"Impostor Syndrome in Leadership: What It's Guarding”

What if the sign on your door said "Welcome Impostor"?

Imagine you walk into the office and the sign on your door says "Welcome Impostor". How would you feel? What would you do?

Most people would want it gone by lunch. Painted over. Not explained to anyone who asked. Nobody would leave a sign like that up. And yet plenty of capable people carry something close to it around anyway, unwritten, checked only in private, on the days it matters most.

Now think about the times you may have picked up a label for yourself. A label called "Impostor Syndrome". It doesn't arrive all at once. It builds, one hesitation at a time, until it starts to feel less like a label and more like a fact.

Nobody hands it to you on your first day of leading anyone. It gets picked up earlier than that. A classroom, a first job, a house where results were the main currency. By the time you're leading a team, it doesn't feel like a belief you picked up. It feels like the truth about you.

Where it shows up

It shows up as questioning your capability, your worth, dismissing your ideas and holding yourself back.

In practice you may have hesitated to speak up, or skipped the follow up clarifying question,  held back from naming an error you had spotted, rehearsed a message five times before sending it. 

Maybe you said "sorry, quick question" before something that needed no apology at all or let someone else take credit for an idea, because saying it was yours felt riskier than staying silent. Maybe you agreed in the meeting and disagreed on the walk back to your desk, even added three extra slides nobody asked for, to feel covered.

Your intent is good, though the results often aren't. Careful is not the same thing as capable. It only looks that way from the outside.

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The pattern I keep hearing

Across years of coaching conversations, I have heard leader after leader question their abilities and judge themselves.

"What if they don't like it, laugh at me, exclude me"...

The words change. The fear underneath rarely does. It shows up most in the leaders with the strongest track record, not necessarily the weakest. The evidence is right there in front of them, and it still isn't enough.

A promotion doesn't settle it. Neither does a good review, or a client renewal, or a meeting full of people nodding along. The label doesn't check the record before it speaks.

I've sat across from leaders who run entire divisions, still bracing for the meeting where they get found out. That meeting doesn't come. They brace for it anyway.

It does not have to be this way.

The paradox

The paradox here is one of visibility. You fear being seen and simultaneously fear being invisible. The fear is also about judgement rather than performance. Somehow the illusion is that doing nothing is safer than trying.

Doing nothing still gets noticed. It gets noticed later, and costs more when it does. A missed contribution reads the same as a weak one, to everyone except you.

What you're guarding, underneath all of it, is an image. Someone who doesn't get caught out. Someone who has it together before anyone else looks closely. That image costs more to keep than it ever gives back.

Nobody built that image in a single meeting. It was built over years, one careful moment at a time, until it stopped feeling like an image at all. It started feeling like the truth about you. It isn't.

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What to try

This shifts one small choice at a time, tried before it feels comfortable, not after.

Speak up once, on something you'd normally let pass. Ask the question you'd usually skip. Name the error before someone else does.

Notice how often you rehearse before you speak. Cut the rehearsal in half, once, and see what happens. Say the idea is yours, out loud, the next time it's yours to claim.

Drop one of the extra slides. See if anyone notices, or if it was only ever there for you.

Act, for one meeting, like the version of you with more courage.

I invite you to reflect on these

• What has brought you this far in your life and career?
• Where is the evidence, if any, for your fears?
• Who would you be if you had more courage?

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Where this leaves you

Confidence can come from proving yourself or from no longer needing to. One of those needs a new audience every time. The other doesn't ask anything of anyone.

Speaking up will get easier and updates will go out on time. You will spend more time on what energises and helps you thrive, and less on managing a fear nobody else can see.

The sign was not really about the door. It was about what you decided to believe, every time you walked past it. Take it down. Nobody put it there but you.

May the next meeting feel less like a test.

Reach out to explore how coaching can support you in working past your fears.

Where can you be a little more kind and accepting of yourself today?

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