There’s a moment many of us know well: You’re walking into a meeting, stepping onto a new team, taking a bigger role, raising your hand for something visible, and a voice shows up that whispers, “Who do you think you are?”
We’ve been taught to call that voice “imposter syndrome.”
But I’m starting to believe that label does more harm than good, especially for women and underrepresented leaders. Self-doubt is real, but imposter syndrome has been branded and commercialized as a defect. This so-called affliction is now a diagnosis for ambition. A name we give to discomfort. A neat explanation that quietly implies, “Maybe you don’t belong here.”
In many cases, the people most frequently labeled with imposter syndrome, whether by a manager, a coach or their own inner voice, are the very people who have earned their seat through high performance, resilience and hard-won capability. Think of the first-generation professional with 20 years of experience who made partner, or the woman who accepted her first C-suite role on an all-male leadership team.
They may feel they lack the necessary pedigree or insider knowledge—despite having the performance, the resilience, and the results that earned them the seat. They are not pretending. They are not conning anyone. They are not imposters.
Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes introduced the term “imposter phenomenon” in a 1978 study based on clinical observations of more than 150 high-achieving women, specifically faculty members and students who were already demonstrating success.
Many of those women privately doubted they deserved to be there, a feeling researchers noted was shaped in part by societal expectations around gender. From the beginning, this label was applied to people who had already proven themselves.
As described in Harvard Business Review by researchers Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey, women and minorities are disproportionately handed this label by managers, by culture, by an entire industry built around fixing their self-doubt, even when they’re outperforming their peers.
An imposter or in a new terrain? The difference
An imposter is someone who misrepresents their qualifications or identity to gain access they didn’t earn. That’s not what most high performers are experiencing. What they’re actually feeling is the normal friction of expansion, including:
- Scope
- Level of visibility
- Expectations
- Politics
- Stakes
- Skills to build in real time
A leap from “I’m learning” to “I’m an imposter” can be corrosive, turning growth into shame. If you haven’t done something before, uncertainty is rational, not evidence that you’re a fraud.
When high performers internalize imposter framing, they pay a confidence tax. This means, they might:
- Speak up less
- Ask for less
- Over-prepare to compensate
- Wait to feel ready before going for the promotion, the stretch assignment or the bigger role
- Shrink their presence by staying quiet in meetings or being modest about wins, all to avoid being found out as someone who doesn’t belong in the room
For example, someone might spend all weekend preparing for a 10-minute board presentation or attribute landing a major new account to luck rather than hard work. They didn’t need to do that, but they felt like they had to.
The commercialization of self-doubt
Somewhere along the way, imposter syndrome became cultural currency. There are now books, dedicated coaching institutes, corporate workshop curricula, certification programs, and an entire industry focused on “overcoming” imposter syndrome.
To be clear, support is good. Coaching is good. Community is good.
But there’s a subtle trap in treating imposter syndrome like a personal defect to fix, centering the problem on the individual rather than asking harder questions about the workplace environment.
Sometimes the issue isn’t that you don’t belong, but:
- You’re the only one who looks like you in the room.
- The rules are unwritten.
- The feedback is inconsistent.
- The standards are moving.
- The expectations are higher for you than for others.
The new female CTO may be required to present monthly to the board, where her male counterparts only turn in a spreadsheet. She feels intense pressure. But that’s not imposter syndrome. That’s a workplace problem dressed up as a personal one.
A better reframe: “I’m not an imposter. I’m new to this.”
Retire the thinking about imposters and replace it with accurate language. For example, say
“This is new terrain, and I’m building the map as I go.”
“I don’t need to feel ready to prove I’m qualified.”
“I’m an explorer, not an imposter.”
Because when you label yourself an imposter long enough, you’re not just describing a feeling—you’re assigning yourself an identity.
4 practical tools for the moment doubt shows up
When that doubtful inner voice shows up, here are a few grounded moves to consider:
- Swap evidence for emotion: Ask: What’s the evidence that I’m unqualified? What’s the evidence that I’m growing? Write down four receipts: wins, feedback, outcomes, and impact.
- Replace “I don’t know” with “I can learn:” You don’t need omniscience. You need adaptability.
- Use a leadership script in real time: Try: “I haven’t encountered this exact situation before, but here’s how I’m thinking about it, and here’s how we’ll validate it.” This displays executive maturity.
- Borrow belonging until you catch up: If you can’t feel it yet, anchor to the fact that you were chosen, earned it and are here on purpose.
If you’re taking on bigger challenges, you will sometimes feel uncertain. That’s proof you recognize your own ambition.
For many high performers, the radical shift is moving away from the belief that they need all the answers and toward a mindset that being uncomfortable at the very edge of their expertise is exactly where they should be.
Angel Rogers is the chief customer officer at Model N.
This article was originally published in Fast Company.
