If you’re wondering how to overcome imposter syndrome at work, you’re not alone. Imposter syndrome has become a bit of a buzzword in recent years, and for good reason—it’s something that many of us struggle with.
A recent study published by the National Library of Medicine estimated that up to 82% of people may experience imposter syndrome at some point in their lives. And it’s particularly common in working environments.
Imposter syndrome is the feeling of self-doubt, like you aren’t qualified for your job, and you feel like you’re a fraud. It can have negative effects on all aspects of our lives, especially work.
Learning how to overcome imposter syndrome at work can help you and your team excel to new heights and achieve your fullest potential.
In this article, we’ll explore the basics of what imposter syndrome is, why it’s relevant to employers and employees, and how you can foster team growth via strategies like building confidence to combat imposter syndrome at work.
What Is Imposter Syndrome at Work?
Imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon instead of a diagnosable mental illness, but it’s still reasonably easy to identify.
Put simply, imposter syndrome is when you feel like an imposter or a fake in some aspect of your life—in this case, that aspect of your life is your career.
Even if you’ve been successful in your career and are a consistently high achiever, you can still feel like you’re inadequate. It’s a consistent feeling of doubt, often coupled with negative self-talk.
Understanding and overcoming imposter syndrome is easier when you look at the most common symptoms, so let’s take a look at how it actually manifests in the real world.
Symptoms of Imposter Syndrome
- Inability to assess your own skills: Being unable to objectively analyze your own skills and competence, especially if you often think you aren’t good enough, is one of the most common symptoms of imposter syndrome.
- Self-doubt: Another common symptom is self-doubt, which is the lack of confidence in your own skills and abilities.
- Self-sabotage: If you find yourself blocking your own success and preventing your own goals, you may be dealing with a case of imposter syndrome.
- Fear of failure: Though being afraid of failure is a normal part of life, constantly being worried that you’ll fail and won’t meet expectations can be a sign of imposter syndrome.
- Being overly critical of yourself: Self-reflection and analysis are important, but frequently berating yourself over small mistakes and missteps can be another symptom.
How Imposter Syndrome at Work Can Impact Team Dynamics
With the basics of imposter syndrome covered, let’s move on to how imposter syndrome at work can impact team dynamics.
Lowered Ambition
One of the most harmful and impactful effects of imposter syndrome is lowered ambition. People with imposter syndrome often lose the motivation that pushes them towards their goals.
If you’re constantly filled with self-doubt and the fear of failure, it’s easy to stop trying just to avoid the failure you fear. While this is a very personal set of feelings, it impacts the workplace too.
Lowered ambition and motivation for one employee can have an effect on everyone else. It may result in reduced morale while forcing other employees to pick up the slack, which can increase the risk of burnout.
Imposter syndrome at work can have serious consequences on your entire team, not just the employee dealing with it. In other words, one employee’s burnout or lack of motivation may rub off on others.
If your employees aren’t motivated and driven, skill development can become more challenging.
Jealousy
Another potential impact of imposter syndrome is jealousy. It may sound odd, but it’s a common result of imposter syndrome. Those who feel inadequate often think that they’re the only ones experiencing this, like everyone else has it all together.
This can lead to jealousy of other team members, which can obviously be harmful in the long run.
Jealousy can spread like wildfire in the workplace, resulting in negative effects all around. It can lead to feelings of inferiority, create distance between team members, hamper communication, and more.
Poor Morale
We mentioned this earlier, but it deserves its own section—imposter syndrome at work can result in an overall decrease in morale among your employees and team members.
High morale is a key aspect of running a successful business, and imposter syndrome can directly impact it.
When self-doubt, lowered motivation, and jealousy start to impact communication, success, and goals, morale is likely to plummet across your organization.
It’s no secret that poor morale can have a multitude of negative impacts on your business. For example, one Gallup report found that companies with high employee morale were more productive and profitable than those with low morale.
How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome: A Leader’s Guide
It’s clear that imposter syndrome can have a significant impact on team dynamics, but how do you deal with a work-related problem that’s so personal?
Combating imposter syndrome isn’t easy, so let’s look at some ways leaders can beat imposter syndrome and foster growth within their teams.
Encourage Open Communication
As with most workplace-related problems, a great place to start is by encouraging communication between employees.
