EQ and Imposter Syndrome

You're here because you have already achieved some outer success and reached your current executive leadership position. But growth doesn't have to stop here. There is a thrill and satisfaction in challenging yourself, stretching and seeing how much you can achieve. Have an impact and make a contribution.

The talents, skills and tools that have got you to this point will not necessarily take you further. Or the approaches you've used to achieve this success may have been expensive in terms of time, energy, stress and effect on your relationships. You need new or upgraded power tools to make sure you can sustain or advance your position more easily.

The High-Performance Executive Newsletter introduces these tools, so that you can level up, as video-gamers would say. It draws on many areas of solid research into high-performance in business, including neuroscience, psychology, physiology, trauma therapy and flow-state study.

The three essential areas for high performance are neuro-regulation (to get and stay calm), clear the negative self-talk and the beliefs that create them (including imposter syndrome), and create new success habits.

This week we're looking at the link between emotional intelligence and imposter syndrome.

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Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EQ) has been found to have a more direct correlation to business leadership and success than IQ.

EQ is the “something” in each of us that is a little intangible. It affects how we manage behaviour, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. EQ is made up of four core skills.

• Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen.
• Self-Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behaviour.
• Social Awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.
• Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and others’ emotions to manage interactions successfully.

That is, EQ includes both awareness and skills. Unlike IQ which doesn't change, EQ can be devloped and improved upon.

A study across all industries correlates one point of EQ to an extra income of ￡1000 p.a.

This is an average across all seniority levels and so it has a greater impact the higher your base salary.

Clearly awareness and the ability to manage communications with yourself and others will make you a more effective leader. So the EQ salary difference can easily be related to tangible results, performance reviews and therefore promotions and job offers.

Imposter Syndrome

But the salary difference can also be caused by imposter syndrome holding talented people back.

Imposter syndrome is self-doubt; the secret feeling of being a fraud, when you’re not, and the fear of being found out.

Common behaviour patterns driven by imposter syndrome include;

• Avoiding taking new roles or promotions, or delaying putting yourself forward, for fear that you are not quite good enough
• Self-doubt that causes you to miss opportunities even though they would be exciting and good for your career
• Distraction and worry about being found out making you take longer to do work (and maybe work longer hours to compensate)
• The stress, anxiety and overwhelm caused by imposter syndrome leads to exhaustion and poor decision making.
• The stress of imposter syndrome can cause you to quit your job and even industry, leading to loss of earnings as you establish your next position

When imposter syndrome strikes high achievers, they still perform well but it may be making it harder, more stressful and slowing down your career.

That is, imposter syndrome hold you back from achiveing your full potential, even when you're highly successful.

The EQ - Imposter Syndrome Connection

Imposter syndrome is the symptom of a deep identity-level belief about your worth; the false belief that your worth depends on what you do.

This belief is unconscious for most people, that is you are not aware of it.

Nevertheless, we act from our beliefs (our brain’s model of the world). They affect how we interpret people and events around us – the self-awareness and social awareness part of EQ. Which in turn influences our ability to manage ourselves and our relationships with others.

Take the example of Stewart, a COO in a large software company. An EQ test showed that he had a high degree of self-awareness (94%). He read a lot of leadership and personal development books, had some sessions with a therapist, took many self-growth courses and was naturally self-reflective.

He was aware of his thinking and behaviours. However, he had never found the right tools to do anything about these and?didn’t really understand people who weren’t just like him.

So his self-management, social awareness and relationship management skills were much lower in EQ.?The result was that he was frustrated as he knew what the problem was but had no idea how to change it.

He also experienced imposter syndrome, and his frustration increased his self-doubt making his imposter syndrome worse.

More specifically, imposter syndrome hinders your development of EQ skills.

The pattern is as follows;

1. You know you should say or do something (from intellectual learning )
2. But you don’t do that when under pressure, because people default to their beliefs when under pressure. So the belief causing imposter syndrome drives what you do unconsciously.
3. When you realise that, you berate yourself or feel that you’re somehow not good enough, which reinforces the imposter syndrome and the belief that causes it.

All the leadership theories in the world won't help you if you cannot implement them due to imposter syndrome.

Changing the Belief

You can eliminate imposter syndrome for good by changing the belief that drives it.

The process for doing that starts with becoming aware of your thought patterns, beliefs and behaviour patterns.

Self-awareness.

It then requires reframing how you see yourself and others by adopting a model of human behaviour that keeps you feeling calm and in control.

It creates a permanent transformation in your model of the world that focuses on self-acceptance, other-acceptance, and creates an easy equanimity. It makes you less reactive to the events around you and allows you to respond thoughtfully instead.

The result of eliminating the belief that causes imposter syndrome is an increase in your EQ.

I’ve long seen the anecdotal results from clients eliminating their imposter syndrome. More recently I’ve been testing EQ before and after my programme, getting the vital data.

An example is Philip, a management consultancy partner, whose overall EQ rose from 64% to 81%

The statistics predict this 17-point jump in EQ would be worth an extra ￡17k p.a. for Philip, if he earned the UK average salary of approx ￡30k p.a.

However, Philip earns ￡120k p.a. and he's already achieved that with an EQ of 64%.

He can expecting his financial return to be much more at an EQ of 81% - and of course, that's for the rest of his career.

?Emotional intelligence is essential for good leadership but is hindered by imposter syndrome.

?The power move for high-performance is to eliminate imposter syndrome and reap the rewards of a higher EQ.

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What I’ve loved (re-read) this week:

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

This classic book has been relevant for over 25 years and is still going strong today.

Daniel Goleman writes beautifully, clearly and explores emotional intelligence in depth.

It was ground-breaking work when published in 1996, and was updated two years ago.

It’s a pleasure to see how well the idea of emotional intelligence has been embraced in the business community as an indicator of high performance for leaders.

Well worth reading.

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An action step you can do today…

Imposter Syndrome Self-Assessment

The first step in growth is to understand the problem – the self-awareness part of EQ.

Use the link below to download a free worksheet to understand how imposter syndrome may be affecting you. We look at three areas; your thinking, your physiology and your behaviour.

Click here for Imposter Syndrome Self-Assessment

The link takes you to a video that explains these three areas and you can complete the worksheet with your own experience of imposter syndrome – because everyone is different.

Once you are aware of the problem and its impact on you, you have all you need to make an informed decision about addressing imposter syndrome or not.

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We'll cover more on EQ and on imposter syndrome in future issues.

Do subscribe and share!

I’m Dr Tara Halliday, Imposter Syndrome Specialist.

I’ve been a holistic therapist and high-performance coach for over 21 years.

I'm the creator of the Inner Success for Execs programme - the fastest and best solution to imposter syndrome.

My book, Unmasking: The Coach’s Guide to Imposter Syndrome was an Amazon #1 bestseller in 2018.

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Check out the Inner Success for Execs programme for fast 'up levelling' of your internal leadership tools.

https://www.completesuccess.co.uk

Think you may have imposter syndrome? Take this free quiz to find out:

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Want to fast-track and have a chat about your inner success, book a quick 15-minute call here:

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Have an excellent, refreshing and recharging weekend!

Tara

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