Confidence — the antidote to imposter syndrome
3 ways to believe you have what it takes
You can’t spell STEM without self-esteem.
I remember in my first job interview after grad school, my previous boss told me she had to choose between two people, one with technical experience and the other one without the skills at all (or more like, yet).
She did what she believed to be the right decision. She took a chance with the fresh grad who knew how to sell her self at the time.
The antidote to imposter syndrome
I know it is mind-boggling to convince yourself you have self-esteem in a STEM-related field. It is the worst place to be if you want to build your confidence, when everyone seems to be a high-achieving individual except YOU. At least that’s what you tell your self.
Most of us suffer from imposter syndrome, where despite being a good-performing individual, we still manage to find a way to doubt our skills. It is self-inflicted pain, unfortunately. In a perfectionist field where accuracy is key, we tend to get anxious about things out of our control.
Take those students who got accepted at top-performing schools, for example. Everyone is expected to perform at their best and get validated through grades and participation. Knowing you got selected at the top university, you carry with you the mindset that you can’t mess up — ever. After all, you are not used to failing. You have always been the achiever in your class and everyone voted for you to be the next President. Just the right recipe for breeding perfectionist individuals.
But when things get overwhelming, perfectionist people tend to unconsciously nitpick at their shortcomings and procrastinate.
Well, news flash:
You can’t survive STEM without self-esteem.
Banking on potential
Going back to that job interview, let’s switch roles this time. If I were the boss and I had to choose between a person who has experience in the field and the other who doesn’t know how to code but is willing to learn and grow with the right attitude, I would choose potential.
This sounds like a risky investment but playing safe is not playing smart. That’s why hiring managers or PIs in a lab should also look for the soft skills and not only focus on the hard skills, and find that sweet spot. Not too inexperienced but not too rigid on the technical side.
Let’s talk about attitude. Perfectionist people tend to not do well when it comes to challenges — especially when they’re used to being in control of almost everything. This is when group work does not bother you because you can do the group work yourself — but this only works in a classroom and not in a laboratory or an office. Most people with this mentality tend to not see the big picture. They cannot allow the variables to be unpredictable because unpredictability could lead to failure. They know how to solve a technical problem because they have the technical skills to do so.
But what happens when the technical skills are not enough, especially when the problem is more than just technical?
Say, you land a job in tech that involves heavy programming, you may encounter many difficulties in debugging your codes and trying to make the software work just in time to hit the target deadline, which is the following day. Your boss also asked you to prepare a high-level presentation showing your project progress in the first quarter and you need to include graphs and explanations meant for a general audience. If you are someone who likes to work alone with a mindset that you can’t mess up, moments like these when you’re supposed to deliver several outputs the next day, could be a perfect recipe for paralysis.
So here’s how I use the antidote
I focus on facts.
I know everything is all in my head when I get overwhelmed so I do the most logical thing to do. I unload and dump. If it’s all in my head, then out of my head it shall go.
I create a matrix where I see all of my thoughts in one place so I can address them one by one and look at patterns. Imagine gathering all your data and standardizing them so you can easily perform analysis. Take the example below. This is my typical internal chatter when hell week at work starts:
But what does it take?
The whole exercise relies on self-confidence and willingness to adapt.
You need to believe in your self enough to get through the whole situation, especially if you lead a team. This takes confidence and adaptability to reframe your thoughts. You have to put yourself in that situation and envision a person who thinks that way.
You need to get out of your head and stop operating on that negative internal feedback and start operating on a positive one.
In my case, the job I landed required supervising a project that utilizes satellite data to monitor drought from space. To give you context, I studied giant clams under heat stress in a laboratory months before that job and I only attended an elective on remote sensing a year prior. Nevertheless, I understand the impacts of climate variables on different ecosystems and I had basic knowledge in analysing satellite data.
So I did what I had to do — believe in my self to develop my skills further. I did not listen to my internal chatter of insecurity and fear of trying and failing. I needed that self-confidence to put my best foot forward in my job or else, I won’t have the audacity to face high-level stakeholders and add value to the team.
Realistically, the job was not smooth-sailing at first because I had a steep learning curve and I needed to learn fast. Fortunately, this individual challenge only worked when I approached it with a collective solution. This is when the power of collaboration comes in.
STEM researchers should encourage a collaborative environment to thrive in a competitive field.
I took the initiative to ask people, especially those who were senior to me in the lab. I humbled my self enough to recognize the fact that I needed to learn, not on my own, but with other people. This could also include your boss.
The supportive environment of my first workplace strengthened my self-esteem, which encouraged me to:
- Allow my self to grow and realize my potential. I know I have larger shoes to fill and I should welcome that challenge.
- Allow my self to operate on positive internal feedback and generate positive outcomes.
- Allow other people to teach me and collaborate with me to solve problems together and generate helpful insights.
For this supportive environment to form, you need to reach out and get out of your comfort zone. This is how you develop self-esteem in STEM and encourage others to do the same.
