?Psychology of Startups' Talents: The Imposter Syndrome ?

The only thing worse than imposter syndrome, is handling it wrongly?

If you’re a founder, read this article then pass it on to the Heads & Managers in your startup. If you happen to be a manager, read it and pass it forward to your team. Imposter Syndrome does not just hit founders & entrepreneurs, it hits all startup talents; matter of fact it can hit anyone anywhere!

Every week I meet multiple startup founders in Egypt and during our deep conversations I realized a recurring pattern. Almost always when the founders feel much more relaxed around me and I have built some rapport with them they tell me one way or another that a lot of their anxiety comes from all the hopes and expectations on them from the team and the investors. They have to put on a mask as if they are on top of everything, but sometimes they feel like frauds and that eventually someone is going to expose them.

Because of their senior positions in their startup they are unable to share this with anyone and they choose to either:

-???????Ignore this feeling (which doesn’t go away),

-???????Let it become a cancer and spread all over their thoughts and cause them anxiety

-???????Struggle with it in silence (because no one can know that they doubt themselves a lot of the times)

Not only some of your favorite founders have it, a lot of your friends working in startups are struggling with imposter syndrome too!

But first, what’ Imposter syndrome?

Its this psychological pattern where you doubt yourself, your competence and your achievements!

-???????Feeling you’re not worthy enough of the achievements you have & unable to own & internalize your success (maybe you got lucky)

-???????Feeling that you’re a fraud who will be exposed & that you’re pretending and deceiving others by talking and acting normal as leader in your business

I learned a lot from career coaching talents working in startups (including my team at Noon when I worked there).

Every limiting belief we have is powered by a story that we tell ourselves.?

So what is the story many talents and entrepreneurs tell themselves??

FACT: Founders & Talents in startups are never “ready” to the next step; we’re almost always stretched and expected to work on projects and in positions much bigger than us.

STORY: Many talents in startups think that this happens ONLY WITH THEM or ONLY AT THEIR STARTUP. ?While this story is not true, I understand where it comes from!

In startups, there are no “sign posts” on each corner telling you that you are developing enough here, you’re making better decisions there, there’s no path to walk on, no external validation on most of the things you do and not enough time to reflect on the experiences you go through!

They think that this narrative is limited mostly to them and their teams!

BELIEF: Because of the above story, many talents “SECRETLY” CONSTANTLY DOUBT THEMSELVES & QUESTION if their current experiences and set of skills would qualify them to get hired elsewhere, or maybe allow them to be a manager in a corporate. They want this validation that they are on track somehow or according to someone, that there’s some sort of a benchmark or scale that if they see themselves on they can say: “I’m doing well according to this scale”.

A lot of us “startup talents” choose to suffer in silence because we find it hard to believe that this community of confident entrepreneurs we’re in are struggling with our same feeling!

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So why do YOU need to address the issue? & not just for yourself as a founder or a senior manager in a startup, but also for your team members?!?

Building a startup is already challenging on its own, and having to do so with doubts in your mind will only add on to that challenge.

YOU NEED YOURSELF & THE TEAM TO BE GROUNDED & FOCUSED!

Why do we get Imposter Syndrome as startup talents?

There are 2 categories of causes/triggers of imposter syndrome in startups.

1)????Nature of Entrepreneurship:

-???????There are no qualifications/certifications that can tell you or anyone that you’re legitimately a founder or someone who has an entrepreneurial mindset. This problem compounds the imposter syndrome feeling in a world where a lot of credibility comes from accreditations.

-???????“The greater your knowledge of a subject, the more you understand the vast extent of your ignorance.” This makes you feel like you’re constantly ‘not there yet’, therefore an imposter.

-???????As an entrepreneur you’re expected to have a lot of skills and be able to do multiple things which makes you feel incompetent everyday because you’re unable to master something completely.

2)????Nature of our Egyptian Startup Ecosystem:?

Thing is, the culture of our startup ecosystem triggers imposter syndrome in you and your team:

-???????Not enough failure stories are highlighted in our ecosystem. Most success stories you hear end up making your scale of what a success is seem too stretched and distorted to the point that any achievement you make feels worthless.

-???????Focusing on vanity metrics pushes lots of talents to try to showcase any number and brand it as a ?success in efforts to compensate that feeling of thirst for recognition.

We should educate ourselves on which metrics matter and which should not be used to misguide others.

-???????The 24/7 "hustle or die" attitude that when celebrated leads to many talents feeling constantly underachieving and not up to the “ENTREPRENEURIAL STANDARDS” as if you need to be a workaholic to be legitimately a great talent.?

The only thing worse than NOT ACKNOWLEDGING imposter syndrome and its effects on your team is IGNORING it or thinking you can ELIMINATE it!

The fact of the matter is this, coping with it is your best chance to avoid its negative effects.

Imposter syndrome can make you and your talents have a paralyzing fear of failure, anxiety due to comparisons with others, fear of exposure to avoid being caught, becoming perfectionists, procrastinating the beginning of important projects etc…

One founder told me that more “success” he had since raising funds, the worse it got for him. Imposter syndrome fueled his motivation to do more to not be exposed or judged but at the cost of constant anxiety. His self-worth and identity became associated with his company’s results.

Before I share how to cope and help your team cope with this, check the diagram on the right to know the 5 types of imposter syndrome. (SHARE WITH ME IN THE COMMENTS WHICH TYPES DESCRIBE YOU)

Now let's talk about how to cope with Imposter Syndrome...

1) Flip the question first, know what your’re good at!

So rather than worrying that you don’t know enough, it can help to flip the question on its head and to focus on what you do know.

Fact is: we tend to undervalue our true areas of expertise. So, by taking feedback from any stakeholders who worked with you enough, you recognize where you are strong & what areas you lack in. The more you know about yourself, the less of a fraud you feel because you actually admit things openly to yourself and others. Top it off by being vulnerable & transparent about who you are so that you have nothing to prove to anyone.

2) Talk only from YOUR experience:

During any talks with anyone try to always consciously answer from you experience. Literally say that all what you know comes from these first-hand experiences, nothing more or less. You can’t possibly be an imposter if you only talk from your experience.

?3) Don’t feel pressured by others, not everyone is as smart as they show:

“The Dunning-Kruger effect describes this odd relationship where self-assessed competence is often inversely proportional to actual competence.” This means that by default the more competent and experienced you are, the more likely you will feel less confident about your competence compared to others. Just by knowing this you will actually NOT want to be hyper-confident ever again because that puts you on “Mountain Stupid” up there in the peak of the curve on the left! (& maybe some people who claim they know it all and make you feel like an imposter are actually on Mt. stupid too)?

So In conclusion,

I believe it’s extremely natural for talents in startups to worry that they don’t know enough as much as they need to, because this is what pushes them to learn, do more and be more! Imposter syndrome will always be a normal by-product for people who stretch themselves and try to learn many things to achieve bigger things.

Always remember that there are many undocumented struggles and failures in the ecosystem around us as much more than you think, and when you add them to the formula of how you assess yourself, your scale will be more realistic and you won’t be so tough on yourself.

??Now share with me in the comments if you’ve ever had the imposter syndrome and which type are you from the 5 types mentioned in one of the images above!

(GENIUS, EXPERT, SOLOIST, PERFECTIONIST, SUPERHUMAN)