Her onetime fitness coach and partner, basketball star Nancy Lieberman, felt that in order for Martina to reach the top she had to hate Chris. “[Martina] tried that for a while,” says former athlete and author Mariah Burton Nelson, “but it didn’t work for her so she went back to sharing bagels and laughter with Chris in the locker room. The two remain friends.”5

  Empathizing with the loser or with the underdog is fine. The problem comes in when you routinely suppress any pride or excitement about your own achievement in order to spare another person’s feelings. In her work with gifted elementary school girls, Dr. Lee Anne Bell found that this tension between empathy and achievement can cause females to want to change the rules altogether. When she asked a group of girls to role-play a hypothetical situation in which one girl won a science prize but then dismissed her accomplishment in front of a friend who was envious of her win, the girls were able to act the scene out with ease.6

  Next Bell instructed the girls to find ways the winner might respond that would enable both girls to feel good about themselves. This task proved considerably more daunting. At first the girls came up with options like “tear the trophy in half,” “give it to the teacher,” “leave it in school,” or “give the trophy away, it’s just a piece of metal.” Although all of these strategies did preserve the relationship, they still sacrificed the winner being able to feel good about her achievement. Finally the group arrived at a solution focused not on individual achievement but on changing the system of judging altogether. If students got to work cooperatively in teams rather than competing as individuals, the girls surmised, everyone would get to do creative, high-quality science projects, and everyone could win.

  The female desire to change the system from “I won and you lost” to “We all won” is a powerful reflection of what clinical psychologist Georgia Sassen refers to as women’s “heightened perception of the ‘other side’ of competitive success … [a sense] that something is rotten in the state in which success is defined as having better grades than everyone else.”7 It also casts the difficulty women have in claiming credit for their achievements in a different light—one that, according to Dr. Peggy McIntosh, speaks to other dimensions of the impostor syndrome that can’t be addressed by raising confidence.

  McIntosh sees a lot of authenticity in feelings of fraudulence, wondering if perhaps those who really think they are the best and the brightest are the real frauds. “When women apologize or falter in public, or refuse to take individual credit for what they’ve done, I think we should listen twice,” she says, because these behaviors may help us to “question the myth that those who have power individually deserve it.” She adds, “When women feel fraudulent, often they are trying to share power, privilege and credit in ways that have not yet been recognized.”8

  If you identify with this success scenario, ask yourself:

  Does your ability to feel and express empathy toward others prevent you from feeling or expressing pride in your accomplishments?

  If yes, what would you do differently if you were not concerned with how your success made someone else feel? Be specific.

  How can you be sensitive to others and feel good about your achievements at the same time?

  If you are in a situation you know you’ve outgrown, how much has to do with fear of stepping out of your comfort zone and how much is out of concern that they “need” you?

  Are you using loyalty as an excuse to avoid challenging yourself?

  If so, are there ways you can achieve your own goals while also being considerate of others, like going out of your way to help find a suitable replacement or offering to stay on to train that person?

  Scenario 2: If I’m Too Successful, My Family Might Suffer

  If you have a family, any career advancement that requires you to spend more time at work is going to trigger concerns about the impact of your success on loved ones. If moving up in the organization also entails a physical move, it can mean disrupting your partner’s career or children’s education or being away from aging parents. These decisions are difficult enough. Feeling like an impostor makes it that much harder to parse relationship considerations from your usual self-doubt.

  One thing that can help is to at least recognize that your guilt is not entirely self-generated. No one raises concerns about a man’s ability to work and raise children at the same time. Even at the highest levels, no one assumes he’s not up to the job. But society is quick to sow these seeds of doubt about you—seeds that, if you’re not careful, can take root in your own mind. After all, success enhances a man’s likelihood of being a good provider and makes him deserving of the title “family man.” There is no comparable term to describe a woman who provides financially for her family because she’s seen as pursuing her career at the expense, not for the sake of, her family.

  If you feel selfish or guilty for being driven, remember that to have children is to experience a certain amount of parental guilt—period. Thinking of others first is admirable. At the same time, there’s a reason flight attendants tell you to put your oxygen mask on first before helping children. Rather than see your success as coming at the expense of your family, make sure you give equal weight to the ways your success serves them. Of course there is the obvious financial contribution you make. In addition, though, consider how your children benefit from having an accomplished role model, one who is pursuing her goals and utilizing her talents.

