The tech world is changing and expanding rapidly as well all know. It feels like every day, there are new, different and better ways to implement solutions, which is a good thing because this empowers us with new tools and technologies to work with to provide the best solutions to our clients, business or projects. However, it can also feel overwhelming if we’re trying to keep up with the latest and more so, when internal and/or external factors make us feel or think that we should “know everything”. Overall, it can sometimes be easy to feel like an imposter in our team or workplace when we’re getting bombarded with technical questions and requests that we aren’t sure of the answer or simply don’t know yet - and feel like we should. These feelings are often referred as the Imposter Syndrome.

What is an imposter syndrome?

The imposter syndrome is commonly defined as the idea that your accomplishments as well as where you are right now in your career are due to luck and not your skills or knowledge. It’s a “misalignment” (whether accurate or not) between how you perceive your competence and how competent you really are. Basically, like the term suggests, it’s feeling like an imposter and be afraid that your colleagues or clients will “find out” that you’re not as competent or knowledgeable as they thought you were. Whether that perception of yourself is accurate or not, the self-doubt can cause anxiety and self-sabotage.

Dr. Valerie Young who is an internationally-known expert on the subject explains that there are 5 different types of imposter syndromes:

• The Perfectionist
• The Superwoman/Superman/Super Student
• The Expert
• The Natural Genius
• The Soloist

This article tends to focus more on “The Expert” type of imposter syndrome, but I’d suggest you to refer to Dr Young’s work if you’re interested to know more about the 5 types or about the subject in general.

Obviously, I’m not a psychologist nor do I claim to be an expert in the subject (to be honest, I even felt like an imposter at times when writing this article) but I know that the following mindset and ideas have helped me in the past and I’m sharing them with you with the hope that they’ll help you as well.

1. Put things in perspective

You should consider to take some time to take a step back to think and appreciate all what you’ve learned and accomplished so far in your career for your team(s), client(s), personal project(s), etc. Think about the challenges you’ve had to face and how you’ve overcome them and if you didn’t, what could have you done differently? Sometimes, we’re so deeply focused on what we do that we tend to forget about the big picture and how far we’ve come and I think it’s worth to spend some time to self-reflect once in a while which leads to the next point.

2. Help and give back to others

Realize that wherever you’re at, there’s always someone that is a few steps behind you that you can help, teach and lift up. Therefore, don’t be afraid to lend a hand if one of your teammates or colleagues need help. Also, you could make your peers benefit from your knowledge and experience by organizing Lunch&Learns or maybe just a quick presentation about something you’ve learned that could bring value to your team, project or organization.

Furthermore, teaching or presenting something will help you better understand it because it’ll force you to retrieve what you’ve previously learned, structure your thoughts and internalize it before presenting it to your audience. As a nice bonus, it’ll improve your communication and presentation skills.

3. Never stop learning but do stop comparing yourself to others

No matter where you are in your career right now, you should never stop learning, especially if you’re in tech. Our field is changing and expanding so quickly that it is, in my opinion, important to keep up as much as we can so we can constantly improve and optimize our solutions and the way we work. If you’re not sure what to learn, search for the trending technologies and start digging into the subject that interests you the most; maybe see if you can get a certification related to that technology. By constantly learning, improving and giving back to your peers as mentioned in the previous section, it will not only build your confidence, but you’ll become a much more valuable person to your team, project and organization.

“If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done” - James Clear, Author of #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits

Before jumping to the next point, I’d like to say a few words about comparing ourselves to others. It can be easy and tempting for us to want to compare ourselves with our surroundings (I know I’ve been a victim of that multiple times in the past and even sometimes today) but I’ve found that, most of the time, it does more harm than good. Instead, as cliché as it may sound (and I’m sure you’ve heard this multiple times), the only person you should compare to is to yourself from yesterday; focus on doing you and how you can improve your skills and deepening your knowledge. When it comes to the people around you, if they’re currently at a level that you’d want to reach, instead of comparing yourself to them, you should try to learn from them and that leads to our next point.

4. Ask for help and model after your role models

“Success leaves clues” - Jim Rohn

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Regardless on where you are in your career right now, there are people that have been in the same place as you and overcame similar challenges that you have - and even worse, you’d be surprised! What I like to do is to find people that are doing the things that I aspire to and study their journey:

• What made them successful?
• How did they overcome their challenges?
• How do they approach issues?
• What are their habits?

It doesn’t have to be one person; it could be multiple persons where each has an aspect in their life that inspires you. Ask yourself how you can adapt and implement those strategies to your life and career.

If that person is someone you know personally, depending on your relationship with that person, you can invite them for lunch, dinner, a coffee (whatever that you judge is more appropriate, as long as the environment promotes discussions) and ask them to share their experiences with you. If you want to bring it to another level, you could even ask that person to mentor you. However, before doing that, be cognizant that this would require some personal work on your side first. If it’s a path that you’d like to take, I’d suggest to read about mentorship and how to find a mentor that’s right for you.

When meeting up with people, please keep in mind that their time is important and you should be grateful that the person accepted to give you some of their time. You should find ways to add value to their life as well; for instance, think about how to make that moment a great experience for the other person, think about how you could help them and, if it’s not right now, you should write a note to yourself for the future when there will be an opportunity to do so – always keep in mind that it’s not all about you.

The idea, at the end of the day, is to build authentic relationships with others.

5. Get comfortable in being uncomfortable

“A ship is always safe at the shore, but that is not what it is built for.” -Albert Einstein

It might sound a bit contradictory. You might think that the reason why you wanted to know how to deal with imposter syndrome to begin with was to get rid of that awkward uncomfortable feeling. I like to think of it this way: if you’re getting out of your comfort zone, it means that you’re growing. I think that being a bit uncomfortable sometimes can be a good thing as it can push you to want to improve, learn and be better to “compensate” for what you think you should know and, regardless if that if that self-doubt was accurate or not, you’ll still get better at the end of day. And if you make mistakes along the way, it’s not a failure if you’ve learned something from them. Learn to embrace the process!

Conclusion

I hope that these 5 mindset tips will help you to better manage the discomfort that the imposter syndrome might cause. If you feel that this article as well as other resources on the internet didn’t help you, it’s important that you consider talking to a mental health professional.

Again, and as always, I’d love to hear your feedback and if you have any questions or something you’d like to add based on your experience, please let me know in the comments section below!

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