Effective communication is an essential part of any successful business or organization, and it’s necessary if you want to figure out how to overcome imposter syndrome within your team.
Try creating more opportunities for discussion, whether that be through meetings, events, or something else. Discussion opens up the possibility to talk about goals, achievements, feelings of inadequacy, struggles, and more.
These conversations can help your team get closer, understand each other better, and understand that they are as qualified as everyone else.
How To Talk To Your Team
In an episode of our Team Building Saves the World Podcast, three-time TEDx Speaker Coach Kit Pang shared some powerful insights on how to talk to your team:
“As a manager, how can you share examples of yourself? You might discuss the last time you dealt with perfectionism, the last time you felt imposter syndrome, the last time you got nervous speaking—whatever it is, your sharing will help your team share more too.”
When conducting discussions, make sure to listen and give proper consideration to team members’ thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Discounting their viewpoints can further exacerbate imposter syndrome at work and disincentivize employees from speaking up.
Make your discussions an open, safe place for communication where all can freely share their ideas without fear of being judged.
Build Trust
Another essential aspect of learning how to stop imposter syndrome is building trust. Trust is what holds businesses and teams together, but it can be diminished by imposter syndrome.
Working to build trust can be an incredibly effective way to combat feelings of self-doubt. It’s a common imposter syndrome activity to start overcoming it.
Get to know your team members—remember, don’t just think of them as the job they are in. Your team members are individual people with their own strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and goals.
Learn about your team members, find out what they enjoy doing on their time off, what helps them succeed, what causes burnout, and more.
Ideas for Imposter Syndrome Training
Team building activities like the MBTI team building workshop or our emotional intelligence for teams workshop can help you get to know your teams while improving other skills that will help improve your workplace.
You can also build trust in other ways, such as making extra time for interaction or showing appreciation.
Regardless of how you do it, making the effort to check in with employees, thank them for their hard work, and celebrate their success can go a long way when it comes to building trust and boosting morale.
Foster Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is another key strategy if you’re trying to figure out how to overcome imposter syndrome.
Employees dealing with imposter syndrome are often “checked out” and actively disengaged. As such, fostering engagement is an excellent way to start overcoming it.
Encouraging collaboration is a simple way to spur engagement amongst employees. For example, having them share ideas and work on projects together can increase communication, improve relationships, and result in more engaged employees.
How To Leverage Recognition and Feedback
Recognition and feedback are essential aspects of improving employee engagement. Team members who don’t have their successes celebrated or always feel criticized are more likely to burn out and become disengaged with their work.
Always make sure you take the time to acknowledge your employees’ successes, and make sure your feedback and criticism are constructive. Point out what they did correctly while also pointing out areas for improvement.
Remember, it’s best to avoid being overly negative and critical. This is especially true for employees currently dealing with imposter syndrome.
Help Team Members Develop Skills
When you’re trying to decide how to overcome imposter syndrome, helping your team members develop skills is incredibly effective.
The root of imposter syndrome relates to feelings of inadequacy, and helping team members develop their skills can directly combat this. When your employees are learning more, you can help them understand their abilities and showcase their talents.
Thankfully, this one is also relatively easy to implement. Offering more resources to employees is a great start—think soft-skill development, work-related training, extra certifications, or encouraging employees to seek development opportunities.
Creating a company culture that encourages growth and education can help employees get better and break free from imposter syndrome.
How To Make Skill Development Fun
After decades of facilitating team building activities, we’ve seen the impact that fun skill-building can have on employees, and we highly recommend it. We have over 200 programs in our catalog, so there truly is something for every team.
When your employees are able to let their guards down and have fun, they’re often in a good mindset to start overcoming imposter syndrome.
And when they’re playing games where everyone’s skills are needed to succeed, including their own, it’s easier for them to see how integral they are to their team and your company.
Remember, every little bit counts when you’re addressing something as personal as imposter syndrome!
Support Your Team and Help Them Overcome Imposter Syndrome At Work
Imposter syndrome may be something that most people deal with at some point in their lives, but you don’t have to let it bring you and your team down.
You can overcome imposter syndrome in the workplace and encourage team growth by building trust, creating a safe environment, encouraging communication, and working to support your employees.
Take the first steps towards combating imposter syndrome and get in touch with us. Our professional development events are a great way to connect with your team, help them improve their skills, and learn how to beat imposter syndrome.
