Why High Performers Feel Like Frauds

We unpack imposter syndrome and why capable people can feel like they are one mistake away from being exposed. We share real stories from leadership coaching and sport to show how self-belief, confidence, and pressure shape performance.
• where the term imposter syndrome comes from and why it often hits high achievers 
• why women may report it more often and what that might really mean 
• how promotions and new environments can trigger the “found out” feeling 
• a football manager story about expectations, spotlight, and fit 
• the mismatch between external evidence and internal narrative 
• attribution patterns that fuel low self-belief 
• confidence versus competence and the Dunning-Kruger effect 
• why trust is built through consistently good behaviour 
• a practical reframe: doubt as a sign of growth

Have a question, a comment, or want to find out more? go to https://www.beabetteryou.ca/

Podcast thoughtfully produced by https://www.isleofsound.ca/

Transcript

The Fear Of Being Found Out

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever sat in a meeting, looked around the room, and thought at some point they're all going to realise I've absolutely no idea what I'm doing. If you have, congratulations, you might have experienced imposter syndrome. And if you've never felt that way, well, we need to talk about whether you're actually paying attention. Hello, I'm Sharon, and this is Pete Johnson. I don't know what's doing again. You always make me laugh. So we're talking about imposter syndrome, and uh the funny part for me was when I first said this to you, what did you say?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Never heard of it. Don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Well, you do now that I've given you a bit of a uh a read-through of it. So

Where The Term Comes From

SPEAKER_00 0:52

the term was actually coined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Clantz and Suzanne Imes after they'd noticed a pattern among highly successful women who were convinced they had somehow fooled everyone into believing that they were competent. Ironically, the people who experience it are usually the least likely to be imposters. So this is very timely for me. I've just wrapped up a 25-person coaching project.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Where these 25 people were put on a high potential programme. They're all senior leaders in their organizations, either at the director or senior director level. They went through a personality and an emotional intelligence assessment, and then they had a 90-minute session with me. Absolutely fantastic. What was interesting though is that there were some, it was the women, a couple of the women on there who'd done exceedingly well in their careers because I always take a look at their LinkedIn profiles as well. I can see their career trajectory. Um, I talk about what it is that they want to get to, and a couple of them really said, Yeah, I feel like I've got imposter syndrome, feeling like they shouldn't actually be where they are.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

And I thought, well, I wonder if I've ever experienced that. But before I talk about my own experience, I'm gonna ask you, Peter, because another way of putting it, it it's really where is it? So women women know about imposter syndrome, uh, and women actually report it more frequently, but researchers think that it's partially because we're more willing to talk about it. Whereas men might say, I've no idea what this imposter syndrome thing is.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Exactly what I say.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Yeah, yeah. I just spend every day wondering when someone is gonna realise I don't know what I'm doing. So over to you.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Well, I don't honestly, and up until you mentioned it, was it a week ago or a couple of weeks

Confidence As A Business Owner

SPEAKER_01 2:50

ago? I'd never heard of it, but obviously I've experienced it, but I hadn't recognised it. I mean I've been self-employed like pretty much since we worked together in the 80s. Yep. I left in 84, that was the last person that actually employed me. So 1984, so it's 40, 43, 42 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah. So but when you started your own business, you didn't know everything, did you?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

No, but you just we when you start a business, you you you basically learn as you go along. Right. I never got up one day and thought I don't know what I'm doing, because I I knew the job inside out, but I didn't have anybody to tell me what to do, but I just did it naturally.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

This is really about confidence. Would you say that you're confident in Definitely Let me finish the question?

SPEAKER_01 3:39

I'm confident that I know you're gonna ask me the next question.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Uh confident in pretty much anything that you do.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Um I won't say everything, but when you go into the business that I went into and you'd be already already been doing it for set ten years plus, yeah, I was confident that it would be okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

So when you uh rode a horse for the first or second time, were you confident there?

