Turning Imposter Syndrome into our Super Power - Vicky Reddington

In conversations with clients, imposter syndrome has come up frequently.  Because of this Vic wanted to share her experience and her ‘Aha’ moment that enabled her not to overcome imposter syndrome, but to take advantage of it.

We had such an incredible response to Vic's original article that we thought it made sense for Sam and Vic to cover it on a podcast.

We would love to hear your imposter syndrome stories. Please do get in touch: team@amplifiedgroup.co.uk

You can find the full article here

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group, the podcast for tech industry leaders who want to build unstoppable teams to help their organizations execute faster. As always, we're virtual. I'm at Home in Bucks. Vicki's over in Deepest Darkest, Oxfordshire. And today it's just the two of us. Just the two of us. So we thought we would brighten our listeners' days with a little bit of a conversation about something that I know from previous chats affects Vicky and on occasion has affected me as well. So, Vicky, what are we talking about today?

Vic 0:43

Yeah, so um I'm really sorry for uh interrupting your singing, actually. That was rather lovely.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

It was flooming dreadful.

Vic 0:53

Um, we are talking about imposter syndrome, and we're talking about it because I wrote an article about it last year that we published, and it had a really great feedback. And since then, I've been asked by the Chartered Institute of Project Management to go and talk on the subject uh for International Women's Day, which is a real privilege and honour to be here. Wow, that's fantastic to do that, but it just made me think: if this is such a hot topic, does it make sense for us to cover it as a podcast?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I I think it does. I think um you'll probably find that this is something that affects a ridiculous number of successful people, and they probably all hide it pretty well. You know, I used to think of it as, and you know, we should talk about what imposter syndrome is, but for me it was always feeling like you were faking it till you were making it. How would you define it?

Vic 1:57

Well, it is, and actually, um, imposter syndrome is described as a form of intellectual self-doubt when you don't believe your achievements are real. But what I what I think it's really important to say to start with is you know, although I'm speaking on this for International Women's Day, this affects men just as much as it affects women.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vic 2:16

And I hadn't even heard of imposter syndrome until actually we recorded the podcast with Mark Templeton. And he talked about having imposter syndrome when he first became CEO of Citrix, and that you know just demonstrates at the highest level anyone can get this.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. You know, I I hope Martin won't mind me mentioning, but I think you know, he's had his moments of that, you know, one of the most impressive public speakers I've ever seen. But he was always convinced he was rubbish at it. He was bloody brilliant. Um, but he was convinced that he wasn't. Yeah I think it it maybe it was something that drove him, made him more successful, kept him drumming into us not to be complacent. That was his motion.

Vic 3:03

Yeah, yeah. Um actually it's interesting that you talk about it in the um with a focus on public speaking, because I covered that in my article. Um, because when when I first started speaking in public, I used to have to wear a scarf around my neck um because I used to get a really bad nervous rash. Wow. Um but I honestly still still get that not from public speaking, and I've you know stood on in front of audiences, huge audiences, uh thousands of people, and I and actually for me, the bigger the audiences, the smaller they are out in the audience, the smaller the faces are and the darker it is, the easier I I find.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

I can see that it's more anonymized.

Vic 3:57

It is more anonymized. Um but it there's there's a few things that come out of it for me. Certainly, to overcome imposter syndrome in that instance to start with, God, I needed to know my subject really, really well to give me the confidence, but also I think I realized over time that I also needed to be myself on stage versus trying to be someone else. Um, Lewis G, who we had on the podcast, gosh, um Lewis used to have the most wonderful way of presenting where he used to just lean up against the podium and it's almost like a fireside chat before the fireside chat thing became became a fashionable thing, but it you just felt like Lewis was just talking to you and he had such a great way of doing it. I thought I'm gonna try and be like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, like Evan and Natsa with your mate. Yeah, I remember seeing Lewis presenting early days of interacting with VMware for me.

