Hello, hello, hello coaches and leaders, I am so pumped to have Dr or Bay Austin. On this episode, we are so lucky to have a little slice of her time. She specializes in multiple things. But today we're going to be talking about impostor syndrome. So I first would love to welcome Dr. Orby. Austin, and I'd love you to share what your background is.
Unknown:So I am a licensed psychologist, who essentially works as an executive coach. I'm a counseling psychologist. So my background is and adaptive kind of issues and processes. And one of those adaptive issues that we learned about a lot is career. And so that's why I be kind of focused my area executive coaching. I also am the author of two books on impostor syndrome. One is own your greatness. The other one is your unstoppable greatness. I'm very passionate about the topic, largely because I've looked at myself, and I really want to make sure everyone gets free of it. And I just have a real passion for change and seeing people really live their best work lives. And so
Becca Silver:I love it. I love it. And you know, you and I were kind of sharing our professional backgrounds, right. And and you and I have both dealt with impostor syndrome, and it still comes up for me, right? It's not something that's cured unnecessarily. I feel like it's more of a practice to, to notice, right and have strategies around. So for those folks listening, the first thing I'd love to kind of get flat in the room is what is impostor syndrome?
Unknown:Yeah, so imposter syndrome is the experience when you are qualified, experienced, credentialed, you know, you have the background, but you've yet haven't internalized that. And as a result of not internalizing that you fear being exposed as a fraud, in order to cover up that perceived fraudulent to either overwork and over function or self sabotage, and have trouble taking in positive feedback around your performance. And also hyper focus on negative feedback, trying to never make those mistakes again, and get caught very much in the imposter syndrome cycle, where it feels like this is just an experience you have all the time. As soon as you're triggered, you get into these cycles over and over again, around feeling like you're not good enough and having to overwork to do so to kind of really do.
Becca Silver:Yeah, and I can imagine those, the coaches and leaders listening, right, and it's these jobs can be very isolating. And, and you know, you're in a leadership position, you're helping other adults. And I should imagine those people listening, you know, could could identify with some, or maybe even all of what you just said, I certainly do.
Unknown:Yeah, and I think one, you know, so oftentimes we think about sort of imposter syndrome occurring and one of and thinking about as an early career phenomenon, oh, it only happens when I just started out. And that's actually not true, was the data shut? That's not true that it actually carry with you your whole career. And then as you get more senior and more leadership positions and more visible, the triggers can be more powerful in the sense that you feel like there's more, there's more at stake, there's more to lose. I have more responsibility, more eyes on me. So it's such an important thing to recognize that if you're still dealing with it later in your career, it's not surprising it actually can stick with you fairly well.
Becca Silver:Yeah. So I read in a book called Lean In about gender differences, and I'd love to hear from you. What are if there are gender differences? What are their gender differences in the world of imposter syndrome?
Unknown:Yeah, so I miss Do you often hear about imposter syndrome as Oh, only women have impostor syndrome, mostly women have impostor and that's wholly untrue. The research has shown that both men and women experience imposter syndrome. And the new research is showing differences in gender expression, which I think is so exciting. But what the research has shown to date is that for women who experience impostor syndrome, they tend to be what we consider counter phobic. So they actually will face the thing that they fear. But as a result, they're triggered by their imposter syndrome more often, because they're actually facing the thing that they fear. They tend to work and spend more time on tasks than those without impostor syndrome, and tend to, you know, be kind of exposed to it just more often because of that propensity. And then for for men, what we find for men is that they tend to aim toward mastery and take less risks. And so they find themselves in some ways escalating last, getting less opportunity, because they're afraid of the risk that they might take. And so they, they tend to be associated with peers that are less capable than they are. And they're aiming more toward mastery and kind of being able to show that they can succeed in a particular area, but that actually can kind of suppress their advancement.
Becca Silver:That's so interesting like that. I'm fascinated with the women's expression that we will face the tough thing, but in the reaction or the impact is that we're kind of retriggered right? Yeah.