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Well, the first time was on Margate Beach. And it was a donkey, yeah. So I wasn't that confident. I was only about four. But no, I mean you showed me how to ride, keep your back straight, keep your heels, you know, heels down and all the rest of it. If you're gonna fall off, make sure you know how to roll and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

So I th I think the interesting thing about uh about the psychology behind imposter syndrome is it doesn't actually affect everybody. Clearly, it hasn't affected you. Um and it it does tend to be, in my experience anyway, uh more so women that experience it. They they get into a role. I did,

Getting Promoted Then Panicking

SPEAKER_00 4:44

as I've gotten older, I've got quite good confidence in myself, you know. I'm happy to admit when I don't know things, I'm confident in what I do know. A lot of that has come with age, but I remember when I got my first uh when I first came to Canada back in '97 and I got a job. And then I was chatting with um the creative director at this advertising agency I was working at. I'd seen an ad um in the local magazine, I forget what it was called, ad week, I think. And they were looking for a group count directors, VP group count directors at an ad agency. And I read read it out and I laughed. I went, wow, look at this job, because the pay back then, this was 1999, thereabouts. The pay back then was 135,000 Canadian.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

I was probably on about 95 at the time, and I was thinking that now. Oh, so would I? I was thinking, wow, this job is incredible. And the creative director said to me, You should go for that job. It's like what? He said, You you could totally do it. So I thought, okay, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I went for the job and I got it. Which wow. And I remember the very first time I was and I was feeling like they're gonna tell any minute now, yeah, it's gonna be obvious that I don't know what the heck I'm doing. So went into a a a meeting, um, and we were do we were doing, I can't remember what it was, coming up with a strategy for one of our one of the clients, and and I jumped up and got the pet marker pen and was writing on the flip chart, and I looked round and everybody's kind of looking at me and stunned.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

It's like she knows what she's doing.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah. I was like, oh, okay, perhaps perhaps I do know you buffed it then, really. Well, and there's that whole thing that they say, um, fake it till you make it.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Well, I actually would flip that and say, fake it till you become it. Now most people say most people are actually more afraid of speaking in front of others than they are of dying. So they'd rather be the one in the box than the one delivering the eulogy. Whereas, of course, for me, I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

You do.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

But at first, when I first started do doing speaking in front of people and teaching, etc., I was concerned, they're gonna know that I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. So I do relate a little bit to imposter syndrome, and especially when you're in a new environment, it's like when managers get promoted, and you've got a great story about this, actually, right? But not

A Football Manager Under Pressure

SPEAKER_00 7:19

not in corporate, but football-related football-related story that people get very confident and comfortable where they are at, and then when they get a promotion, they can start to be concerned. Well, did I deserve this? They're gonna notice any minute that I don't know what the heck I'm doing or what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

So tell us your story. Yeah, well, my story is uh it's about the old uh Crystal Palace manager, Steve Cottball, who was uh you know, he played for Manchester United. Yes, uh, when he was younger, and then he got he got a serious knee injury very early age, like he was only 28 and he went into coaching. And his first job was at my team, Crystal Palace. And uh he spent nine years at Palace learning the ropes. Um, Palace is like a small club compared to Manchester United. You know, their budget would be like half a billion a year, ours was like 500,000 a year, you know. Wow, a massive difference, maybe a bit more than that, but anyway, so in he did his time at Palace and he was quite successful, and then uh an opportunity came about in 1996 to become Manchester City manager, which is another big team, you know, at the time. The two Manchester clubs, massive. So he took the job and uh he only lasted 33 days, and he was there, and he said as soon as he took it, he knew it was the wrong thing to do. It made him ill every day. He got up and went into work, he just felt ill, he didn't feel like he fitted. It the job was too big for him, it was too big a club, the fan expectation was too high, and he j he just in and uh I mean he he even some of the players noticed it straight away. They said like at training sessions he would often leave early and he never travelled to the away games with the team, he would take his own car because he didn't want to I suppose he always knew he wasn't gonna last that long. So he he he was way in above his level he thought.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

So yeah, he had the imposter syndrome, I suppose, but absolutely, and I think the the you know the sad thing about that is really is he was very successful at Palace. Yeah, the reality is I can't see how coaching a group of people playing football should be any different if you're at that level. You know, you're not if you're coaching a kid playing down the park is one thing he'd already been successful at a club, so but it was once he got into a position where the spotlight was on him more and the expectation were higher, he clearly had the capability because there isn't something magically different that you have to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

And he had a good career after that. He he only spent 33 days at Manchester City and he only took charge of six games, he won two, uh drew one and lost three. So his his win ratio is actually thirty-three percent, and he was there 33 days.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Oh wow. Yeah that's coincidence. Uh yeah. So it and the uh irony about imposter syndrome is that the people who experience it are usually the least likely to actually be imposters, which is that story. So

