How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome at Work (Even When You’re Doing Well)

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt at Work

Ever had that “who let me in here?” moment? Yeah. Welcome to the club no one applied to join.

In this episode of Little Moves, Big Careers, Caroline Esterson dives into the messy middle of imposter syndrome: where self-doubt isn’t a flaw, it’s feedback that you’re stretching.

No toxic positivity. No “just be confident” nonsense. Just straight talk about:

• Why imposter thoughts hit hardest right before a breakthrough
• How your prehistoric brain confuses growth with danger
• Practical tools to shrink the spiral and move anyway

You’ll laugh, you’ll nod, and you’ll probably text a friend, “You need to hear this.”

Because you don’t need to be fearless. You just need to keep moving; even with the wobble.

Listen if You’re:

• Newly promoted and wondering if it was all a mistake
• Secretly convinced someone’s going to “find you out”
• Tired of pretending you’re fine while Googling acronyms under the table
• Ready to stop spiralling and start owning your brilliance, even with wobbles

RESOURCES

As always, you have your:

Bold Moves Brief

Big Conversation Starter kit right here

Download the Gremlin Check-In , your brutally simple, fill-in-the-blank worksheet to help you name the thought, reframe it, and take a bold micro-move anyway.

Connect with Caroline here

Sign up for the Genius Files - your weekly backstage pass to the unspoken rules of high-performance careers. Smart shifts that make you say, “Oh damn, that’s exactly what I needed.” 

Want to bring this kind of truth-telling, high-impact energy into your organisation? Let’s talk. caroline@inspireyourgenius.com

#careertips #careeradvice #personaldevelopment

Ready to make your next bold move? Grab the free Bold Move Audit and join the insider crew.

Stuck, simmering, or onto something juicy? I want to hear it. Drop me a line at caroline@inspireyourgenius.com - I read them all.

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00.12)
So tell me, does this ring any bells for you? You're smashing it, your inflow and then your brain slinks in like a shady party crasher whispering, any minute now they'll figure you out. Sound familiar? Well, welcome to the party, my friend. Thank you for joining me at Little Mood's Big Careers podcast. I'm Caroline Esterson, career strategist and sticker of brilliant people and your co-pilot through the chaos of real world careers.

this podcast, well, it's for you if you've ever done everything right and still feel stuck, overlooked or like you were shouting into a team's call on mute. Welcome to episode 6. And in this episode, we will name the fraud thoughts, unpack the funky feelings and figure out how to move anyway. Gremlins and all.

Speaker 1 (00:54.146)
This isn't a pep talk, it's a practical guide with a glitch in its eye. Smart moves, slight chaos, welcome to little moves, big careers.

Speaker 1 (01:07.352)
You know what I've noticed? Confidence is often sold like it's a birthright. Like some people just are confident and the rest of us are left Googling how to fake it without crying in the loo. But here's the truth. Most people who look really confident to you, honestly, they didn't feel confident at the time. They just acted curious and moved before the panic set in. And this was echoed with many of the people I interviewed in my research.

Despite being fabulously successful, they still feel imposter syndrome at times. It never goes away. Whether you're just starting out or the CEO, confidence isn't a precondition. It's a side effect of trying things freaking out a bit, surviving and realizing you actually didn't die. The people you see as naturally confident, they've just had more reps. They've learned how to manage those wobbles, style out the nerves.

keep going anyway. And that's what we're going to explore today. How to build those same coping mechanisms on purpose. Discomfort isn't a red flag. It's a neon sign that says, hey, hey, hey, you're stretching. And if your inner critic's getting louder, you're probably actually on the right track. So time for a game we like to call a gremlin translator.

Now, welcome to the chaos. It's game time! Zero prizes, mild embarrassment, but hopefully...

Okay then Wendy, are you going to hit us with some inner critic nonsense? And I'll tell you what it really means.

Speaker 2 (02:48.142)
I'm up for being that inner critic bit of nonsense.

Call me worse. Never, surely not.

You're a fraud. Everyone's going to find out.

that really is a classic. How often do we all think that? But the translation is that actually you care and this matters. You might be operating a bit outside your comfort zone, but that's exactly where the growth happens.

You're not qualified.

Speaker 1 (03:21.986)
And the translation here is that actually it's just that you're doing something new. Welcome to the stretch zone.

People like you don't do stuff like this.

that's interesting. You're just breaking a pattern and that's brave. And also absolutely rubbish. There's nobody like you. People like you.

If you were really good at this, it wouldn't feel so hard.

Isn't that just like a classic shame spiral? You, my friend, are pushing into new territory. Growth is effortful. And guess what? Things worth doing are rarely easy. Unless of course we're talking microwave meals and blaming IT.

Speaker 2 (04:11.79)
You shouldn't need help with this.

the classic lone ranger gremlin. You've been conditioned to think that competence means silence. But the real pros, they just ask better questions. Support is not a weakness, it's a strategy. And also, why suffer alone when you can do it in Teams chat?

