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Welcome to Episode 93 of The Non-anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get into today's episode, I want to encourage you again to connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com.

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I keep getting material for this podcast from people who are connecting with me and asking questions or referring videos or podcasts that they want me to hear and comment on.

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Go to thenonanxiousleader.com. If you don't already have my email address, you can use the contact form or you can sign up for my blog and Two for Tuesday email. Then you will get my email address. Either way, let me know what you think and ask me questions, because that's how we continue to learn and grow together. So without further ado, here is Episode 93 on Impostor Syndrome.

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Today's episode actually came from a question from a coaching client who is also a listener of this podcast, and here is the question: "Is there a family systems theory perspective on imposter syndrome and fear and anxiety from lack of control? These are a couple of things that keep surfacing in conversations with people inside Silicon Valley. I am wondering how I can look at them through a family systems theory, non-anxious leadership lens."

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When I looked at this, I thought this is a great question because I have experienced imposter syndrome myself. The first time this happened was when I took the job I currently hold as Director of Camping and Retreat Ministries for our region of The United Methodist Church. It was back in 2000. And I remember sitting at my desk and saying to myself, "What have I gotten myself into?" At that moment I felt wholly inadequate. I felt not up to the task at all.

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The second time was when I was writing my first book. Now, as I started writing the book, this was in the fall of 2016, I didn't tell anybody about it. And I was writing 30 minutes a morning, five days a week. After about two months or so, I got three chapters completed, and I really felt like I was getting momentum. I felt great. This book is going to happen, I kept saying to myself.

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But I remember a morning when I was about two thirds of the way through it. It was early in the morning. I was sitting at my desk. I was about to start writing. And all of a sudden I remember saying to myself, "Who do I think I am? Nobody cares about what I'm writing. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say." And if that's not imposter syndrome, then nothing is.

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Fortunately, both of those moments were fleeting and I got back to work. They weren't debilitating. They didn't hold me back. But sometimes imposter syndrome can be quite challenging because it can nag at us and it can cause self-doubt.

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So as we get started, I think the first thing we need to do is to define imposter syndrome. And I'm going to use Wikipedia's definition, which says:

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"It is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has a persistent, internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Despite external evidence of their competence. Those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with imposterism incorrectly attribute their success to luck or interpret it as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be. While early research focused on the prevalence among high achieving women, imposter syndrome has been recognized to affect both men and women equally. "

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While the definition says that this is an internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud, another way to look at this is this is an inability for high achieving people to internalize their success. They are not able to own their achievements and somehow believe that they are a fraud or somehow believe they are not up to the task or that it was just luck.

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An interesting thing I found in Psychology Today was how you can prevent your children from having imposter syndrome. For me, this speaks to how it might have developed in us in the first place.

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The article says that there are two types of messages that can spark imposter syndrome. One is constant criticism, in which children feel like they will never be able to measure up. Another is constant praise, such as "You're So Smart," which causes the child to internalize high expectations and put pressure on herself. An interesting note here is that the article says that parents can help children by praising effort, not results.

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This is exactly the idea behind Carol Dweck's growth mindset. Carol Dweck is a psychology professor at Stanford University, and she has pioneered the research that has resulted in this concept of a growth mindset. Now, to understand a growth mindset, it's helpful to understand the fixed mindset.

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The fixed mindset believes that we are what we were born with, whether that's intelligence, athletic ability, musical ability or artistic ability. It's our genes that determine what we can do in life. Now we can see how criticism will result in having a poor fixed mindset. I remember a homeless fellow I used to work with, and his dad used to beat him and tell him that he would never amount to anything. That clearly resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy and a fixed mindset.

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Ironically, praising kids can also result in a fixed mindset. So when you tell a kid that she is smart, she starts to think that it's all about her intelligence. When she runs into a challenge, into something that she's not able to get right off the bat, then she thinks, well, maybe I'm just dumb at this or I'm just not good at this. And she doesn't persist. That's a fixed mindset, on the other hand, a growth mindset is a mindset that's focused on effort and not results.

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It's focused on doing the work and learning and growing. So a growth mindset will say, well, if I'm not good at it, maybe I can figure out how I can do this better. Or if I made a mistake, what can I learn from this and how can I do it better the next time? And as you can imagine, a growth mindset is the way that we really learn and grow. We'll come back to that later.

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But what I want to do as I want to look at Valerie Young's five types of imposter syndrome or five types of people who experience imposter syndrome. This comes from her book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It.

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The first type is the perfectionist. For this type, success is rarely satisfying because it can always be done better. Perfectionists are often considered control freaks and they try to control everything. Further mistakes can be devastating, increasing self-doubt.