Vic 4:58

Yeah, and yet when when I tried to be like that, I got really, really low scores because it wasn't me. And actually, my my presentation style, as you can imagine, well, you've seen it in secret, is jumping about on stage, waving my arms around, being all enthusiastic. So me trying to do low G didn't work for me at all.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

The presenting thing is interesting. Uh, I've um obviously done my first share of presenting, as you know, and I think I've always been okay with it, but maybe because of my time playing in bands and things and just being used to being on stage, but I had a bit of a wobble, it was one of our kickoff uh uh uh soft cat, I think. And I over-prepared, I was nervous, I was worried, I basically memorized what I was gonna say word for word and recited it, and it was my worst performance ever.

Vic 5:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Because I'd got myself in in a bit of a state about it. And since then, and you know, that told me a good lesson that there's a tension between being prepared and knowing your subject, but not over-preparing. And I know I've said the same thing about these podcasts. If we over-prepare it, it just sounds a bit scripted. Whereas if we go in with an with a good idea of what we're gonna say, but a bit more of a casual attitude, it comes across much better. And it's more natural. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vic 6:20

But being prepared, I I think having imposter syndrome for public speaking, you can use to your advantage because I think you know, I I remember on a couple occasions not making as much effort as I should. Yeah, whereas I think the vast vast majority of the time I've always felt like I have imposter syndrome, so I've taken, you know, made the extra journey to really be prepared for it, not over-prepared, but in a natural way. And and that's when it works to its best. And I think the the biggest um learning for me on that was I was asked to present at an analyst summit for Citrix. I was flown over to San Francisco and I was just there for literally for 24 hours. I was I was the I was the only female presenter, I was the only one under the age of 30, I think, um, with the executive team, and I felt like really, really out of my depth. But my goodness, the the stories that I had to tell to make my point, because I was I was presenting on innovation, yeah, but I was talking about the power of simplicity, and that really, really pushed me out of my comfort zone. So the prep that I did for it, not scripting word for word, because I think scripting word for word, my experience of that is if you go for word for word and then you miss a word, it throws you off.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

And that's yeah, that's the thing, you lose your track, and then you're trying to look back at your notes, and yeah, yeah, it's just a mess, isn't it?

Vic 8:10

Yeah, whereas having the general gist of the points you're gonna make, it it doesn't matter if it if you don't need to be word perfect.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, funnily enough, it's a similar sort of thing, I think, with with with with music, and some people might disagree with me, but I think music is better if there's just a little bit of live tension there. You know, if it's over-rehearsed and too crisp, it can be anodyne and boring, and you might as well be listening to the CD or the Spotify stream these days, I suppose. Um, whereas if the solos are a bit more ad-lib, and you know, you might throw in an extra little fill here and there or whatever, I just think it's better. It lives and music is a living and breathing thing, much as it's more human. Yeah, it is, it is. It's otherwise you might as well have a robot up there playing.

Vic 9:06

Do you know why? Uh uh, you know, this just shows how unscripted it is. But I remember going to watch Brian Adams in concert when I was at university, and I've been so excited to go. And then I went to school.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

You were you were so cool back then.

Vic 9:22

Oh god, wasn't I just um but listening to him was just like listening to the CD. There was no performance, there was no human element to it, and it was really boring.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Yeah, you know, consummate professional, very, very Chris. But you know, really it's Brian Adams plus a backing band of session musicians, yeah. Um, and you know, not to knock that, because I could I would never have the skill or precision to be a session musician, but that is about playing precisely the right note and precisely at the right point. Whereas for me, it was about jumping up and down on stage and putting a performance in. Really interesting. I didn't realise that Brian Adams would be quite Mahanodyne, but um I just remember it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vic 10:12

Just back with me. Yeah. So it's interesting. Um, just coming back to the point of uh imposter syndrome, that you know, one of the books that I've really enjoyed reading recently was Adam Grant and Think Again. And one of the main points that I really love out of this book is that he talks about it's nothing about best practice, it's about better practice because we keep getting better, and I think that really fits with the growth mindset that we're all striving towards now. Yeah, but he talks about there's a really he he the second chapter of his book is absolutely dedicated to imposter syndrome, and he talks about there's a real benefit of imposter syndrome, which is it means you don't have an ego, and yeah, that makes such a difference because if you don't have an ego, you are willing to go that extra mile and to to be more human in your approach in the first place and be more authentic and all of those things that people want to relate to.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Yeah, yeah, you're probably right. You know, it's it's um I wonder what percentage of successful people suffer from imposter syndrome and and how many of them are successful in part because it's what drives them. I think if you if you think you are good enough, you rest on your laurels a little bit. Whereas if you never think you're good enough, you're always yeah, complacency is exactly that. You're always, always striving for improvement and striving to be better, and I think that that pushes you on. So it ain't necessarily a bad thing, right?