So if your gremlin's talking to you, you can see kind of actually it's good news. It means you're doing something that it hasn't seen before. That's all. It's not failure. It's your new frontier. Time for brain food, the research bit. But make it cheeky. Because we all love evidence, especially when it supports our own experiences. So let's talk about imposter syndrome.

Not as a mindset issue, but as an evolutionary masterpiece. You weren't wired to walk into a room thinking, whoa, I've got this. You were wired to walk into a cave thinking, is this safe? Am I welcome? Will I die here? Because back in the day, being a little bit anxious, a little bit unsure, and a bit on edge actually kept you alive. The humans who second guessed themselves, they didn't eat the shiny red poisonous berries.

The ones who asked, they liked me, stayed in the tribe and didn't get left behind with the wolves. And the ones who obsessed over status, standing and what others might think, well, they actually secured the best spots by the fire. So if you've ever felt like you don't belong, like you're faking it, or like everyone else is more qualified, it's not weakness, it's ancestral wifi. You know what? You're not in the caves anymore. You're in a meeting. You're pitching.

Speaker 1 (06:02.744)
presenting, showing up in a world where confidence counts more than caution. And while your brain is trying to protect you, instead, it might just be holding you back. So today we're not going to fight imposter syndrome, we're going to understand it, respect the roots and then rewire your response. Because you've evolved. Now it's time to act like it. Imposter syndrome isn't just self doubt, it's survival wiring, pretending to be a performance issue.

Humans are hardwired to prioritise threat over opportunity. It's all part of our evolutionary survival kit. Psychologists call this negativity bias, the tendency to focus on what's wrong, risky or not good enough. It once kept us from being eaten, but today it often just stops us applying for the job. And to make things even more interesting, Dr. Anders Hansen gives us a visual gut punch in his book, The Attention Fix.

I want you to imagine 10,000 dots. Each dot represents a generation of humans. According to Hansen, only the last eight dots have known electricity and cars. Three dots have lived with computers. And just one single dot has had smartphones, emails and Slack notifications. Our brains have evolved over millennia for hunting, gathering and tribal dynamics, not for corporate ladders and meeting invites.

We're trying to do modern life with prehistoric wiring. So of course we scan for danger. Of course we assume we're not enough. That feeling isn't personal. It's just prehistoric. And now we know that we can start working with our brains instead of against them. That's the real key to taking back control. and listen up. This is really important. Imposter syndrome spikes when you're doing something right. When you've grown.

when you've already earned your seat. When the old story doesn't quite fit anymore and your brain's freaking out about the new one. You don't get rid of imposter syndrome, but you can build the muscle to move through it. As Brenny Brown points out, she's the queen of courage and patron saint of vulnerability. You can't engineer resilience in the moment of crisis. You have to build it beforehand. She talks about taking small, deliberate risks.

Speaker 1 (08:27.054)
practicing discomfort around our normal times, choosing situations that stretch you just enough because that's how you build what she calls your resilience gym. That's how you take the sting out of imposter syndrome by deliberately stepping into the stretch zone and proving to yourself again and again and again if necessary that you can handle it. And each time you do, you start to kind of quiet that voice in your head.

You start to shrink the panic and you grow the kind of confidence that's earned, not faked. Because coping beats confidence every time and resilience is what lets you keep moving. Even when your brain says, who let you in? Good question. You're not the only one asking it. So let's go into this week's Listener Dilemma because it turns out everyone's trying to figure out how to sound confident without Googling acronyms under the table.

Time for What Would Caro Do? Like a career agony aunt but with less cardigan and more fire. Because sometimes you don't need permission, you just need better advice. So this week's letter came in hot, hot. It's from promoted but maybe still pretending from Pont-y-Pried.

Dear Aunty Caro, I've just been promoted but I feel like I'm pretending. I don't feel confident in front of senior people and I'm constantly worrying they'll realise I'm not as smart as they thought. Help me please?

My friend, let me tell you something. No one gets promoted because they're perfect. They get promoted because someone saw potential. And now it's time for you to see it too. You don't need to feel confident. You need to act curious. And here's the real flex. Those people are really winging it. The difference is the ones who keep showing up, keep learning and keep trying, they stop waiting for permission to belong. They just get on with it anyway.

Speaker 1 (10:32.332)
I once coached this brilliant young guy. was sharp, thoughtful and quietly exceptional actually. His boss was seriously impressed, but he just didn't see it. Every day he'd spiral, questioning everything, panicking. Certainly he was failing. It got so bad he actually nearly quit until one day his boss pulled him aside, not to scold him, but to thank him. She told him, you're in a team that's steady. They're good, but they're comfortable.

comfortable to the point of stagnation. And then you came in asking all these innocent little questions and suddenly people started thinking again. So what he saw as doubt, she actually saw as leadership. What he thought made him a burden actually made him the catalyst for change. She looked him dead in the eye and said, don't stop asking questions. You're stretching us all. That conversation changed everything. He stayed and he led, not by pretending to know all the answers.

by having the courage to keep asking. So here's the question. What if the thing that you're overthinking is the thing that they actually value most? What question have you been holding back because you're worried it sounded naive and it might actually be the spark your teens been waiting for? Hmm, think on that. So let's explore three more ways to tackle those annoying gremlins with our quick fire career moves.