Unknown:And that you're experiencing probably, in terms of frequency, you're probably experienced thing posture more often because you're putting yourself in front of a trigger moral. Okay. So I have
Becca Silver:an interesting question that popped up as you were talking, Are there negative behaviors that come from imposter syndrome that they found in research kind of consistent behaviors, it's like, you know, people experienced impostor syndrome tend to do this to maybe cover up, you know, that they feel like they're fraud.
Unknown:You know, there's a lot of negative behaviors associated with impostor syndrome. I think some of the ones that are the some of the most common is that you tend to engage in sort of intellectual inauthenticity. And so this is an experience that you might know something, but unless you feel like you know, it, 100% or you feel like, you're not going to shame or embarrass anyone by knowing it, you don't share it. And so we often then often high what we know unless we feel absolutely sure. And then we're also worried about the social consequences of knowing. So that's a significant experience. Another one is that we tend to pursue mentors solely for the the experience of external validation. We want them to be like, yes, you're on the right path, yes, you're doing the right thing. But mentors can serve a variety of roles. And mentors can be in all kinds of periods of your life, it doesn't have to just be in your junior Junior professional experiences, we also tend to not negotiate our salaries. So we tend to make less than other people, we also tend to be organizationally really loyal. So even if a central organization is not loyal to us, we tend to be overly loyal to it and stay around longer than we should. We do a lot of behaviors that are detrimental to ourselves. And sometimes we can do different behaviors that are detrimental to others to so
Becca Silver:that's so interesting. Wow. As I was listening, I was like, Yep, I've done that. Yep, I've done that. Yeah, I got a mentor to get external validation. Absolutely. And, you know, something that you said that I just wanted to highlight was in schools, typically, we have been putting quite a bit of focus on supporting early career educators or new teachers. And new principals can get some support some mentorship, but rarely in schools is is attention and money put towards supporting people a bit more experienced? As you know, you're doing off you go?
Unknown:Yes. Yeah, I think it's, it's really a missed opportunity. Because at every stage in your professional development, you're dealing with something else. Hopefully, you're always growing. And if you're always growing, it means you're always also not knowing and you need some support. And so I think it is really important to recognize everyone is in a different phase of development. Everyone needs that mentorship support. Yes. It's super important. It is
Becca Silver:so interesting. So now, I'd love to know, what are the internal impacts of having imposter syndrome?
Unknown:Yeah, so imposter syndrome is correlated to anxiety, it's correlated to depression. So you can actually, you know, it can increase your experience of anxiety and depression, for people of color, it actually is correlated to additional experiences of depression as a result of discrimination. So if you have experienced discrimination, you actually have greater levels of depression as a result of that. So it can have really huge mental health impacts. It itself is not a diagnosis, you can't be diagnosed with imposter syndrome. But it is correlated to a lot of very significant diagnoses that can really impact you pretty significantly. And one of the biggest ones we talk about is burnout. So burnout is a diagnosis. And actually, oftentimes, we know not only burnt out, but we're chronically burnt out, we just almost don't even recognize what it is to be burnt out anymore. Because we've just lived like this so long. It has a lot of really powerful impacts on our own well being and our relationships and the way that we function out in the world. So it is a really important thing to realize that it's not just happening. This phenomenon is not just this thing. Oh, yeah, I feel insecure. I feel like enough, good enough, but that it also has really significant mental health impacts to you that can last a long time.
Becca Silver:Yeah. And I actually used the word insecure and and I'm wondering if you could actually give distinction. What's the difference between being insecure and having impostor syndrome?