Vic 11:49

No, I don't think it is a bad thing. I think you can really, really use it to to your advantage. But I also it's just made me think of people that have got imposter syndrome that don't go the extra mile, but they put on, I need to say this word correctly. Is it a facade?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

They pretend to be a facade, a front, yeah.

Vic 12:11

Yeah, they put on a front to try and be someone that they're not, and come across with an absolutely enormous ego. Yeah. And that that to me is the worst kind of person to work with because there's just a mask.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Well, it's a bit like business narcissism, isn't it? Where you know you're a narcissist is someone who is effectively very unpleasant and controlling to those around them because if they get they've constructed for themselves a you know a web of lies that supports them, and if that gets found out, it gets gets broken their entire world and their fragile ego comes crashing down. And yeah, I suspect we've all worked worked with people like that, haven't we?

Vic 13:01

Yes, yeah. So I suppose one of the things, one of the points we're trying to make here is it's okay to have imposter syndrome, and you don't need to put on a front.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Just ask for help. Yeah, exactly. And we're back to authenticity again, aren't we? You know, people appreciate authenticity, value it maybe almost more than any other character facet.

Vic 13:28

I think so, and I think it seems we've we've seen certainly in our business over the last two years with the pandemic, there is more and more stories coming to the forefront about CEOs talking about the importance of demonstrating their vulnerability and leading from the front and showing that. And I think if you can get to be CEO and be able to do that, you think it sets the tone for the rest of the organization.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that, which is important. Do you think it's ever helped held you back?

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Or has it helped?

Vic 14:12

That's a really interesting question.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

I think or maybe both, maybe both, right?

Vic 14:18

It's done both and in two different ways. And when we talk about public speaking, I think it's really helped me because once I overcame my childhood memory of my knees going up and down in fright when I was speaking um in front of the class, because I wouldn't say boo to a goose. I know you probably find that very hard to uh to believe now, but I wouldn't say boo to a goose. In fact, I say to my oldest schoolfriend, even at you know at the age of 17, I was scared to ask a librarian where a book was. I I would just so timid. But I found finding my voice wasn't about finding my voice for me, but if I had a purpose in business, and certainly Citrix really, really helped me find a voice because I had a cause. And part of my finding my voice was I remember being at um a Microsoft conference and the three or four hundred people in the room, and it got to QA, and it was the the head of um their enterprise business, EPG. Yeah, and I asked a really difficult question at the back, and I was like, oh my goodness, where did where did I suddenly learn to have a few?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

And where did that come from?

Vic 15:36

But I wasn't asking it for me, I was asking it for Citrix, and that really gave me confidence, I think, because um, and I had a lot of support and realized that I could tell stories, and and the more you practice at something you find difficult, the better you get, don't you? So um I think my public speaking, I don't think it held me back. I think me having those insecurities made me more confident. But where I do think it held me back, and I think one of the main points that I really wanted to talk about on this podcast was I was asked on several occasions to do bigger jobs with more responsibility and given the opportunity of fast track to VP, and I turned them down. And that I think I now relate back to having imposter syndrome, but there was one particular instance uh at VMware that I want to talk about because that role, I was asked to take on more responsibility on a fast track to becoming VP and being responsible for the entire partner organization. And I just looked at that role and thought, but I don't know enough about OEM. I don't know enough about all these different elements in the partner organization, I only know the resale piece of it, really. And for that reason, I said, this is not the job for me. I don't I don't want to do it. But what I've since realized is I didn't need to be an expert in all of those different elements. What I needed to be able to do was understand the power of team. And actually, my role would have been as a leader was to bring a team of experts together and make sure that they had the voice and they they were driving their elements of the business forwards, and I just had to look after them.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah, their curator, their pitch person, their their voice, their advocate. Yeah. Yes.

