End Imposter Syndrome in Your Workplace

Summary.   

In a follow-up to their February 2021 article challenging the commonly understood definition of imposter syndrome, authors Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey offer actionable steps managers can take to end imposter syndrome in their organizations. Doing so will require work at both the interpersonal and organizational levels, and success will depend in part on gathering data and implementing real mechanisms for accountability. The authors call on managers to stop calling natural, human tendencies of self-doubt, hesitation, and lack of confidence “imposter syndrome.” Those who want women to lend their full talents and expertise must question the culture at work — not their confidence at work.

In February 2021, we offered one simple idea: Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. Since then, fixing the places where women work instead of fixing women at work has become a rallying cry for women of all races across the world. More than that, the pushback against imposter syndrome continues the push toward sustainable, systemic solutions to ensure work is a place where our most underrepresented employees can belong and thrive.

Since the article went viral, we’ve been asked frequently: If we’re not supposed to diagnose women with imposter syndrome, then what? How can workplace leaders step up to create an environment where imposter syndrome doesn’t exist?

Here’s how managers can make it happen.

Pivot the language employees use to describe themselves

We must take seriously the language we use to describe our experiences at work. If members of your team describe having feelings of imposter syndrome, or even name it directly, listen intently. Honest conversations about what it takes to “win” in your company culture can help your team members adjust inaccurate self-assessments. Share your own experiences of imposter syndrome and highlight the conditions that triggered that response, such as chronic underrepresentation, uncredited work efforts, and microaggressions. Likewise, probe your team members more about their experiences at the company that led them to discount their success or feel like they don’t belong.

While supporting your team members individually is important, take a “both/and” approach to meeting their unique needs while also making the organizational shifts required to address imposter syndrome at its true source. “It’s easier to set up a professional development program, put money into training, or to even pay for a coach or a mentor rather than think about the values, ideologies, and subsequent practices amidst the severe underrepresentation in organizations that create imposter syndrome as a mainstay,” says Dr. Kecia Thomas, an industrial organizational psychologist and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Developing structural solutions that address imposter syndrome triggers sets you on a path to helping make sustainable, systemic changes that can support others who share these experiences.

Be honest about the impact of bias

We must be honest about our professional landscape as it stands today: There are multiple models of leadership and confidence for men, but not many for women of color. Male leadership models range from raging tempers (former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer) to soft-spoken (Google’s Sundar Pichai), from sharp suits (French president Emmanuel Macron) to hoodies and jeans (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg). This means that we give far more latitude to a number of ways men show up and appear in the workplace. Leaders with underrepresented identities then find themselves walking the tightrope bias and approach their self-expression and leadership styles with strategic intention. Discrimination and bias shape our expectations of how leaders should look, sound, and act, making an invisible impact on seemingly neutral terms like “professionalism.”

“What does executive presence even mean? When 46 out of 46 American presidents have been male and straight and 45 have been white, what do we automatically think when we say ‘presidential’?” questions Siri Chilazi, research fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. A history of “think male, think leader” has been a pervasive barrier to accepting that women are perfectly capable leaders even if they express self-doubt or hesitation. We must widen definitions of leadership and the words we use to describe leaders.

“The Eurocentric model of professionalism is a cage for everyone, most tightly constraining Black women,” says Tina Opie, associate professor of management at Babson College and founder of Opie Consulting Group. Opie has faced colleagues’ bias for wearing her natural hair in the workplace. Jodi-Ann, who’s hosted webinars on navigating racial microaggressions for thousands of professional women of color, noted that the most common racial microaggressions among participants were about hair-touching or comments about their hair. Hair is a main signifier of racial difference in the United States and still stands in many states as legal grounds for workplace discrimination — a cause The CROWN Act is working to address.

The onus is on managers with employees from underrepresented backgrounds to spend time understanding that the frameworks determining these standards are already rigged against women, especially women of color, and likely reinforce self-doubt and unbelonging. Understanding the unique challenges faced by people who are different from them builds the managers’ capacity to fully grow in their roles. Managers cannot be considered effective if they can only manage employees who are like them.

