Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

  Hey, CS  Psychos, Rachel Provan here, and I am willing to bet  that you have imposter syndrome. Because if you don't, You'd be the first CS leader I've met who feels that way.  So we're going to get into what causes it and a few tips to combat it that you probably haven't heard before.

That's all coming up next right here on psychology of customer success. Stay tuned.   

[Intro} Humans don't think or behave like computers. You can't just run a command and get them to do what you want them to do. So why are you still basing your CS strategy based solely on logic?  I'm Rachel Provan, CS Leadership Coach, award winning CS Strategist, and Certified Psych Nerd.  I teach CS leaders how to build and scale world class CS departments using a combination of strategy, leadership, and mindset, using my secret weapon, psychology.

Come join me every Wednesday for Psychology of Customer Success, where we'll dive into why people do the things they do, what motivates them, and the effect that has on your CS strategy, team dynamics, and executive presence.   Make sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and make sure to share it with your CS bestie. Talk soon, and here's to your success. 



 Okay. Welcome back. So this is episode number nine, and today we're talking about something that really all leaders have dealt with at one point or another, and that's imposter syndrome.  So last week we talked about the Dunning Kruger effect, where if you know very little about something, you're more likely to feel confident in your ability to do it. 

Well, this is kind of the opposite. So the irony here is that true imposters.  Don't get imposter syndrome. Only people who know about their subject and care about those they're interacting with

 

actually get imposter syndrome.  So, where does this come from, right?  It's not just you.

Pretty much everyone I talk to has this. To me, that's indicative that it's more about our culture than it is about any one person and their abilities.  So, it can come from a number of things. These things are never simple, unfortunately. It can come from, family systems, your role in your family, and How others treated you things they said to you, it can come from things that happened during childhood.

Kids can be really, really mean. And that stuff can stick with you for a very long time and shape your identity. It can come from our culture. The U. S. at least is very individualistic, very you should be able to do everything yourself, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make lots of money and, if you need anybody else that's weak or something.

It's just not very, I don't know.  It's not very forgiving or very realistic.  Social media is, I think, another huge part of this. And a lot of times we don't think  of LinkedIn as social media, but it is. And like any other social media, it's a highlight reel. People aren't going to go on there and tell you about the contracts they lost or the time their boss yelled at them, unless they're well past it. 

They're going to show you, their wins. They're going to show you how well everything is going and tell you about how they did it. And that's great. It's good to know how these things happen, but don't let yourself think that that's all that's going on in their CS department. CS departments are messy.



And beyond this, I think there is a traditional picture of what leadership means, the whole executive presence thing, what it looks like.  It looks like someone really confident. When you picture a leader, you picture someone confident and there's a reason for that.

People are only going to follow you or follow anyone if they sense that that person knows what they're doing. And confidence basically is saying, Hey, I'm comfortable here because I know what I'm doing. You can follow me. It'll be okay. So that's what you're exuding when you have that leadership or executive presence, but that can be really hard to do when you've got all this chatter in your brain, basically telling you that you are an absolute fraud.

You got here by accident. What if you can't do it again? Um, so.  As we've discussed, your brain lies to you a lot. So I basically want to go over a few of the most common lies your brain tells you when you have imposter syndrome.  Tell you what the cost of that will be, maybe think that through a little bit and give you some other options for how to look at it.  

One of the most common ones is it has to be perfect or they'll know. Know what?  Know that you don't know what you're doing, that you shouldn't be here in the first place. The issue with that is that  you have to look at what your thoughts make you do, how your thoughts influence your feelings, which then influence the actions you take.

So how do you show up when you're telling yourself, I don't know what I'm doing. This has to be perfect or everyone's going to know.  Are you more inclined to go out there and share your knowledge? Are you more inclined to keep it to yourself?  Now, which one of those things makes you look more like a leader, someone who shares their knowledge or someone who's too afraid to talk,  right? 

In the idea of things being perfect, that's a whole other subject that we'll get into, perfectionism, because it goes hand in hand with imposter syndrome. Both are mechanisms that are there. To protect you, but they're maladaptive. They don't work. They feel like they should, but they don't.  So  in terms of perfection, You're never going to know everything about a subject. And there is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to learning more.  I like to think you need to know enough to be good at your job and help other people with theirs. I always love learning more, but sometimes it makes sense to learn a little bit more about someone else's job or a different subject than it does to know everything that there ever was about CS.

It might not even be relevant anymore. So beyond that, it has to be perfect. Well, who's definition of perfect. How do you know that's going to be the same as someone else's? And what do you think of others if they make a mistake or if they simply don't know something or didn't include something?

