Is Imposter Syndrome Your Personality?

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 personality and imposter syndrome.

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‘You Are What You Do ... True?’

Imposter syndrome was identified back in 1978, as a false sense of being a fraud that occurs in over 70% of high-achievers.

It was thought to be a strongly held (resistant) notion that despite all evidence of success, people felt that they still weren’t quite good enough.

This self-doubt creates huge amounts of stress and worry. At best it drags people down and holds them back from their very best. At worst it leads to exhaustion, burnout and people quitting their jobs or entire careers.

So it’s a serious issue that impacts performance, well-being, resilience and retention.

Imposter Syndrome Research

Naturally, companies wanted to know who might be susceptible to imposter syndrome. If they could identify the type of person it affected then?they could hire those it didn’t.

At first, imposter syndrome was thought to affect women more than men – you can see the dangerous path this is going down!

But a 1990s study showed that men experience it in equal numbers to women – provided the data collected is completely anonymously.

The research studies showing women experience imposter more than men were actually measuring a?cultural artefact; that society still has taboos about men revealing what they consider to be a personal weakness.

Since gender is not in the mix, then what about personality types?

The Personality Link

Plenty of academic studies then tried to?correlate personality traits and personality types to imposter syndrome. Maybe there was a match with Myers-Briggs profiles, for example?

But personality typing and character delineation showed no correlation with the incidence of imposter syndrome.

Even though imposter syndrome feels like it is your personality and who you are.

In research, a null result is still significant. Therefore this research revealed that imposter syndrome is not an aspect of your personality.

This is good news.

It means that imposter syndrome is not inherent, and not a permanent personality trait. Which means that it can be eliminated without altering your personality.

So What Is It?

Imposter syndrome turns out to be a manifestation of a belief identified back in the 1950s by Dr Carl Rogers. It is the unconscious belief that your worth depends on what you do, i.e your worth is conditional.

In those days, the brain was thought to have a fixed number of neurons in adulthood, and changing beliefs was not possible.

However, modern neuroscience has since discovered neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change and to grow new neuronal connections throughout our lives.

For high-achievers, imposter syndrome shows up as you feeling not quite good enough despite knowing logically that you are capable and competent.

That is, it is a cognitive dissonance, where your brain struggles to hold two opposing views at the same time.

It is not a mental health issue, nor a medically-defined syndrome (despite the name). It is considered 'normal functioning' by psychologists and does not require therapy.

Nevertheless, imposter syndrome still creates huge amounts of stress in over 70% of high-achievers. They still perform exceptionally well, of course. And typically no one would even suspect they had imposter syndrome.

But it still creates internal stress and makes their success much harder for them. It holds them back from achieving even greater performance and success, and keeps them from the fulfilment they so richly deserve.

The final solution to imposter syndrome is to use techniques that change the underlying belief in conditional worth – which thankfully is very achievable.

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What I've loved this week:

The Local Dog Show!

This is only marginally off-topic, so bear with me!

Typical behaviour patterns driven by imposter syndrome include perfectionism, over-preparing and procrastination.

These behaviours, coupled with the distraction of comparing themselves to colleagues negatively mean that people with imposter syndrome are often less productive.

Of course, to produce quality results in a high-octane environment means that they spend more of their leisure time working and are less able to switch off.

Life can start to seem one-dimensional. So being free from imposter syndrome means you finally have time to attend and enjoy delights such as, for me, the local dog show this weekend.

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An action step you can do today …

Imposter Syndrome Impact Assessment

Imposter syndrome is caused by an underlying, unconscious belief. It affects your thoughts, physiological stress response and it drives certain behaviours.

These behaviour patterns have a ripple effect on your energy, income, time, professional impact and mood. They affect your performance, balance and fulfilment for the worse.

The first step toward changing these patterns is to get clear on the impact they’re having.

Download this worksheet to quantify the impact on you personally. Knowledge is power!

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We'll cover more 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 premium 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.

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