  If this success scenario speaks to you, ask yourself:

  How much of your reluctance to take on more responsibility or to relocate is because you feel inadequate, and how much is a genuine concern about what it might mean for your family?

  Is it possible that you are using your family as an excuse to stay inside your comfort zone?

  If you knew your family would be okay, would you have the same level of doubt about your ability to take on a new challenge?

  We just looked at two scenarios that have to do with the impact of success on others. Now it’s time to explore the ways that saying yes to success can factor into your relationship with others.

  How Success Can Impact the Connection Between You and Others

  One of the exercises in my workshops involves asking participants to generate a list of self-expectations or inner rules that contribute to their feeling like impostors. Two rules that invariably come up for women are Don
’t act too smart and Always downplay your accomplishments. No surprise there.

  Next I ask them to name the perceived consequence of breaking these rules. The most obvious, of course, is that other people might find out that you’re a fraud. After all, if you act like you know the answer or that you’re “all that,” and you turn out to be wrong or average, people will know you’re an impostor. But that’s not all that’s going on here. When asked why they care what people think of them a more fundamental female fear is revealed, namely, People may not like me.

  This is not just insecurity. Females learn young that being “too” anything not associated with traditional notions of femininity can put you at risk of not being liked—a well-documented dilemma that led Facebook COO and mother of two Sheryl Sandberg to tell an audience, “I want my son to have a choice to contribute fully in the workforce or at home, and I want my daughter not only to succeed but to be liked for her accomplishments.”9

  This is important because when connection is paramount in your life, any decision that holds the potential to lessen the connection between you and others can be disconcerting. As Gilligan observes, in achievement women recognize “the danger [of] isolation, a fear that in standing out or being set apart by success, they will be left alone.” To different degrees, the next four scenarios speak to this core issue of isolation.

  Scenario 3: The Higher I Go, the More Isolated I’ll Be

  The last thing most male executives worries about is being the only man at his level. You, however, are keenly aware that the higher up the organizational chart you climb, the more male and pale the landscape becomes. And for women, it really is lonely at the top. According to Fortune magazine, in 2010 only eleven of the Fortune 500 companies were run by women, down from fifteen the previous year. Among Fortune 1000 companies, a total of fourteen women had the top job. The isolation is even more profound if you are also a person of color who is expected to leave her—or his—racial identity at the door.

  You don’t have to occupy the executive suite to know that a promotion can incur jealousy and even resentment from people who were once your peers. Men have to deal with this too, of course. But even in tightly knit work groups men tend to relate to coworkers more superficially—or at least in a less familial way than do women. Guys might bond over a drink after work or on the golf course. But it’s the women who organize the office parties, collect the money for the baby-shower gift, and decorate for the holidays. The more familylike the atmosphere, the tougher it can be to leave work pals behind, especially if your former coworker is now your direct report.

  Women will often attempt to minimize the discomfort by trying to still be one of the gang. The problem with this strategy is that organizations are based on the more hierarchical relationships men prefer. So even if your former peers embrace you as one of them, your behavior has violated an unwritten rule that managers are supposed to mainly socialize with people at their level. It’s okay to occasionally lunch with your former work pals, but it’s considered a bad career move not to shift primary allegiance to the new management level.

  If you identify with either example, use these questions to parse what you’re really dealing with:

  Is your apprehension about advancing into senior ranks a function of confidence, or is it the stress of knowing you’ll be the only one who looks like you?

  If you knew you would not feel isolated, would you experience the same level of fear about advancing?

  How much of your hesitation to vie for promotions stems from self-doubt, and how much has to do with maintaining relationships with coworkers?

  Would you experience the same level of fear about being promoted if you weren’t worried about alienating people you work with?

  Scenario 4: If I Stand Out Too Much, I’ll Be Isolated

  Feeling isolated is not just a function of job level. It can happen any time you work in an overwhelmingly male-dominated environment—something that you learned in chapter 2—and can easily contribute to self-doubt in women. Think about how you feel when you walk into a networking event where you’re the only woman: Do you feel confident and in control? Or do you feel self-conscious, perhaps even a little intimidated? If you chose the later, you’re not alone.