Do you think they're an imposter? Do you think they're an idiot? Or do you think, Oh yeah, I probably would have included this or Oh, Hey, that's a mistake. I should tell them, most of us are not  the jerks that we're imagining our audience to be.  Whether that audience is your team, the executive leadership team others at the same level as you, other departments,  everyone is not waking up waiting for you to make a mistake. 

So another one of these lies is if I can't get everything done in time, there's something wrong with me.  Instead of  I have all these things to do and I can't get them done in this amount of time.  Maybe that means I'm trying to do too many things. 

And I need to prioritize a little and say no to some things.  Most new leaders, it never occurs to them that they're allowed to say no. And It's one of the first rules you have to learn because if you don't start saying no to things, you will never be able to do your own job because everybody else is going to be piling things on top of you. 

 No is not a curse word. Okay. 

So if you should be able to get everything done  no matter what is on your plate,  how is that going to play out?  You're probably going to end up working overtime, you're going to end up burning out, feeling resentful, and, this kind of goes in hand in hand with the helper personnel, you want to be able to do all these things, but you're not realistic about what's reasonable and what you can actually do, and still be healthy.

And yes, you need to still be healthy, or you're going to hate everyone around you. And. If you keep moving at that pace, trying to do more than is reasonable,  not only are you going to burn out, you're going to start making mistakes, big ones. So it's better to decide, you know what? I can't work on this right now, or this is too much right now.

It has to go a little bit later than insist that you're Superman or Superwoman and make a mistake. Because of it.  So  really, if you're believing that you can't get everything done in time, there really isn't anything wrong with you. It just means you need to reprioritize.  Another part of it, I know I've felt this one is if I don't do it perfectly, there will be consequences for others.

I felt this way recently when I got sick. There were people I was supposed to meet with, people I was supposed to help classes I was supposed to run, people I was supposed to help with with interviews, and you  Bottom line, we're human, and I physically couldn't. It's a little bit easier when you physically can't than when you have to actually do battle with your brain and say, This isn't realistic in the moment. 

But  what it did help me realize is the world does not stop spinning simply because I can't do everything I feel like I need to do in that moment. Everybody. Finds a way to get things done to move forward. No one gave me a particularly hard time about it, which makes sense. I couldn't really do anything.

But even when you can, saying to someone, I can't do this right now. I'm so sorry. I'd rather.  Tell you I can't do it than do it and do a bad job for you. That wouldn't be fair to you, ? So

I don't know, for me, letting people down is something that feels really bad.  So  you have to change that language. about it. Because when you feel like you're letting people down, you're going to be kicking yourself and saying all sorts of mean and nasty things to yourself. And that's not going to lead anywhere good.

The more you insult yourself, it's just a vicious cycle. And that is not how people become successful. You don't mentally beat yourself into success. Something else that pops up a lot is it doesn't count if others helped me. Now I hear this a lot when I'm working on people's resumes with them and  I'll ask them, have you ever built playbooks or have you ever worked on a customer journey?

Like, well, I did with three other people, it's then, yes, you did that. You don't have to say, I built playbooks with three other people. You can say, I built playbooks. Don't lie, don't say, I built the entire playbook, system by myself. But you can say, experience building playbooks and risk, risk expansion and advocacy.

Just say what you've done. You don't have to say, Oh, I didn't do it by myself. It still counts.

And just as a reminder, collaboration is a good thing. It's not a weakness.

 A tricky one can be where if you're doing something that doesn't come naturally to you.  And it seems to come naturally to a lot of other people,  it can feel like having to work extra hard on this or not being great at this one part of the job means that I'm not qualified. 

Now,  some things are going to come easy to you, and some things are going to take work. We've talked about a growth mindset.  It really is that, yes, you can learn these things. If you choose to, if you decide it's worth it and you work hard, yes, you can learn them. Guess what? There's also another option.

I definitely felt a lot of imposter syndrome early on in my leadership career. For many things, but definitely around data.  Because I am not someone who's great at pivoting tables and spotting patterns, things like that. I can read data once you've,  got  the reports, that's fine.

But  while I can do all the analysis part of it, You probably don't want me to. It's going to take what's what takes somebody else like an hour. It's going to take me 13 hours. I'm going to hate every second and I'm probably going to make mistakes because my brain just doesn't work that way. I have a little bit of dyslexia, but that's not even really even if I didn't.

I'm good at some things. I'm not so good at others. That doesn't mean I'm a terrible customer success leader. Yes, you need data. So you know what I do? I ask someone else on my team who's a rock star at data. I tell them what information I want. I talk with them a little bit about what's possible, how they're going to do it.