Unknown:Yeah, so imposter syndrome is a constellation of things. It's not just feeling like people often say, Oh, it's you have to have poor self esteem. No, it's way more than that. It's this. It's this experience, you know, that you are, you can be perfectionistic you can often overestimate others and underestimate yourself. You can, you know, engage in these intellectual, inauthentic engagements where you feel like you're not truly yourself in this moment, because you're trying to hide things. You're, you're often also very conscious of how other people are perceiving you can be very caught up with external validation almost over everything else. So there's a constellation of things and when people have impostor, they're like, ding ding, ding, ding, ding. It's not like oh, I have a self esteem but no, I'm not looking for external validation or, Oh, I have you know, a struggle with this. And I feel embarrassed when I don't know that but yeah, I don't do this because they feel all of the different constellation factors. And so I think it's it's a variety of things that are going on, largely with this concept that if you make a mistake, if you do something wrong, it's evidence that you're a fraud. I think that's one of the hallmarks of it. But but it is a variety of things that is not just selfish, you can have self esteem issues and not have impostor syndrome.
Becca Silver:Okay, that was a really great distinction. And you mentioned perfectionism, which I kind of thought I was like, I wonder if this is related. And it is. And so I actually I talk quite a bit about perfectionism, because a lot of educators and school coaches and principals can have perfectionism and the light that I really shine on it within education, we talk a lot about growth mindset. Yeah. And I was thinking, Yes, and perfectionism is a symptom of a fixed mindset. And, and many times we, in education, glaze over growth mindset and have incorrect definitions of growth mindset. But I wanted to highlight that, that, you know, perfectionism is a symptom
Unknown:of it, you know, so the root isn't perfectionism, per se, it
Becca Silver:could, it could, right? Perfectionism can come from multiple things. But yeah, if if you someone that's listening, is suffering from perfectionism the need to do it. Right, right. You might have impostor syndrome, kind of fueling that, is that I guess,
Unknown:absolutely, there's a really significant correlation between perfectionism and an impostor syndrome. And I think one of the things that I think is so important to recognize is that oftentimes perfectionism is antithetical to learning. And so like, what is teaching you is mastery, get get this right, get it right all the time. And it really doesn't allow you to make mistakes, and really appreciate the importance of failure and mistakes and growth. And that, you know, I kind of hoped nowadays that I'm in another position with my own imposter syndrome, I kind of hope I'm always failing and making mistakes, because otherwise, it suggests that I'm in a, in a bad place, I'm stuck in some other place. And like, you know, if you follow me on Instagram, or any of these other places, like you'll see constant typos in my work, not on purpose, but but I'm doing things very fast, and I've got a lot going on. So I sometimes don't double and triple check. So there's a type of, and I used to get a lot of heat, because you know, my audience is largely perfectionistic. And they wouldn't say kind of mean things about it. I think I've learned to realize like, they're in their own process of hopefully healing from their perfectionism. And I can't live like that. Because if I do less content will come from me, less effort, less support of the community, I need to be there in an imperfect way, or I'm not going to be able to support you, because I have to get it all perfect. It's going to be a while before you get it.
Becca Silver:Right. And what I hear is, you know, you're more committed to making a really big impact than doing things perfectly. Right. And sometimes it's a trade off. Like, what are you actually more committed to? Yes, you know, looking good, right? Because perfectionism is a shield. Yeah, and you know, need to look good. And it's like, are you willing to reduce the level of impact you have on other people to essentially look good, and protect yourself.
Unknown:And also to like, you'd be looking good on the outside, but you feel like garbage on the inside, you feel like garbage on the inside. It's not making you feel great to be perfect. It is awful. And so I also don't want to agree to that either. I don't want to look great on the outside and feel like garbage on the inside. I really want to feel good on the inside. And I'm a little messy on the outside because I can do right now.
Becca Silver:Right. Right. And that's, that's it's really about the I just keep coming back to like it. It's not only that it's the best that you can do right now. Right? Because a goal is never perfection. Yeah. It's really is about making a difference.