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The second type is the superwoman or superman. This person covers up her or his insecurities by working harder and can easily become a workaholic. A key aspect here is that the superwoman is more extrinsically motivated by the approval or validation she feels from achievement rather than from doing the work itself.

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The third type is the natural genius. This type of person expects that things should come easily because of natural ability. This is a fixed mindset. Mistakes will shake their confidence and this type of person will tend to avoid doing things that they are not good at.

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The fourth type is the soloist. This type of person is afraid to ask for help because it may reveal themselves as a fraud. They don't want help, or don't want to need help, because they see this as a sign of weakness.

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And the final type is the expert who bases her competence on what and how much she knows. Since there will always be things that she doesn't know, she fears being exposed as a fraud.

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You're probably asking yourself two questions here. One is what type of imposter syndrome person am I? And secondly, what can I do about it using family systems theory? I can't answer the first question for you, but I will try to answer the second.

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The first thing I think we can do is ask the question, what voices in my past contribute to this? Was it criticism? Was it praise? Who was I trying to please? To the extent that you grew up trying to please someone who was important to you, you will be more susceptible to imposter syndrome.

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Now, this doesn't mean you can't please someone. But it also means that you want to work from intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. Trying to please somebody is extrinsic and you want to try to move it towards the intrinsic to focus on what matters to you and why.

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Wherever it originates, the reason impostor syndrome can pop up is because self-worth can become contingent on achieving. This means that defining self based on something external rather than who you are and what you believe is more likely to result in self-doubt and imposter syndrome.

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Self-differentiation is being able to claim your own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. As you grow in this, you will be more likely to focus on your own goals and values and less likely to focus on external validation.

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An interesting thing to think about here is that impostor syndrome happens when surrounding togetherness pressure is consistent with your goals. In other words, you are trying to achieve something that is consistent with the norms of the system and will also get you validation and praise. A question to ask is if you are susceptible to this type of pressure to get external validation and praise, what will you do when the norms of the system conflict with your own goals and values?

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To me, this is one of the reasons that self-differentiation, that being a non-anxious leader, is so important. Not only does it help us to avoid imposter syndrome, but it will make it more likely that we are able to keep our integrity when things in the system actually conflict with what we believe.

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An interesting thing to note about surrounding togetherness pressure is the effect that it has on people when they are a minority in the system, whether that is gender, racial, ethnic, sexual orientation or otherwise. Although Wikipedia says that men and women can experience imposter syndrome equally, I think the point here is that, according to Psychology Today, whenever you are feeling different from the majority of your peers, that can fuel a sense of feeling like a fraud. In other words, when we don't conform to the norms of the system in which we are functioning, we are more susceptible to imposter syndrome.

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It's helpful to ask the question, what pressure am I feeling to conform? How can I claim who I am and what I believe? This will help you resist not only internalizing unconscious bias, but also resist imposter syndrome.

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Finally, it's important to note that impostor syndrome often occurs when encountering a new endeavor. Whether this is a promotion, a new challenge or starting a new ministry, the situation involves change. Since all change is loss, there is grief involved.

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The first thing to do is to acknowledge that change; to realize that the old comfortable ways of functioning might not work. Rather than feeling like an imposter, own that you are in a new situation.

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The second thing to do is to take responsibility for yourself. Tell yourself this is something new, but I can learn it, I can work through it. It's not about working harder to gain recognition. It's about doing the work of learning and growing. Expect to make mistakes. But think of those as ways to learn, and gain competence and confidence. Learn to ask for help. People who are self-differentiated know that they are interdependent. They know that they can't do it alone.

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Finally, get some perspective. Look around. Have others been through this? If they were able to do it, can I? I remember when we were buying our house, which was 20 years ago, I just felt so inadequate. I'm like, I'm never going to get this right. They're asking for so much paperwork and I'm going to mess this up. I suppose I was feeling imposter syndrome.

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Then I got some perspective. I said to myself, look around you. How many other people have actually gotten a mortgage and were able to buy a house? A lot of people have done this, probably some who are not as competent as you. And I was able to relax. I was able to get some perspective and I was able to go through with it and get it done.

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To me, impostor syndrome goes hand in hand with high achievement because it means we're constantly pushing ourselves to take on new things and embrace new challenges. I remember saying to a friend one time in a phone conversation that I have learned to embrace this feeling of discomfort that I may be doing something that might not work. If we can get to the point in our non-anxious leadership where we can own our goals and values in that way that we are constantly looking for improvement, then that does help to reduce the amount of imposter syndrome because we know that we are not going to get better without making mistakes, without having setbacks.

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And that's a part of the process, from a family systems perspective, that is taking responsibility for yourself.

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That's it for Episode 93. If you want to connect with me, go to thenonanxiousleader.com and use the contact form or subscribe to my blog. Until next time, thanks and goodbye. Now go be yourself.