Vic 17:40

And if you think about you know, moving into a leadership position of Europe or a CEO role where you've, you know, you've been you've come up through sales, or you've come up through marketing, or on the technical side, you're not an expert in all the other different areas. And it's okay to admit that and make sure that you've got the right people in the team. And in fact, I was with a leadership team this morning, and they've identified that their top priority is making sure that they have talent that are really being given the opportunity to work to their best potential because that's how the business is going to move forwards, and then realizing that of everything that they're going to do, that's the thing that's going to help the business, propel the business forwards, is really great to hear.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

But you know, that mirrors my experiences in moving into the CTO role in SoftCat, in that, you know, I I I never felt that I was the CTO. We, my little band of merry people, we were the CTO. It was the brain, the SoftCat brain trust. Um, a bunch of individuals with wonderful ideas and great strategy, and I was really just there to bring it together to articulate it upwards to you know the board as to what we what we were doing and what the strategy should be, sideways to the other members of the director team, and most importantly, into the sales team so that they could tell that story. Um, and my job wasn't to come up with this stuff and wasn't to be the all-seeing eye on everything technological, it was to coalesce all these different streams together and bring it into a cohesive narrative by bringing these people together and giving them a voice that individually they probably didn't have. Um I've got very similar questions.

Vic 19:37

I've got a question for you on that, which is so I've heard you tell that story a few times now pretty consistently. When you were actually in the role itself, or when you were first asked to do that role, did you consciously know that that's what your job was to do?

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Yes, I knew all along that I needed the clever people to create those individual streams within their areas of expertise because the IT industry is big, right? No one person can know everything. Um, possibly Joe Bagley, um, who you you'll well know, I suspect he can, but and what one or two other magnificent human beings, but not me. Um and you know, I'm not actually directly from a technical background, so I did need people who had that deep knowledge.

Vic 20:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

And my role was always to bring those streams together into a story that basically the salespeople could articulate to our customers. Um to simplify it. Yeah, to simplify it, to make it understandable and digestible and not be about the tech, but relate to the businesses that consume the tech and the reasons those businesses needed the tech. So I always knew it was not about me saying, Oh, you know, we need to do this, that, and the other. It was about assessing what the options were brought to me by the clever people in my team who are the and continue to be the brains behind the softcap office of the CTO today.

Vic 21:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

So which means it was never me, it was always them because they've carried on being successful without me.

Vic 21:27

Yeah, which is a wonderful thing to be able to enable, isn't it? But but you going into that role, not having a technical background, it's almost the same as Martin Kelly when he took over running the technical organization for Citrix. So it's Citrix's internal tech. He said, I don't know why you want me to be in this job, because I've got no knowledge of the technology. And the CIO said at the time to him, we've got 600 people that understand this technology inside. Yeah, yeah. We need someone that can lead them and bring them together. And it's understanding that actually that's what leadership is. You don't need to be a subject matter expert to do that. You just need to be a leader of people.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

That's it. That's it. And you know, I don't I didn't have the technical background. The weird way my strained brain works is that I can understand and articulate this stuff without necessarily having had to have done it in detail. But that did mean that I needed the people who had done it in detail. And you go to make sure we were doing the right thing. Yeah. And giving them a voice and giving them the yeah, so really interesting.

Vic 22:37

Yeah. So I feel like that now at the Amplified Group because, gosh, the projects that we're getting involved in now, and we are only focused on the tech industry, and we are primarily focused in organisations that are going through hypergrowth. And the impact that I believe we can have recognizing that the tech industry is powered by people and it's how people work together that makes a difference. We're on an absolute mission to change what it feels like to work in the tech industry. Now that's a really plumbing big, hairy, audacious goal to be talking about.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Yeah.

Vic 23:20

And if I was on my own, there's no way that I would say that that's what we were trying to do. But because I am absolutely surrounded with people like yourself, thank you very much, that are able to give us the support and the guidance. And I know very well what I'm capable of and what I'm not. So I've got a session this afternoon on business planning just for us on an area that I know I'm not particularly strong in, and I'm asking for help to be able to build that out, to build that services because I know how to take a product to market. I don't necessarily know how to build a franchise model around services, and it's very different. And being able to ask for that help and get that guidance, I wouldn't be able to do that on my own.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah. The fun funny thing is, next time you have to do it, you probably will know because you'll have been through it with these wonderful people who do know it.

