Imposter Syndrome

Where's your focus?

When you become a senior executive, no one expects you to do the work of an individual contributor, they expect you to lead at a senior executive level. The problem is, many leaders are not ready for that shift because they were never coached or prepared for the demands of senior executive responsibilities.

Coaching imposter syndrome begins with building a culture of coaching. It requires understanding that competence is not only about performing the job to a certain standard of “what good looks like.” It’s also about how others perceive you in the role. That perception isn’t shaped by occasional excellence, it’s shaped by consistent behavior, every single day. Contact me via email if you would like to have a informal discovery conversation.

Coach Burrell

When I coach, I don’t justify or explain the process to make it acceptable, I do it to help build a culture where people have patience with themselves and with others as they work through the challenges they face. Coaching is always confidential. I never speak about my clients, though they may choose to speak about Coach Burrell.

Throughout my career I have seen far too many people promoted into roles they were not fully prepared for. This often leads to two outcomes: they either take away empowerment and lead with command and control, or they struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling unworthy of the position. The best time to prepare someone for their next role is before they step into it. Contact me via email if you would like to have a informal discovery conversation.

Second-guessing

Imposter syndrome is a feeling that many people experience at some point in their lives and can be described as having these three main elements to it:

1.     The belief that other people have an inflated view of your own abilities or skills, a far more inflated view that you have of yourself.
2.     You have this intense fear that you’ll be found out and exposed as a fake.
3.     You consistently attribute your success that you do recognise, to other factors outside of your own abilities and talent.

Contact me via e-mail to arrange a confidential meeting.

You are good enough

Imposter syndrome can feel like dissonance or disconnect between what you see as yourself and your public view. I think a little bit of self-doubt is very good for self-development and the three elements of imposter syndrome are:
a) You believe other people have an inflated view of your abilities and skills.
b) You have an intense fear that you’ll be found out and exposed as a fake.
c) You constantly attribute your success to other factors outside your own abilities and talent.

 

Social media has a huge role to play in imposter syndrome as you can see everybody else’s successful lives and feel that you are not good enough. Here’s an exercise: Write down all the things that you are successful at and then look at all the reasons why you may have achieved that success. This is because you can mistakenly attribute all of it to luck, but when you put it down on paper, you’ll realise how ridiculous that is. Learn to accept that you will make mistakes and you don’t have to be brilliant all the time. Contact me via e-mail for 1:1 coaching sessions.