The “Imposter Syndrome:” How Employers Unwittingly Nurture It

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Everyone is familiar with the imposter syndrome, even if unaware of the formal title. If left unmitigated, it can severely impact a worker’s self-esteem, productivity, ability to innovate, and boldness in solving problems. It can affect those around them, including family relationships, working relationships and a group’s unity of purpose. It may be a lot more prevalent today than it was decades ago.

Introduced in 1978 in the article “The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention” by Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Dr. Suzanne A. Imes.Clance and Imes defined impostor phenomenon as “an individual experience of self-perceived intellectual phoniness (fraud).” According to the study, ”… researchers investigated the prevalence of this internal experience by interviewing a sample of 150 high-achieving women. All of the participants had been formally recognized for their professional excellence by colleagues, and had displayed academic achievement through degrees earned and standardized testing scores. Despite the consistent evidence of external validation, these women lacked the internal acknowledgement of their accomplishments. The participants explained how their success was a result of luck, and others simply overestimating their intelligence and abilities.” …this mental framework for impostor phenomenon developed from factors such as: gender stereotypes, early family dynamics, culture, and attribution style. The researchers determined that the women who experienced impostor phenomenon showcased symptoms related to depression, generalized anxiety, and low self-confidence.”

Although this study focused on women, the phenomenon is not confined to women whose insecurity might have been more “programmed by culture.” For example, the imposter syndrome, coincided with the emergence of a rapidly changing work environment moving towards – yet to be designed – automation, yielding an increasingly unstable work environment and rate of change. Many perceived their skill base relative to the evolving job requirements eroding, but could not understand it or explain it since the future was yet to take shape. In the 1980s, we saw the introduction of more computer processing power that reached the desktop, changing the nature of work employees were expected to perform and changing the target jobs for which career, technical, and four-year models of education were preparing workers. Without knowing the direction and depth of the change, even those employees solid in their careers of 20 -30 years began doubting their future and the future security of their families. Today, the rate of introduction of newer technologies makes even the most savvy “techy” feel vulnerable to obsolete.

Contributing to this growing self-doubt were a crumbling safety net as companies discharged their pension obligations, employers chose, or were driven, to off-shore first hourly jobs, then salary jobs such as legal, accounting, customer service and medical. Wages were driven down as some employers, whose operations remained in the U.S., imported technical labor who were willing to work for less pay and benefits, often requiring the incumbent worker to train their replacement.

Academics threw fuel on the fire promoting “gig economy jobs” as if these were comparable to jobs one could spend a career in and retire from. They said “no one should expect to be in a job forever,” trying to shame a worker into believing they were not worth the consideration while they themselves celebrated tenure and could count on a secure pension. Many recently found out just how supportive the government was about these jobs when gig workers and contract workers were denied unemployment benefits and stimulus help during the COVID-19 crisis.

Employers and industry will realize the undoing of the American worker psyche for decades and generations. Not only did this phenomena affect each worker directly and differently, it affected their family as they brought the damage home. Children watched their parents live on the edge of insecurity for what might seem an eternity. Think of the challenges employers will have finding, developing and retaining talented workers. Many young people have decided that they want to break that cycle of insecurity and vulnerability, and it is up to the employers to prove to them why they should apply, stay, care and excel.

It was not uncommon that as the rate at which work and the workplace changed accelerated and the “contract” between the employer and employee dissipated, the next generation of workers grew more doubtful of the notion of career, stability and company loyalty. Many watched their parents “reinvent themselves” when scolded by the media as if their plight was their fault alone. They spent years in college courses to receive a degree in a new field, only to find that field was off-shored as well. Today’s students and future workers often have little to show for their pursuit of a college education except mountains of student debt and slim prospects of finding a job in their field before the cannot be hired because their skills are considered “no longer relevant.” And those lucky enough to find that job out of college may find that, sadly, their courses in college were not as job-relevant as the schools might have promoted.

Complicating the workplace and nature of work was an endless stream of management theories confusing the issue and not addressing it, such as the notion that in the future job descriptions would be obsolete; that organizational charts were a relic of the past. Let’s make the job and its relationship to the organization, its goals and objectives, innocuous. Let’s keep the worker guessing. Without knowing the tasks one is expected to perform and to what level of quality – the reason for being hired – and how this work fits into the organizational umbrella – to know who is giving the orders – can only create stress on the worker and the organization. Not knowing accurately how a worker will be gaged against the job-tasks and constraints to gain employment security, promotions, a livable rate of pay and access to opportunity would sustain a sense of inadequacy and vulnerability for even the most emotionally stable worker.

Dr. Clance and Dr. Clance believed that “The impostor syndrome (also known as fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) can more broadly be applied to anyone who doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. Despite external evidence of their competence, these indiividuals experiencing remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved.”