  Psychologists wanted to understand the possible effects of gender-imbalanced settings on advanced math, science, and engineering students. So they had them watch videos portraying a summer leadership conference. One video showed a conference where men outnumbered women three to one, and another portrayed a conference with equal numbers of men and women. Not surprisingly, women who watched the first video reported a lower sense of belonging and less desire to participate.

  What is significant was the finding that just watching the gender-imbalanced video caused these elite female students to experience faster heart rates, perspire more, and be more easily distracted—all indicators of stress.10 Knowing this can help in those real-life situations where you might judge yourself for letting your minority status get to you in the first place. Now instead of thinking, If I were really competent, I wouldn’t be so unnerved, you understand that you can be perfectly competent and still experience stress in these situations.

  If you identify with this success scenario, ask yourself:

  Am I anxious about being in a male-dominated environment because I really don’t think I’m competent enough, or am I experiencing the normal stress that comes from feeling isolated?

  Scenario 5: If I’m Too Successful, I’ll Lose Connection with Family, Friends, and/or Community

  Gender is not the only factor that can lead you to worry about the alienating effects of success. If you are a person of color, you may experience cultural pressure to downplay your academic or professional success in order to avoid being accused of “acting white.” Similarly, if you are a first-generation professional, your success may alienate you from the people you grew up with—sometimes to a painful extent. Even if you want to talk about your work with family or friends, it’s not always easy. If they don’t ask you about your work, you feel hurt. If they do ask, it’s obvious they don’t really get what it is you do. Rather than trying to bridge this new divide, you may attempt to circumvent it altogether. You avoid mentioning that prestigious college or job around hometown friends lest they assume you think you’re “better” than them.

  The loss of connection may be so intolerable that some people deliberately choose a job below their training or abilities. I once met a Ph.D. in business who had taken a job as a bookkeeper. The impostor syndrome had something to do with her lowering the occupational bar, but it was also a way to close the connection gap. “When people find out I have a Ph.D.,” she said, “I can immediately feel this gulf widening between us.”

  Sometimes the distance caused by a career decision is more physical than emotional. It’s scary enough to move far from home; feeling like an impostor only adds to the anxiety. If you also happen to belong to a religious, racial, or sexual minority, then this can further complicate your decision. Not only are you leaving friends and family behind, but depending on the demographics of the new locale, you may cut yourself off from your larger social network as well. When you are forced to decide between advancing in your career and experiencing social isolation or in some cases even the risk of physical violence, it’s that much harder to separate legitimate misgivings from impostor fears.

  Any kind of major change or transition will trigger impostor feelings. If you identify with this success scenario, ask yourself:

  How much of your reluctance to say yes to success is related to self-confidence, and how much comes from wanting to avoid feeling alienated emotionally from family and friends?

  If you’re hesitant to move, would you still be reluctant to go if you knew you would be welcome and happy in the new location? If the answer is yes, then your impostor fears probably outweigh the relationship concerns.

  Scenario 6: If I’m To
o Successful, It Could Hurt My Chances of Getting or Keeping a Man

  You might think accomplished women worrying about not finding love is a thing of the past. In reality the women in my workshops speak often about the challenges they face on the relationship front. There is a reason MIT professor Sheila Widnall includes on her list of 10 Reasons Why Women Don’t Go into Engineering the concern that a female with the highest math score won’t get a date to the prom. The dating scene has never been easy for “nerdy” guys, but it’s probably not because women are threatened by a smart man. At least not in the way some men feel about being “outsmarted” by a female—especially on their own turf.

  Even if you personally brush off such nonsense, every heterosexual woman who’s ever studied in a male-dominated field such as math or science knows that the response to the question “What’s your major?” is not exactly a dude magnet. One female physics major was actually coached by a male friend to lie and tell prospective dates that she was majoring in early-childhood education. Apparently he thought other males would be less intimidated by a woman preparing to command a classroom of five-year-olds than by one who might someday run a laboratory of fifty-year-old men.