How to avoid imposter syndrome by slowing down to speed up

By Mary Porter

If there is one thing the recent US election result showed me, it is that people have very different views on whether or not someone can do a job. The difference in these views will depend on the skills and experience that you are perceived to have and this perception will be very much influenced by whether you appear to believe in yourself.

Love him or loathe him, I can’t help admire the self-confidence that Trump showed throughout the election campaign. I have no doubt that for some, his confidence was the key factor that persuaded them that he was the right man for the most powerful job in the world, despite his relative lack of political experience.

And it got me to thinking whether Trump really believes in his abilities or whether he ever suffers from imposter syndrome? Does he have to silence the voices in his head that doubt whether he has the skills and ability to carry out the job in front of him?

Earlier this year I was asked to take on the UK Team Lead role on a temp basis while we looked to recruit for this vacancy. While not quite the most powerful job in the world (!), as Skyscanner’s biggest market it did feel like a huge responsibility.

At that point I started to doubt whether I had all the skills and knowledge needed to carry out this role. However, I recognised this doubt as imposter syndrome and knew I was not alone in these feelings, particular in a tribe where we were all focused on upskilling and becoming more T-shaped and a company filled with bright and ambitious staff.

So armed with confidence in my Growth Mindset and desire to stretch myself I accepted the challenge and threw myself into it, aiming to read and learn as much as I could.

And I wish I could tell you that it was plain sailing, but it wasn’t.

The learning trajectory was huge. Every day there were new challenges and skills to learn, in addition to my other role responsibilities. The team of hugely talented individuals were struggling to pull in the same direction and were desperately in need of someone to help unify and motivate them. In turn, I was desperate to upskill as quickly as I could so I could start delivering real value to the team so I tried to attend every meeting, demo and training course on offer, while trying to digest as many blogs, online tutorials and books as possible, often working late into the night.

I was soon exhausted.

Thankfully I recognised that I had reached breaking point and realised something needed to change. Accepting this was all I needed to give myself permission to say no.

I realised I had to slow down in order to speed up.

I realised that upskilling is a marathon, not a sprint; I scheduled worktime in my diary every day so that I had time to ‘make’ and not just attend meetings; I declined non-essential meetings and asked others to attend in my place; I recognised that I could not possibly know everything (and nor was I expected to) so just had to prioritise what felt like the most important, accepting that I might make a mistake or drop a ball somewhere but if I did I would learn and make sure not to repeat it.

​I also took time to look back at how far I had come and how much progress the team was making. I stopped blaming myself when we didn’t make as much progress as we wanted, I couldn’t immediately see the solution or changes did not have an immediate impact, confident that some things take time and need to be mulled over.

And, as you might have guessed, I started to see the impact — I certainly x10 my job satisfaction and motivation!

But slowing down also helped me to see that we were making progress as a squad; we had increased squad throughput by 80% and reduced cycle time by 400%, increased visibility and shared learnings. As a team we understand more about our traveller and their needs than we ever have done and through multiple tests have discovered and developed a ‘toolkit’ of tactics that can impact our key metrics. We are now using all of this to deliver some really big ticket items.

And of course there is still loads more I have to learn — but rather than getting overwhelmed by that, I am taking it one step at a time, asking for assistance where I need it and recognising how lucky I am to be surrounded by intelligent and experienced colleagues who, far from being a threat, may well be the key to my future success.

So with my temporary role coming to an end next month, it is with a wee tear in my eye that I bid the team farewell. I am really proud of what we have achieved and taught one another in a relatively short period of time. I have no doubt that the UK team will go on to deliver far bigger and better things in 2017 and hope that in some way I helped to lay the foundations for their future success.

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About the author

My name is Mary Porter and I was one of the first 100 employees to join Skyscanner back in 2010. A huge amount has changed since then, not least the fact we now have over 800 staff across 10 global offices. Despite this we have retained our start up culture which allows us to experiment with new channels and ideas. I love that Skyscanner supports this without any fear of failure.