An organization without current and accurate job descriptions or an organizational chart, and a system to train, measure and manage workers to those important factors, is more lucky than not to have reached and sustained success. They may realize during an incident such as the Crash of 2008 or the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 – ? that their firm’s ability to adapt quickly to unforeseen changes in the industries, the markets that they serve, customer base and the quality of the labor pool is impaired.

The impostor cycle

“The impostor cycle,” as defined by Clance, “begins with an achievement-related task. An example of an achievement-related task could be an exercise that was assigned through work or school. Once one has received an assignment, feelings of anxiety, self-doubt, and worry immediately follow. The cycle accounts for two possible reactions that stem from these feelings. One will respond either by over-preparation or by procrastination.”

“If one responded to the task with over-preparation, the successful outcome will be seen as a result of hard work. If one responds by procrastination, one will view the outcome as a matter of luck. In the impostor cycle, gaining success through hard work or luck is not interpreted as a matter of true, personal ability. This sequence of events serves as a reinforcement, causing the cycle to remain in motion. With every cycle, feelings of perceived fraudulence, increased self-doubt, depression, and anxiety accumulate. As the cycle continues, increased success leads to the intensification of feeling like a fraud. This experience causes one to remain haunted by one’s lack of perceived personal ability. Believing that at any point one can be ‘exposed’ for who one thinks one really is keeps the cycle in motion.”

The imposter syndrome can manifest itself in the workplace in many ways.  The worker may fear that their colleagues and supervisors expect more from them than they can deliver. The fear of not succeeding may cause a person to hold themselves back and avoid seeking higher achievements. This, along with the fear of doing things wrong, can affect their overall job performance.

Some workers attempt to overcompensate by promoting ill-founded solutions, are more prone to make errors out of lack of clarity of purpose, and some well retreat become specialist in those things I feel more comfortable performing. Undervaluing skills and abilities can lead those with impostor syndrome to deny their worth. They may avoid seeking promotion or a raise because they do not believe they deserve it.

The fear of not being good enough can lead to mental health complications, in some cases. The person may experience: anxiety, fear of being a fraud, depression, frustration, a lack of self-confidence and shame. However, experts do not consider impostor syndrome a mental health condition.

To self-compensate, some workers may hone their acting skills to project the type of individual that is perfect for the job. If left undiscovered by colleagues or management, this may have a negative impact on the department and overall organizational productivity and cooperation. A superb acting performance may put them in line for promotion, creating a sense of bewilderment among the incoming workers who might see this as the type of behavior that creates a path to advancement. In the 1970’s, this was referred to as the Peter Principle – the concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence.”  If pervasive, it is not hard to envision the problems this would cause to any organization.

Employers cannot take on the role as psychologists and psychiatrists over their primary business responsibilities. However, they can be aware of the damage done to workers and candidates and try to accommodate as best they can within their constraints. One easy solution in line with the business strategy is to, first, define each job in terms of tasks, how those tasks are expected to be performed to give the highest quality and productivity for the organization, and have a clearly defined organizational structure that supports the company’s overall mission. When employees feel that they know exactly their role in an organization, and they have the materials and support to reach the level of mastery expected by those who have hired them and pay their salary, much of what is considered to be the imposter syndrome can be quelled, and excellence and cooperation encouraged.

It is impossible to visualize how a company would expect employees to reach the noble goal of overall excellence when most cannot define their area of expertise that is suitable for their area of jurisdiction. Yet many firms expend millions of dollars to encourage excellence and are disappointed in the results. It is easy to find similar contradictions in life, such as teaching kids how to be better drivers when they have never gotten their driver’s license or know nothing about the operation of a vehicle. Or providing seminars to pilots on how to excel at piloting when they have not yet completed their pilot training. Or providing motivational encouragement to soldiers who have not yet completed basic training on winning a battle. The proverbial “cart before the horse.”

If jobs are clearly defined down to the best practices task performance, this will give the employer and the employer’s business strategy the inputs it needs to exceed. When that level is reached, then it is possible to motivate employees to a higher level of excellence and is the pragmatic way to realize success in that effort. Once people have mastered their jobs, then it is possible to take a look at the overall organization for improvements. When the inevitable shifts in market forces, economic forces, availability of workforce, occur, adapting to those shifts can be made much easier, less costly, more cohesively and with more agility.

Proactive Technologies’ structured on-the-job training system approach develops incumbent, new-hire and cross-training workers to full job mastery through the accelerated transfer of expertise™.  To see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities or your region. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues. A 13-minute promo briefing is available at the Proactive Technologies website and provides an overview to get you started and to help you explain it to your staff. As always, onsite presentations are available as well.