For managers with underrepresented identities, Dr. Thomas acknowledges that “every move to a new position of leadership just narrows the number of people who can be considered peers or in a cohort. Layer on top of that being the only one just exacerbates that sense of isolation.” As we advise our team members about what worked for us, “we have to also be mindful that sometimes we get to positions of leadership as a reward for towing the status quo,” Dr. Thomas adds. All managers, including those who share social identities with people on their team, must help filter out and address biased decision making and communication to their employees. Bias isn’t just something other people do; understanding these frameworks helps managers address their own biases as well.

Reduce biases against women of color at work

When both of us entered our jobs at more junior levels, armed with recognized graduate degrees, we expressed our ideas freely, raised our hands for plum assignments, and expressed our ambitions openly. But as we encountered more pushback, especially from our white counterparts, our behaviors slowly changed. Ruchika started pulling back, speaking less in meetings and quietly guarding her ambitions. Jodi-Ann searched for reprieve across sectors and industries to little avail, until she, like a rapidly growing number of women of color, branched out as an entrepreneur. According to the American Express 2019 State of Women-Owned Business Report, women of color make up 89% of the net new women-owned businesses per day, despite only comprising 39% of the total female U.S. population. Despite wide disparities in women of color’s access to capital for these businesses, many find they would rather take the risk to escape from toxic and biased workplace cultures.

Our experiences are consistent with research. Chilazi recalls a year-long research study in a large multinational company where her team studied the most senior people in the organization. “Despite the fact that the men and women we looked at were incredibly accomplished, women systematically reported much worse experiences than the men, and lower perception of fairness of the organization overall,” she says.

Much of it is the “death by a thousand papercuts” phenomenon where women were told conflicting pieces of feedback, like, “Don’t be so aggressive but also speak up and pound the table, but don’t be so assertive and show that you’re a leader but don’t override other people,” Chilazi says. “Then, as they rise up the ranks, women see men in lower-seniority positions making more money than them, and at some point women decide they don’t need to deal with this,” she adds. Her study found that many high-potential women started leaving the organization — not because they lacked ambition or experience, but because the experience of cumulative bias wore them down until there was often a final incident that “broke the camel’s back.”

“Our experiences create us,” says La’Kita Williams, organizational designer and founder of CoCreate Work. In her work with startup founders, Williams finds that women across races “typically create organizations where it’s a priority for people to feel more fulfilled and more like themselves.” As a result, “we’re building different systems where people can bring the fuller version of their experiences, talents, and backgrounds and the way that they communicate to these businesses.” When we receive the message that our leadership isn’t welcome, it’s no surprise women of color start pulling back or even away from their employers.

Reducing bias against women at work requires action at all levels, including interpersonal relationships. Individual women spoke to us about how managers could help them overcome feelings of self-doubt by reinforcing their own belief in their abilities and chances of success, using phrases like, “I know you can lead this big project; I’ve seen you succeed before and I believe in you.” It also helped to expressly be told that they would be supported by their managers. Most of all, managers best supported women by genuinely listening to their experiences of gender and/or racial bias, and expressing the view that it was the organization’s responsibility to fix it.

Managers can also help change how other people perceive their team members. For example, if a colleague warns of your team member’s contrarian approach in meetings, you can easily assert the value of their social style by saying something like, “Contrarian? I would not put it that way, but I will say how much I really enjoy having her on my team. I can always count on her to think deeper about our work and offer new insights and perspectives.”

Be data-driven and rigorous

Seek to understand bias and your role in reducing it, but don’t stop there. Act on that understanding to create a measurable impact on your employees’ day-to-day experiences at work.

Many leaders hesitate to assess their workplace cultures for bias and exclusion for fear that it will upset employees or set expectations for quick fixes. Despite these concerns, asking direct questions about bias can help answer the question on everyone’s mind: What can we do? Start by understanding what may be the specific processes that create barriers for women and people of color, which may have been written off as individuals’ imposter syndrome.

As Chilazi reminds us, many organizations employ rigorous measures when launching new products, such as market research, multiple rounds of testing, identifying challenges and barriers, setting goals to overcome them, and collecting customer feedback. She questions: “Why not manage talent, inclusion in the same way?” Our organizations spend inordinate resources to know so much. Why not use them to understand how our systems and practices harm the women and people of color on our teams?

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