Is the Imposter Syndrome All Bad?

Stop Before You Write Yourself Off as an Imposter

I stayed at the pickle ball court with total strangers after my friend left me there, and I placed my paddle in the slot to play. It was something I avoided for months. Would the luck of the draw place me with experienced players? Would I cause them to lose? Ephie and Miriam’s paddles were next to mine. We chatted about my novice status after six months into the sport, and they advised me, “Don’t let anyone push or discourage you!” It was a “you go girl” pep talk. Sure enough, I lost both games with them and another player, but they encouraged me to keep practicing and come back. Enveloped in the kindness of this middle-aged couple and a handful of other regulars, I left marveling at the speed strangers become new friends.   

This small experience with discomfort is a microcosm of a common struggle. When venturing into new territory—a business, promotion, relationship, education, or skill—we experience struggle—even incompetence—and begin to question ourselves. We feel like imposters on the verge of being discovered for the frauds we are, and thus we say to ourselves, “I don’t deserve to be here,” or “What was I thinking?” or “Why would they want to listen to me?” Imposter syndrome, first identified in 1978, is experienced by 70% of people at some point in their lives, including accomplished and famous people. John Steinbeck once said, “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” This syndrome is often triggered by feelings of discomfort with new challenges.

Framing this common experience as a syndrome tells me that it’s something to get over and work against. In fact, most of the literature on the syndrome is about overcoming it, and that certainly has its merits. We shouldn’t allow it to hinder us from trying new things. It should not keep us locked in doubt, self-accusation, and thinking we are undeserving of our achievements. But is there a beneficial side to the feeling of being an imposter?

Think of someone who never experiences it, someone who charges ahead pretending to have everything under control, someone who lacks the humility to admit doubt, uncertainty, and the need for help. Sadly, the world is littered with the fallout from people who think more highly of themselves than they ought to, like the podcast “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” which illustrates what happens to a church when a leader fails to examine his own authoritarian style. This is just one example of a common tendency to elevate celebrity and success over character and give a pass to authoritarian leadership. It’s not just about the leader, but about us because most of us collude in this process.

There are some surprising benefits to the imposter syndrome. In an article called “Why Imposter Syndrome Can Be a Good Thing,” Caroline Castrillon points out three benefits: It indicates you’re pushing yourself; it keeps your ego in check; and it signals you are gaining expertise (https://corporateescapeartist.com/why-imposter-syndrome-can-be-a-good-thing.) This lines up with the findings I learned from a book on skill acquisition called Make it Stick.

That book taught me that I will stink at something before I learn it. The best learning happens when we are uncomfortable and full of doubt, not when we feel good about it. It turns out that our feelings are incorrect when it comes to learning. Take the experiment of Cal Poly SLO’s baseball team with how to improve batting skills (Brown, 80-81).*  Half of the team practiced the conventional way of hitting forty-five pitches in three sets. Each set was one kind of pitch thrown fifteen times. For each set, the learning seemed easy as the hitters saw more of the same pitch. The other half of the team faced three types of pitches randomly thrown for a total of forty-five pitches. At the end of the forty-five pitches, the hitters still struggled to connect, calling into question their proficiency compared to the other half of the team. It turns out, though, that the perception of proficiency is unrelated to skill development.

After twice a week of these extra practice sessions over six weeks, the players with random pitches, who felt less proficient, showed significantly better hitting skills. Hitting a baseball is arguably one of the most difficult skills in sports. This is especially interesting because all the players were already skilled before the experiment. This experiment underscores how comfort not only skews our perspective but also hinders learning and growth. The same applies to other challenges and disrupters: tolerating discomfort is a winning strategy for the long haul. When the disrupter ends, the victory is satisfying.

I recently told my Grammar and Comp students of my pickle ball story, and they made the connection to themselves. “So that means I’ll stop stinking at grammar in six months” one boy chimed in. Later I watched that same student buckle down and apply more effort than before—and show progress. It’s gratifying to encourage him and hopefully others to be okay with discomfort as a necessary means to learning and growth. Struggle, it turns out, is not only necessary but it is good.

What gets in the way? Perfectionism and the inability to fail. Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, talks about her dad’s unusual question around the dinner table. Instead of asking what the kids learned, he asked “What did you fail at today?” That fostered a mindset that if one isn’t failing, one isn’t trying. And if one isn’t trying, one isn’t succeeding. It’s simple but unfortunately lacking in many homes, classrooms, places of work, and society.

What if we developed the mindset that discomfort, struggle, and failure are not only necessary but integral to success? How would our leadership be different? How would we ourselves be different? What unnecessary pressure would this relieve, what fear would it dispel, what self-acceptance would it foster?

These auspicious possibilities keep me going back to the pickle ball court.

Source cited:

Brown, Peter. Make it Stick. Belknap, 2014.