Unknown:Yes. Yeah. And really making the impact. And that's what I always remember about the work is like when someone has like, I've had people say like, How dare you write a book when you're when you clearly can't spell or whatever. And I think it hurts. But I think that one of the things I remember is all the people who write me and be like, who changed my life, like, following your book has turned my life around. Like, that's what I'm trying to do. Like if I if I spell your without the apostrophe Ra, you know, like, I don't think that's stopping someone from actually getting my point. But I think you know, if I don't share my point that stops him from getting my point. 100% of the time. Yes. Yeah. It's something that's been really powerful for me to learn over the process of getting over my own impostor syndrome.
Becca Silver:Yeah. Okay. So I'd love for my coaches and leaders to hear if they're really identified, this is resonating. Like this is me, right? I suffer from impostor syndrome, what can they do to help themselves? Yes, so
Unknown:I think one of the things that I really suggest is really figuring out sort of why it came to be I think that is really important because the reason why it looks the way it does today, oftentimes people like Oh, it's my boss is triggering me in this work environment. That's the trigger that's not why I got started usually got sorted from some other reason. I think also really learning how to kind of change your narrative and watch your narrative and, and really be careful about how you speak Think about yourself to others, and how you speak about yourself to to yourself, because oftentimes there's a massive disconnect from how people perceive you and how you perceive yourself. And part of realigning up that narrative is, is working on overcoming him. We talked about sort of dealing with automatic negative thoughts and really, really challenging them. You know, one of my favorite quotes by AMI Ray is, you are not your thoughts. You're the observer of your thoughts, and really learning how to observe your thoughts not as truth but as thoughts. And are they useful for me? Are they helpful? Are there other ways for me to think about this situation that might be more productive? And how can I read narrate those things?
Becca Silver:Because it's yeah, it's not the truth? No, it's never we've
Unknown:we've come to believe that whatever we think is the truth. And it's not, you know, and I think really is trying to look at the facts and look at how to how to understand something as facts, because one of the other things that there's a there's an automatic negative thought, which we won't actually talk about in the book that I talk about a lot otherwise called the inability to disconfirm. And so we will engage in trying to disconfirm the the the thought is irrational, we will always will say, well, actually, I can prove that my rational thought is true. Because like this person said, I wasn't good at that, or that the grab onto, like, these really thin lines that try to prove that that we're as bad as we think we are. And really learning to kind of get into a point of challenging that, like, is that serving you is that doing any good for you is like keeping you stuck in a place. You don't want to be in the first place. And so it's really a process to really contrast the facts, even if you can see them as facts, trusting them is a whole new ballgame.
Becca Silver:Yeah. And it makes me think of confirmation bias. Yeah. So it's like we make a decision. We have an interpretation about life, a story about ourselves or about life, and then we find proof that it's true. See, it's true. See, it's true, right. And we're filtering out all the proof that it's actually not true. Yes.
Unknown:Yeah. And I think, you know, recognizing that, you know, we're engaging in that and being able to challenge that really kind of opens up your world. We think we're protecting ourselves by believing this thought, but actually, it's actually narrowing our world is narrowing the options is narrowing the possibilities. But we broaden our world when we allow ourselves to be challenged in those thoughts to be challenged. And so
Becca Silver:yeah, well, this conversation has certainly been educational. For me. This has been so wonderful to learn all about impostor syndrome. So I'd love you to share with the listeners, where can they find you? You have amazing, I need to put a little plug in for her Instagram posts. They are so informational. Everyone's like juicy full of really useful stuff. So tell them where they can find
Unknown:you. Yeah, so I'm on Instagram at Dr. Obey Austin, and I'm on LinkedIn, too. So Lisa RBL, so you can find me I'm on LinkedIn. I just started a YouTube channel. So I'm also on YouTube. Yeah, and so like, I'm just always trying to share information so people can really it's accessible. It's, it's, you know, credible, it's based on research. I don't like just spew stuff. And so I really think it's really important to kind of do that and publicly share.
Becca Silver:Love that and I will put all your information as links in the show notes as well, so it's easy to kind of click and follow you I highly recommend following Dr. Orby Austin. So thank you so much for being here on the show and sharing your amazing knowledge