Having a brilliant career but feeling like you don’t deserve it. When theorizing the imposter “phenomenon” in 1978, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes would never have imagined that their work would give rise, half a century later, to one of the most fashionable terms in the management and leadership of the world press. At the time, the two American psychologists interviewed 150 women occupying prestigious positions in different fields. It appears that they do not attribute their success to their skills, although recognized by their peers, but to luck or external factors. These women describe their fear of one day being unmasked, that their supposed incompetence will be realized after the fact.
Five decades have passed and the impostor “phenomenon” – now renamed “syndrome” – has never lived up to its name so well. As essayist Leslie Jamison points out in the New Yorker, “it was only with the rise of social networks that the idea really exploded.” The media followed suit. Tips for getting rid of it, tests to identify it… press articles published on the subject are legion – In 2023 alone, the American version of the Forbes site has devoted more than a dozen to it. Another area for exploring the imposter “syndrome”? Youtube. On Google’s streaming platform, coaches, mentalists and psychoanalysts create tutorials every day and provide keys “to get through it.” Some videos have been viewed tens or even hundreds of thousands of times. Lack of self-confidence, a sure value which also brings joy to the personal development aisles. There are books that promise to “free you from imposter syndrome” or even “tips and tricks for finding the right posture”. We can no longer count the celebrities who reveal that they suffer from it. The spectrum is wide: Michelle Obama, Starbucks boss Howard Schultz, singer Pierre de Maere and even Kim Kardashian. A few searches on Google tell us that imposter syndrome affects 62% of managers, 74% of lawyers and 70%… of urologists. Athletes are not spared. The skier Cyprien Sarrazin, for example, said he called on an energy therapist to overcome this syndrome. A study from the Journal of Behavioral Science, widely reported and dating from 2011, indicates that 70% of people experience it at one point or another in their lives. At this rate, we are close to an epidemic.
However, this “syndrome” – described as such by the American researcher Valerie Young in 1986 – is poorly named since to date it is not recognized either as a pathology or in the major classifications of mental illnesses. It is not a question here of denying the existence of such a psychological state, nor even its consequences and the suffering that it can cause for the people concerned, but as well as the statement Jemima Kelly, columnist at the Financial Times, said the inappropriate use of the term syndrome “is part of a broader trend that too often pathologizes perfectly normal human feelings.” Not to mention that such an approach, based solely on personal feelings, excludes the possible structural and organizational reasons that could lead certain people to feel illegitimate in their professional life.
Second widespread idea: women would be more affected. A metaanalysis published in 2019 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, which reviewed 62 studies carried out on the subject between 1990 and 2018 (50% of these studies were carried out between 2012 and 2018) is less categorical. Half of the studies that compared men and women found no gender inequality in the face of imposter “syndrome”. It also emerges from all of this work that depending on the measurement tools chosen, the share of the population affected fluctuates between 9% and 82%. So a wide range. Two fairly clear trends, however: ethnic minorities are over-represented while this “syndrome” is often associated with depression, anxiety and burn-out.
The feeling of imposture, the sign that “you are aiming high”
Third preconceived idea: we must “cure” this feeling of imposture at all costs. Adam Grant, organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, sees on the contrary a triple advantage: it can motivate us to work more, to work more intelligently – “Feeling like an imposture puts us in a state of “beginner’s mind and leads us to question the assumptions that others take for granted” – and allows us to learn better (Think Again, Alisio, 352 p.). “I wonder if we have not misjudged this syndrome by only seeing it as a troublemaker,” says the researcher. In the columns of Bloomberg, American economist Tyler Cowen goes so far as to call it a superpower: “When I’m looking for talent, I’m looking for people who feel like they’re suffering from imposter syndrome. If you think you’re not not qualified to do what you do, that’s a sign that you’re aiming high and aiming for a new, perhaps unprecedented, level of success.” Finally, if you still doubt yourself, be sure of one thing: real impostors never suffer from such a syndrome.
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