Do you suffer from imposter syndrome?

It all started when I was 8yrs old, and I was waiting to get into my classroom in New Zealand. The Teacher, a Mr Kilmister, was proceeding to punish children for missing stationary, having your hands in your pockets or some other misdemeanour. A punishment that involved reaching over your desk while he took baseball sized swings at you with a meter long wooden ruler. Needless to say when I finally arrived at the head of the line I was terrified of this large and imposing man. I tried my best to answer his questions correctly by the whimpering of his previous victims was generating an increasing level of panic. After failing and bracing for my round of educational correction, he told me that I was a con-man and I always would be.

This may sound harsh in our modern context but in New Zealand, corporal punishment was legal until 1990. So in 1984, it did not take much for some teachers to start expressing themselves physically.

Now to give some context to the remark, I was a large 8 yr old and jumped a class because of my physical size rather than academic ability. So when you have an authority figure sending you these kinds of mind bullets at such a young age, the cut goes deep. Needless to say, imposter syndrome has been a long time companion of mine.

For those of you who don’t know how that feels. It is pretty much when you are obsessed with doing things perfectly, but fail to recognise your success, and you are afraid some is going to call you on it because you don’t really deserve to be there.

“I still believe that at any time the no-talent police will come and arrest me.” — Mike Myers

Thankfully, I can honestly say that it is no longer part of my life and not something I spend my energy on any longer. This has allowed me to accept things, enjoy the moment and remove a lot of unnecessary anxiety from the natural process of learning and growing as a person even the failures.

However, I see it all around me in the industry I work, perfectly competent even extremely talented people struggling with their inner critic. It can lead to depression, burn out and all kinds of other forms of destructive behaviour. So why aren’t we more focused on helping people to deal with it?

I guess one theory is that it is not necessary to have a happy team just a productive one. I know for me it was a reliable motor. A constant struggle to prove I was worthy of my spot, working harder and harder to reach some unreachable goal. The companies were always happy, and the jobs always got delivered no matter what the personal cost and the comedowns were hard.

My focus has now shifted to trying to help others work through this and build genuine confidence and a grounded sense of self-worth. In doing so, I have a noticed a few reoccurring factors that are harmful to those stuck in the grind. So here are a few warning signs and potential ways to stop enabling this kind of behaviour.

A lack of strategy and definition of what success could look like up front. At the beginning of every project there are a lot of big promises and high hopes, and then it turns into a mad dash for the finish line. This leads to a sense of panic and confused frustration. When the smoke clears we then don’t even know if it was a success or failure. No one is sharing numbers and likes, or reviews on social media are often fickle. It would be great to hear a straight we made it to number one, we sold x number of copies, or you know what we bombed, but we gave it our best shot.

Some Films fail commercially, but the creative teams are rewarded for their success artistically. In other cases, there is a substantial commercial success and the teams a heavily criticised. By establishing a strategy and framing what success would look like for all stakeholders up front this post-release stuff is easier to navigate.

The merging of roles has created a diluted sense of the edges of one’s responsibility. A concrete example of which is the absence of Art Director on a lot of European productions or the additional work that slipped into the storyboarding process as we transitioned from paper to pixels (Layout and editing somehow got folded in there). Someone is still doing that work, but no one is getting paid for it anymore. So how can you take praise for something you don’t have the credit for?

We have a lot of borrowed titles being thrown around but does anyone actually know what they mean anymore. I mean why does a director have to do more than Direct? If you are doing boards, scripts, corrections or additional posing etc. then you hardly have time to direct your team, writers, voice actors and collaborate with producers and network execs. However, if you are told that this is just part o the job and if you can’t handle it then perhaps someone else can what do you do? Most people that are looking for some kind of validation of their skills or reassurance will just accept.

The journey from maker to the manager is not an organic one, and people need to be trained and supported during this transition. When I say, manager, it is when you go from an individual artist in a team to supervising a dept or crew on a project. This is a different role with a different set of skills, but ultimately it is treated as some kind of ladder. Best performing or longest serving artist goes to manager almost automatically. What help are we giving them? How are they being supported in this transition?
I have heard of artists losing all sense of self-worth and making the lives of themselves and their crew miserable because of long-forgotten imposter syndrome. Or a desire to demonstrate their worth by micromanaging the team. This goes for managers who lack craft-based skills too, it is hard to feel worthwhile when the value system in the studio is based on your ability to execute an artistic task.