And I give them their chance to shine. Because guess what? There are a lot of people who love working with data, who think it's fun, who shine naturally at that.  That is not my zone of genius. Great. This works out well for both of us. They get a chance to shine. I don't have to be miserable, but you better believe when I'm showing that to executive leaders or really to anyone else, to my own team, I am going to shout out that person did the work on the data and look at what a fantastic job they did.

So making sure you give credit.  is important.  But don't be afraid of delegating. Not doing something yourself that you are bad at  that's good leadership. You're not supposed to be doing everything yourself. That's why you're in charge of other people. 

How about this one? I have to know how to do everything associated with this job, or I shouldn't be in it.  Would you want your direct reports not asking questions if they didn't know something?   Would it mean they were incompetent if they did ask a question?

As a leader, you set the tone. You'll hear me say that a lot because it's  something I deeply believe in.  You have to do the scary things first, meaning you have to be okay with asking a question. You have to be okay with saying,  Oh,  I don't know. That's a great question. Let's go find out.  We're in the age of Google.

We can Google things. We don't have to just sit there and not know or go to the library. We can ask other people. We can look it up. Alright.  This isn't a pop quiz every day. You wanna know the basics, but if something happens to slip your mind or, I definitely remember when I was first coming back from maternity leave, I could barely remember my own name.

I was on like three hours of sleep a night. I certainly was not remembering everyday, regular terms. And sometimes I would say, you know what? I am just on zero sleep. I'm, the word is escaping me right now. It's X, Y, Z, that I'm trying to do and someone would pipe in with it. And my career was fine.

Nobody gave me a hard time about that. Everyone's allowed to misplace a word or forget something now and again.  But once your team sees you saying that you don't know something or that you're better at something than something else, they feel a lot safer. asking questions. They feel a lot safer letting you know what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are, rather than thinking that you're trying to catch them out in something.

Something I see a lot in CSM, CS leaders, you discount what you're good at because it comes easily to you, or you think it's a soft skill.  Now, it's important to have a mix of soft and hard skills. Obviously, but soft skills don't count less. The higher up you go in leadership, the more you need them. And what's interesting is,,  you know, while they're dismissed, while they're dismissed at lower levels, there are  a lot of men who are in CEO positions, CFO, COO, and they're all trying to figure out these soft skills that come naturally to a lot of women because we're socialized to have them.

And men are not so much. Now, and again, of course there are men who have fantastic soft skills, and of course there are women who are very analytical. And that's what comes naturally to them. I'm saying in broad strokes it's something I've seen in CS. But please understand that just because it comes easily to you  doesn't mean that it's not important. 

And if you think that soft skills don't matter, Go ahead and try putting one of the engineers on the phone with the customers.  See what that does for your business. I don't think that anyone will get the best results out of that because that's not their strength.

Just like putting you in the engineering department would not benefit anyone. 

 So something that's interesting about these,  nobody wants to think this way about themselves. Most of us know on some level that our brains are lying to us.

But the reason we keep doing it is because it makes us feel safe somehow. Again, this is a lie. But. If I'm thinking, Oh, I don't know what I'm doing,  I can have my guard up and I won't let anything slip that might make it seem like I'm not 100 percent competent. I understand why we feel this way. Just like you can't worry your way into being constantly safe. 

 You can't protect yourself from not knowing everything in the world. You can't fake it through fear.  It just doesn't work.  



All right. We're clear that it's not helpful.  So here's some actually things that you can do to counteract it because obviously just saying, okay, I'm not going to feel that way anymore. That doesn't work either, but there are things that you can do.

So  first and foremost, 

play to your strengths. Just like I was saying before with the data and the soft skills,  if you're not good at something, let someone else do it. And allow yourself to do what you're good at, and that feels a lot better. You don't even have to say, I don't know how to do this, I'm bad at this. You can just say, hey, I know you're really good at this.

Would you handle this? I really think you could do a great job at it.  When you are spending your time in your zone of genius, You're going to feel a lot more confident. Another thing is to write down your negative thoughts.  I'm not talking about just think them, identify them, note, write them down on paper.

The reason is once they're down there, they look a little bit more silly.  Actually writing down  Oh my God, I'm such a failure. And they're going to find out.  Would you show that to someone else?  No, because you would feel ridiculous. And just doing that kind of allows you to see, oh, this isn't a terribly realistic way to think.

It's shining the light under the bed for the kids so that the monsters disappear. So you can see that, there was never anything there.  shame dies in the light. So bring it to light,  make that thought stand out in the light, and you're going to see that it's silly. 

And then you can burn it, you can tear it, you can do whatever you want with that paper so no one sees your silly thoughts that they are having too. I guarantee you.  You can always question, would I think this or say this about a colleague?  Probably not. About a direct report? Probably not. How about your best friend?