Vic 24:13

But it wouldn't be so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Vic 24:19

Yeah, so so really, you know, in summing up, taking advantage of the power of teamwork to help overcome imposter syndrome.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Yeah. Imposter syndrome in and of itself probably drives you towards teamwork in a way that thinking you know it all, or at least pretending you know it all, turns you into a controlling manager that doesn't let the people within your team do what they need to do.

Vic 24:44

That's a great summary. Say that again. It was brilliant. Do it again.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

So probably the fact that you have imposter syndrome drives you towards creating more of a team environment because it makes you realize that you need those people around you.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Whereas without it, you could become an autocratic manager rather than a leader that foists their view and their strategy upon people without input from elsewhere, which you know, as we know, as everything that we've talked about on all of these podcasts. You need the former, not the latter.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

So possibly, possibly imposter syndrome, much as it might hurt sometimes, is a bloody good thing.

Vic 25:24

Absolutely. As such a brilliant summary, thank you. I think that might be the most profound thing we've come up with on our on Get Amplified to date.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Well, there you go. There you go. Happy days.

Vic 25:38

Brilliant. So in this series, we have been asking our guests, or we're planning to ask our guests, um, for a book recommendation. And um it's just the two of us, and I've already given my book recommendation, which is Adam Grant and Think Again. I thought it might be fun to ask you if you have a book recommendation.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Absolutely, and I do. Um, believe it or not, I thought about this beforehand. Um so and I've said this many times, possibly not on any of these podcasts, but I might have done. Um, but loads of the younglings at SoftCat would ask me, and I would always recommend this as a starting point. And it's a bit old-fashioned. I don't know that it's necessarily still in favour as such anymore, but it's how to win friends and influence people, the old Dale Carnegie book. My dad did a series of Dale Carnegie courses. I remember him having, you know, the um post not poster, like a certificate up on the wall with a little you know, gold embossed sun star thing on it. And um, so he gave me a couple of his books, and this was the one that in particular helped. Um, when I was starting out, probably sort of just post-uni or maybe slightly earlier than that. And I think it really helped me, you know. I think without that, so it gave it gave me an understanding of how people should interact with each other for mutual benefit and for positivity, as opposed to just going in all guns blazing and trying to stand my authority on everything, which made a real difference, I think. And I think it really helped me in the early stages of my career. I think the stuff that I learned from that, because I'd read it so early, just became embedded in the way I did things. And to this to this day, I don't subscribe to the Lord Soral and Sugar finger pointing, angry red face mode of doing business. I don't I don't think the world needs that, it's not helpful. Um, very occasionally you might have to have some strong words with somebody, but those words are more powerful if you only use that very occasionally. And interestingly, I think I still use that stuff now that I'm sort of mostly retired and messing around in the garden and and that kind of thing. I still use stuff that is in my psyche from those early readings of that book in my parenting style. And you know, my I seem to have this manner of getting stuff done with Iris that everybody knows with teenagers, it can be hard, but a more consensual way of doing things seems to work for her, and I so I do think I carry some value from that into my personal life and and my my parenting life, and it I I would recommend it to people.

Vic 28:46

It sounds very practical.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

It is, it's pretty practical stuff. It is it's pretty practical. I think if a lot of people read it, not only would potentially they garner some success from it, but I just think the world would maybe be a nicer place.

Vic 29:00

Yeah, yeah. Um we like practical, don't we? Because practical, you know, you can I I love reading books where I take something away that I think I can do that, I can apply that, I can use that versus it just triggering my thinking and I'm trying to figure out okay, what what does that mean? And I want it to practice. I think that's why I love Patrick Lencioni so much. I think Simon Sinek is so popular now, and he's brilliant at painting this amazing picture of what the world of work should be like. Lencioni has those really practical, pragmatic steps, which we are now seeing the benefit of with the clients we're working with, actually. So, yeah, practical is good. Brilliant. Fantastic. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Right. Well, there we go. So that was a short and snappy episode of uh Get Amplified. And it just remains for me to say thank you for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. As always, your comments and subscriptions are gratefully received, and we'll see you next time.