We need to support each other in doing the right thing. Preying on insecurity is not getting ahead, and it is not economically sound. It is short-term satisfaction based only on an individuals desire to feel important or influential. We need to encourage each other to work sustainably. That is not to say we all need to be working 9 to 5 but all-nighters and 7 day weeks are not a solution and are a sign that something is very wrong. By acknowledging this and addressing the resource issue, schedule malfunction or skills gap together solutions can be found.

There is often a lack of understanding on both sides of the production floor. We are lucky to work in an industry where people are open-minded and well-meaning so we should give each other the benefit of the doubt. The production staff are not intentionally trying to create friction or difficulty for the creative teams, and the artists are not trying to undermine the structure of the production, but silos have been put in place to separate us, and with that, we have forgotten to have empathy for our fellow team members.

I can’t think of an example where someone has mentioned human centred management as a contributing factor in the production flow, bottom line, the KPI’s or the sales of a series or Film. What if a KPI for managers was artist retention?

It is generally put across in some form of backdoor recruitment tool and aspirational promo for a companies culture but never as a serious competitive advantage. I mean I would love to believe things are different in the shiny world of America productions but unfortunately it seems that they just have a larger spoon full of sugar to help the same medicine go down. If we taught our creative teams that there was a reward in increased productivity, innovative process and automation then we might have different results but for now, if you save a month that is a month less next season. By punishing people for doing the right thing we are encouraging them to do the wrong thing.

Finally, social media has had a significant impact on the way artists see themselves in the last 10yrs. I remember reviewing portfolios in person and on paper. Now everyone has a Tumblr or Instagram feed charged with images and evidence that life is fantastic.
Everyone is crushing it! So what happens when you are not? What happens when you are struggling, or the production you are on is average? We are getting bombarded with an infinite stream of content that is telling us that it is normal to succeed. Well, it isn’t, and for every success, there is a lot of failures. It takes a ton of hard work to do anything but by focusing on one foot in front of the other you might get there.

I remember John Ewing, a Disney animator from the age of the 9 old men, telling me it takes an awful lot of bad drawings to get a good one. He knew that most people didn’t hear him, so he put his crappy drawings out in the lunch room for people to see.

So don’t believe the insta-hype, everyone has to work hard.

The thing that has helped me the most was learning a new skill as an adult. I set out to learn to ride horses a few years ago. Most of my classes were with 15yr old girls, and I was laughed at for wearing the ridiculous pants (Which are pretty unique I admit.) But I knew what I wanted to achieve, and I had framed my own version of success. I learnt through hours in the saddle and a lot of failures that it is one step at a time. Horses have taught me so much, but the most significant lessons were to live in the moment, most problems are caused by YOU and by controlling yourself you can fix a lot of things, and finally, who cares what anyone else thinks.

So to recap,

Define your role and responsibilities, so you can’t be caught up in an unattainable quest for perfection

Frame what success will look like so you can not deny praise and you can intellectualise failure.

Focus on one step at a time to quiet your inner critic and the fear of failure. As a manager you should be trying to set up processes that create this.

Try to learn new things as an adult to remind yourself about the benefit of the journey. If you are not failing then you are not learning much.

Finally, try and have empathy for those around you but accept that most of your problems are somehow linked to something you are doing. Strive for self-awareness.

A confident creative will bring magical solutions, and well managed creative teams can be massive support in finding innovative solutions as the production runs out of resources towards the business end. We just have to create open channels of communication and encourage everyone to be in a support role.

I wish someone gave me this advice when I was pulling all-nighters on commercials, working as a TV series Animator, Gorillaz and Robot-boy and I apologise to all those I dragged along with me.


You and Eye Creative

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You and Eye Creative is a Paris based company. Developing animated content faster, with less risk and more confidence.

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