Put anyone in the situation but yourself.  We all tend to want to think Oh, we have such compassion, but we hold ourselves to a higher standard.  And  the thing that really broke through that for me was when somebody actually said to me, Why, do you think you're better than everybody else?  And I was like, God, no. 

And they're like, so if you don't think you're better than everyone else, why do you think that you have to do better  in order to meet the same criteria?  And I was like, Oh,  that, that's a fair point. So if I'm trying to hold myself to a higher criteria than everybody else,  it's putting myself on a pedestal 

and it's okay to want to be the best. You got to pick your battles. So something else that I always encourage and.  Honestly,  this is one of the best things that you can do for your career is to have an accomplishment tracker, track your wins. All right. I have one of these on my website.

I'll link to it. You can download it.  This thing not only helps you look back and see all of your wins, on a day where you're really feeling crummy, you lost, a major account or your team did, or  one of the performance reviews or one of your direct reports said they have a problem with you.

It's really good to have some data to look back on that's positive and say, I did that. I did all these things on there. As bad as I'm feeling today, I am not what my head wants to think I am, which is a complete and utter failure, and I don't know why anyone allows me to be here.  It's really helpful.

It also is good to , keep track of all your wins so that you can use them in your performance reviews to try and get raises and promotions. And if you don't get those, to use them on your resume to try and work somewhere else for a better job.  So I will link that in the show notes.  Let's see, again,  social media, limit your time on LinkedIn.

I can't believe I'm saying that because I get most of my audience from LinkedIn. But again, it's social media. CS is messy. So  limit the amount of time people crowing about their wins because it's not going to make you feel very good.   Also bear in mind, just because you aren't the best at something doesn't mean you're bad at it.

Like just because Serena Williams exists doesn't mean that I therefore suck at tennis.  It just means she is a genius at it, and yeah, I can whack a ball back and forth, and that's fine.  On a practical note, I'd like to point out  most of the people that I talk to are newer leaders. If you're new at something,  it's normal to suck at it.

It's not going to happen that you come in and miraculously know everything and no one expects you to, whether you were promoted from an IC or whether applied for this job, unless you lied like crazy on your resume, everybody knows your experience. They know that you don't know everything.

They know that you haven't experienced everything. Acting like you do,  that is going to set off more alarm bells than you're saying, Hey, this is the first time I'm doing this. What's worked in the past? I'd love some guidance.  They really, no one expects you to be perfect, and no one thinks that you should know everything except you. 

And. Sucking at something at the beginning doesn't mean that you will suck at it forever. You're going to make mistakes. I could give you all the best advice in the world, and you're going to make mistakes.  Because that's the best way to learn. Unfortunately, it's the most effective way to learn. The things that you don't learn by listening, you tend to learn by doing.

  



And another thing I obviously recommend,  is get,  a mentor, get a teacher, take a course, even if it's not mine.  I mean, that's the whole reason I started doing this in the first place was because I saw there was no one teaching CS leaders how to do their job.  And it was taking years of people  making mistakes that were really painful, and it's just not necessary. 

And the other thing is, I would really recommend having a community. of CS leaders. That's why we do cohorts and that's why we keep it to CS leaders because it's important to be able to benchmark yourself.  One of the things that surprised me was in the first cohort, how much people told me it helped their mental health.

 If you're talking to other new CS leaders, it's like, oh, they didn't know that either. Oh, we can all find it out together. Oh, they're having trouble with this too. So now you're not the dunce of the universe. You are just knew it this like they are. It's always really helpful to have a community and not just so that you can benchmark, but so that you can support each other.



 And you're also able to hear from other people what's working in the real world. Versus, you know, something on a webinar that was recorded years ago, or a book that could be at a company that's at a completely different stage from yours.  Having  the wrong standard to hold yourself to  is really going to make it a lot more painful.

 If you're at an early stage startup company, trying to run a CS department like a Fortune 500 company. You're going to feel really frustrated and really bad that you can't do it because, of course, that's not possible,  but I see people all the time.  Saying yes to a job and saying, yeah, I can,  build and scale a CS department in six months and  probably not very well.

 But if nobody taught you how to do it, you would have no frame of reference for that. There's a lot of the blind leading the blind. So  you are much less of an imposter if you actually go out there and get the knowledge for yourself  and having people  📍 to check in with who know their stuff. People in your community, people who've been there before.







 And finally, you're never done learning.  This is just part of learning. If you think you are,  then you might be an imposter. All right. That's what I've got for you today. Thank you so much for joining me. If this was helpful to you and you want to supercharge your CS leadership and strategy using human psychology, make sure you're on the wait list for the next round of CS Leadership Academy, which opens back up for registration on February 15th,  in 2024, , get some rest, take care of yourself and make sure to share this with your CS bestie talk soon.

And here's to your success.