Evidence Versus Inner Narrative

SPEAKER_00 10:23

psychologically, it's essentially a mismatch between external evidence and internal belief. External evidence, I've been promoted, I have qualifications, people seek my advice. Internal narrative, I've been lucky. Yeah, they're overestimating me. Eventually, someone will find me out. So it's not really about competence, it's about what we call attribution. So people with healthy self-belief tend to say, I worked hard for this, I deserve it. And this is exactly what I was experiencing. These people I was saying about in the coaching programme, when I looked at their emotional intelligence results, they all had low self-belief. So when you've got low self-belief, it's way more likely that you're potentially going to experience imposter syndrome. So uh people with uh imposter feelings will say, Well, I was in the right place at the right time. Success gets attributed externally and failures get attributed internally. So we think sometimes people with that low self-belief think things happen to me, I'm not in control of them, but if I fail, then it's all my fault. So it's really uh an interesting perspective, and my I because I don't really suffer it that much, you know, there are moments when I've gone they're gonna figure it out. Yeah, but it doesn't stay with me for long because I've got pretty good confidence as well in my own abilities. Um and I do believe that anything you want to be like, um you made a a comment to me, uh, which we're actually gonna talk about in the next podcast, about me being highly emotionally intelligent. Well, I'm actually not, I've practiced it. Yeah, my my blueprint, if you like, it is is not that particularly strong in certain areas, like I've got no impulse control, etc. Luckily, you've got high self self-esteem, which is helpful, but to help people to connect with um building up their own knowledge bank of what they have done, and I would say to these people as I was coaching them, you know, I only have to look at your resume to see that you've been successful. Um, and people don't just keep promoting you. Yeah, I know there's the PETA principle, which is people get promoted to their level of incompetence, that's one thing. But when uh you're sent on a on a course, it was a course, and what they were doing with me was one part of it, which was about development, they were picked as high potentials. You don't get put on those if you're not capable.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

So understanding, you know, I've heard managers saying things like, you know, am I am I doing enough? Should I know more? Everyone else seems more confident than me. Um so and the interesting thing again is that confidence and competence are only loosely connected. Yeah, some of the most competent people I've met have doubted themselves, and some of the least competent people I've met had absolutely no doubts whatsoever. And of course, the simple well, there's a psychological effect for that, it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. In simple terms, low competence and high confidence is dangerous. High competence and low confidence gives those imposter feelings. High competence and healthy confidence is the sweet spot.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

That's okay.

Trust Comes From Consistency

SPEAKER_00 13:53

And a great question is if you genuinely are an imposter, why do people keep trusting you?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

You know, why do people got a trustworthy face? She looks like someone I could trust.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Well, obviously, it has to come to uh what actually happens beyond having a trustworthy face, whatever one of those is. It has to be in what what you do. People don't trust you to do things if if you're inconsistent. You know, one of the things I talk about in one of my workshops is always aim for consistency, but consistently good, not consistently bad. One of the worst things for a manager to be is inconsistent. I once worked for two different managers. One of them was an asshole all day long. The other one would come in some days, he'd be really happy, talkative, friendly. The next day he'd be really grumpy. Well, I actually preferred working with the first one because at least I knew what I got.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

But and I use that story to help people understand because you know, when you're a manager, you you're you're setting a tone. And if you're not confident in what you're doing and it's coming out via your emotions like that, then you're not gonna set no one's gonna trust you, even if you've got that trustworthy face. Um,

Final Takeaways On Self Doubt

SPEAKER_00 15:17

so I think that's really all we have time for.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

So my honest takeaway uh of the week, really, is if you have that imposter syndrome, think about this. Managers have promoted you, clients have hired you, teams listen to you, people ask for your advice. At some point, it becomes statistically unlikely that you fooled everyone for decades. Perhaps imposter syndrome isn't evidence that you don't belong, perhaps it's evidence that you're growing faster than your self-belief can keep up. Over to you, Peter.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Okay, so I'll keep it short and sweet again. Um, I think everybody should at some point have self-doubt. Makes you a better person. Okay. But um, if someone's paying you 150 grand a year, don't don't try not let too many people know that you've got self-doubt and just crack on with it.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Fake it till you become it, eh?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Excellent. All right, well, thank you, and that's good night from me.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

And it's good night from me.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Good night.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Good night.