Hi, my name is Marie and I feel like an Imposter. What about you?
The work environment has some similarities to Social Media: We only see what people want us to see and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking everyone has it figured out but us.
Because why would anyone share their most vulnerable self on social media or at work? We want to show our best side.
We don’t want someone to doubt the decision of having invited us to an interview, having hired us, or having promoted us…We want to come across as confident and not as someone who doesn’t believe in themselves, so we don’t dare to talk about feeling like an imposter.
Reasons for Imposter Syndrome vary. The feeling of being a fraud can often appear when we are changing careers or our role, when there are language or cultural barriers, when we have not found our personal strengths to name just a few potential triggers.
One thing that we can be certain of is that we are not alone!
In 2020, the Journal of General Internal Medicine stated that up to 82% of people face the feelings of the imposter phenomenon and struggle with the sense of not having earned what they have achieved. These feelings can contribute to increased anxiety and depression, less risk-taking in careers, and career burnout.
We can all agree that nobody wants to feel anxious, depressed and like a fraud.
But what if we could use our feeling of being an Imposter to help us find what makes us unique and what differentiates us from others — since we already established that feeling like an imposter doesn’t make us unique :)
Talking to others who also feel like a fraud has been helpful for me to overcome my fears of not being proficient in my role, so I reached out to my Product Experience colleagues here at DocuSign to discuss our personal doubts and to learn about how they deal with them.
We came up with a few concrete tips that I’d like to share, in hopes that it will help others control their feelings of being an imposter.
1. Be prepared and find your strengths: Don’t focus on the reasons that make you feel like an imposter, focus on your experience, your achievements and your uniqueness
Micheline, Product Designer:
One piece of advice from me would be to know how to sell yourself and your skill set. In any previous job or career you’ve had, you acquired the skills that qualified you to be in that industry. These can certainly be spun into why you are perfectly suited for any new role.
2. Invite the fear of failure: Come up with strategies on how to deal with the worst outcome
Ricardo, Product Design Architect:
It’s important to get realistically grounded and assess the situation. There is a Buddhist exercise to invite fear to be part of you and it actually works pretty well for me. What’s the worst worst thing that can happen, and then I couple that with strategies on what I can do about it now.
3. Put yourself out there: Find a mentor, a coach, a friend, a former colleague to exchange and talk about your doubts and feelings. An outside perspective can help you regardless where you are at in your career.
Shelby, Senior Manager Product Design:
I hired a coach not that long ago, because I was feeling really drained. At the time I was leading the work of 10 designers, but I would have told you that I just say stuff without real impact. So she said, slow down and watch what happens when you give advice or when you give people direction, so I did, and I was starting to see the impact of my words more.
4. Find the right place for you to be: Companies don’t just interview you for a role, you interview the company as a new employer. Sometimes we set ourselves up for failure by accepting a job that doesn’t fit our strengths and needs.
Ricardo, Product Design Architect:
When I presented my portfolio, I made a conscious decision, with the help of a couple mentors, to tell my story and be as sincere as I could, by trying to be compelling but clear on what I can and want to do and what I don’t. Setting expectations on what you need from the employer, if they want you to bring value, created a much better story for me.
5. Set yourself up for success: Identify achievable goals and don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by long-term goals
Ricardo Product Design Architect:
I practice not to absorb the stress of knowing that I have 20 things to do and try to give my work a shape that is more realistic, better to assess objectively. Every day is a fresh start. And it’s easier for me to plan what kind of achievements I’m going to have on that specific day. I can prepare myself, so I can gain perspective and understand what I can and cannot do.
6. Treat yourself as you would treat others: Don’t be harder on yourself than you would be with someone else.
Madeline, Product Designer:
There’s one thing that I do: When I’m looking at something I’ve designed and it looks like someone just threw spaghetti at a wall, I close my eyes and then I try to imagine that I am not looking at my design but at somebody else’s. When I pretend somebody else made it, I gain perspective and it makes it look so much better.
7. Acknowledge the positives: Accept compliments. Celebrate your successes and remember them.
Sara, Manager Product Design:
The tech industry is very cyclical and there’s always something else to fix. We don’t stop and just say: “hey you did a great job last week.” I think there is a relationship with that feeling of constantly just moving along and feeling like an imposter because you’re not taking the time to reflect on the growth that you did have or the things that you did do.Cami, Design Program Manager:
When we are doing our performance reviews, we start practicing grounding ourselves and our assessments. In the beginning I didn’t see the positive things I did, but when it came to the negative I could pull that evidence really easily. If we take a screenshot of compliments and positive feedback to look at, it can really help us when we are feeling insecure. Whenever I feel lost, I go back to these and it helps me center myself, remember the positive things and helps me remember that I know what I’m doing.
8. Be part of the change: Help create an environment where it is ok to talk about doubts
Madeline, Product Designer:
The only thing that makes me feel like maybe I do belong, is really hearing people that I am sure belong, saying that they feel like they don’t. The first time I heard somebody say they had imposter syndrome, it was a professor that I really respected and she was giving a lecture and she referenced her own imposter syndrome. When I was like: “Her? She has imposter syndrome?” Hearing people that you really respect say they struggle with it is such a big part of getting over it.
I know that it seems impossible to get over these feelings of doubts (and most likely we never will), but we can learn to live with these feelings and to control them, instead of letting them control our lives.
These feelings might sneak up on you from time to time, but won’t be as overwhelming anymore.
Whether you choose to act on one or many of the tips my colleagues shared with me, just remember that most people feel like a fraud at one point or another. It’s normal!
Speak up, share and help yourself and others feel better about themselves.
If you feel comfortable sharing your own experience, tips or how this article resonated with you or might have already changed your perspective, please let us know in the comments or reach out to me directly.
⭐️ Thanks to my amazing team members for sharing their stories and tips, to Jake Mitchell, Adam Fry-Pierce, Christa Louks & Sara Holburt for editing this article, and to Anndo Ko for the beautiful illustrations.
👋🏼 Want more from the DocuSign PX team? Check us out on Instagram, Medium, and Dribbble. Want to work in an environment where you can have open discussions like this? We’re hiring!
