Author: Mike Urgo
Last week I discussed rejection and the importance of being convicted in your mission and values. The number one enemy of being convicted is imposter syndrome. I have read many posts and articles on imposter syndrome and would like to add my thoughts to the mix. I believe that many people experience imposter syndrome in varying levels throughout their entire life. For me, there are some things that I have done that have helped me work through my imposter syndrome.
To start, let’s look at the root cause of imposter syndrome. While this may not be true for everyone, I believe for the most part that it starts with people’s intrinsic need to be valuable or perform well. Most people that are experiencing imposter syndrome are not feeling that way due to anything malicious or because they have nefarious plans. It’s because they want to do well, but for one reason or another, they don’t feel like they are right or deserve to be the one to do the job.
For me, imposter syndrome started to really rear its head as I started to gain more and more responsibility professionally. In my day job, I was given additional direct reports and as a collegiate coach, I was nominated as president of our league conference; both of which were extremely humbling experiences. But on the inside, the voices in my head started to become negative and self-deprecating. I started to think things like:
Am I cut out to do this?
What happens if I mess this up?
Am I being set up for failure?
I don’t want to let people down.
As I progressed into these positions, I started to really take the time to step back and reflect.
Why am I feeling this way?
Is there factual evidence to support these internal thoughts?
The answer has always been no. The fact is, I am harder on myself than anyone else and I think many people are the same way. We hold ourselves to such a high standard, we have to stop at times to look around and give ourselves credit to what we have achieved. For me, I have started to refer to these things as an internal trophy case. A place I can visit in my mind to remind me of what I have accomplished. Choosing these trophies is important. For me, I am most proud of accomplishments that have required hard work or stepping outside my comfort zone.
For instance, I started blogging during COVID when most everything was stuck inside, I enjoyed just writing about whatever came to mind. It gave me something to do that was a challenge. To me (the imposter), the only people that would be going to my website were family or friends. I started asking a few families and friends what they thought of the blogs, just to get a pulse check on if I was putting myself out there in a way that would be detrimental. Everyone came back with positive feedback, but I still thought to myself: no one really cares about this, but who cares, it’s giving me something to do.
I really enjoyed writing the blogs (go figure), but as life moved back to normal, and I got busy, I stopped writing them. I then started to feel embarrassed. What if someone I don’t know read them, what would they think? Should I hide the old ones? It was a couple of years later that I received an email. It was from someone who read my blog from April of 2020 called: I, Coach Urgo, Am A Drug Addict (you can read it here if you’d like). In this blog I talked about my competitive nature and how winning can be so addictive, so how do you deal with losing.
The man who reached out was from Vancouver, Canada and his son was playing junior hockey and had just suffered a devastating loss in their playoffs. He had stumbled across my blog and sent it to his son. He said the blog really resonated with his son and with him and helped his son work through the way his season had ended. This is an internal trophy that I love, because anytime I have thoughts of doubt, I remember that guy.
One of the leading interview questions right now is: what fulfills you, or what motivates you to get out of bed in the morning? For me, the question has always been easy. I love helping people meet their full potential in whatever they are trying to do. So, if this newsletter helps one person overcome their own imposter syndrome, to me it’s worth it.
So, if the first tip is to build and use an internal trophy case, the second and third tips have to do with being self-aware. I am again going to lean on both an athletic and professional example when talking about self-awareness. To me, there are two types of self-awareness that can battle imposter syndrome:
Current Capabilities & Potential Capabilities
Current capabilities are the skills which you currently have and the ability you must execute. While potential capabilities are things that you could possibly become good at, given the right education, support, and opportunity. What is also important is to make sure you have an objective support network to ensure your belief in your capabilities isn’t misguided.
This is difficult to teach. When coaching hockey, it’s especially hard because the difference between good and great players isn’t that big of a difference on paper. For example, being able to skate down the ice, at top speed and score on a goalie in practice isn’t too hard for most hockey players who have been playing for a long time. However, when you add in defenders, game situations, pressure, fans, etc. that is what starts to separate out talent.
As a coach, I would talk to the team about playing within our strengths. Practice was the place to push the limits on new skills or moves, and once they were able to execute the new move or skills with consistency, that is when it would be appropriate to include it during a game. This taught them to recognize and be aware of their current capabilities. If they were executing a new move in practice with a 10 – 20% success rate, it means they have the POTENTIAL to learn it, but don’t yet possess the current capability. In hockey, much like other sports, you want to mitigate risk vs reward. So, trying something with a 10% success rate isn’t advised.
This is hard for college students and working adults, especially once you see that you have the potential to accomplish something, it doesn’t mean that you are proficient in it. The key is to find a safe place (like practice) to become efficient to add it to your list of current capabilities. It is the process of practicing something to a point of consistent success that I believe can give you the confidence to address the thoughts of self-doubt or imposter syndrome.
When leading employees, I try and give them spots to shine as much as possible. As an example, when I last lead a Project Management Office (PMO), I would try and have my project managers lead the executive stakeholder calls as much as possible. As one may imagine, this caused some stress at times, especially for the less seasoned project managers. However, to continue to shift their potential capabilities to current capabilities, we would spend time practicing those meetings, so that when the time came, they were prepared.
The more you can practice skills, trust in your potential, and remember the things you have accomplished as internal trophies, the more you can combat the internal voices that contribute to imposter syndrome. Finally, those feelings can also be a positive thing. I am not here trying to say everyone shouldn’t shoot their shot, but if you haven’t practiced and you don’t know how to shoot, maybe you should hold off.
This is where having self-awareness is so key. Don’t be afraid to take a step back and look in the mirror with an objective lens, making sure to be realistic, but don’t sell yourself short and forget about all those trophies you have obtained.
As an aside, if you are reading this and in a dark place and you are thinking that you don’t have any trophies and that there doesn’t seem to be a safe place to practice, reach out to someone. It can be me (link below) or a close friend or coworker, but don’t suffer in silence. The world we are all trying to navigate is hard enough, you don’t have to do it alone.
~ Coach Urgo
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