Speaker 1 (12:00.014)
Small shifts, sharp impact. These are quick-fire career moves. Real things you can do before your next coffee refill. OK, so let's turn those funky feelings into forward motion. Right, if your gremlin's on the mic and your brain's doing the cha-cha slide of self-doubt, here are a few little bold moves to keep you grounded. Number one, say it out loud.

Poster syndrome feeds on silence the moment you name it. Even if it's to your dog, it starts losing power. Your job is to interpret the pattern. Say it. Laugh at it. Shrink it. And yeah, talking to the dogs count. They're elite listeners. I talk to mine every day. They cock the heads, roll over on the sides for a tummy rub and then nudge me for treats. They don't solve my problems. I'm not pretending they do. But for me, they just let me get it out of my head.

And that's often all it takes. Number two, revisit your receipts. You have collateral experiences that are already in the bag. Take time to count these up. That win you brushed off, the thank you email you forgot to print. Start a brag folder or as we call it, a happy file. It's kept on our desktops. We share these things monthly to remind us of those, eek, we actually did it moments.

You know, your imposter thoughts don't stand a chance against that hard proof of evidence. Pull it out when the gremlin gets noisy. You've earned those receipts. Number three, move with the fear. Stop waiting to feel ready. Know that confidence comes after the action, not before. So stretch yourself a little, then again and again. You remember us talking about Brenny Brown earlier?

This is her principle in action, that tiny wobble, that's growth in motion. Your gremlin's volume goes down the more you move forward anyway. So now onto my favourite cringe-worthy moment. This podcast is so cathartic for me. It allows me to put all my errrr

Speaker 1 (14:20.238)
So let's fix that before someone puts it on a mug. So it's time for Career Quote Crime and I have two gems for you this week. I just couldn't decide. First up we have

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Cool slogan, useless advice. We're not here to feel the fear. We're here to work with it, to name it, understand it, strategize around it and still do the thing because fear isn't the enemy. Paralysis is. And the next one I've got for you is really personal. I'll tell you why after I've laid myself bare and shared it with you. You ready for a blooper?

Make it! Make it!

kill you. Sounds really cute, doesn't it? Like something you'd see stitched on a decorative cushion in a networking brunch cafe. But here's the thing, it's a trap. A stylish, competence-themed trap. Because when you tell yourself you're faking it, your brain hears, I don't belong here. You're not faking it, you're learning. You're not a fraud. You're just not quite fluent yet. It's a big difference.

Speaker 1 (15:29.89)
So this is a personal story I like to call the Dunhill Cardi Chronicles. When Billy and I were in our early 20s, we went to see Tony Robbins, not just to see him, there was also firework, firewalking involved because well, obviously you do, don't you? Now I've done several of his programmes since and I've learned a ton from him. But on this occasion, fresh off the coal walk and high on fumes of ambition, we took his fake it until you make it mantra very literally.

Billy, who normally wore supermarket shirts from Tesco's or Sainsbury's, it's a little bit fuzzy, was suddenly in Bloomingdale's buying a £400 Dunhill cardigan. And that was the cost 25 years ago dread to think cabbage would cost now. Black, zip up, very snazzy, genuinely stunning. He looked like the kind of man who ran an international hedge fund and meditated. The problem was he never wore it. To this day, it's still hanging in the wardrobe.

on dust gently collecting like the remains of an extinct version of himself that we were trying to summon. So if anyone wants a Dunhill Cardi size L for a mere, shall we say, tenner plus postage, give me a shout. I'll grab a photo of me in it and pop it on social so you can see this stunning museum piece. So here's the thing, you don't need to spend £400 on a Cardi to prove you belong. You don't need to fake anything.

You're not an imposter, you're work in progress. We're all work in progress and progress, my friend, is a look that always fits. So let's close down this episode with a few words of encouragement. You're not a fraud. You're just growing. That voice in your head? It's scared because you're evolving and evolution is messy. But mess is where the magic lives. So take the step. Say the thing. Be seen.

Your seat at the table isn't a fluke. It's a fact and the only thing you're faking is how chill you look doing it. Until next time.

Speaker 1 (17:41.966)
So that's a wrap on this episode of Little Moves Big Careers, where progress isn't perfect, but it is happening. If your brain's buzzing and you want more magic like this, head to inspireyourgenius.com forward slash podcast for the show notes, cheeky extras and the kind of tools your career has been crying out for. Share it, steal it with pride, start a movement. So if you did enjoy this episode, please subscribe, share.

and send me your dilemmas for what would Caro do and any ideas that you've tried to caroline at inspireyourgenius.com. And if you want to bring fresh thinking into your team or company, that's literally what we do. Drop us a line, we'll make it sing for you. Until next time, make the move, even if it's tiny, especially if it's tiny.