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The Impostor Syndrome

In my experience, the folks who have no doubts about their abilities are usually the ones that absolutely should. Enjoy this article on the Imposter Syndrome from NYT.

Imposter Syndrome

On paper, your investments in stocks, real estate or even cash may look like your greatest assets. While all those things are superimportant, you have something else that’s even more valuable. It’s the investment called you.

Finding ways to increase your value while doing the things you love may be the most important thing you do. Maybe you pursue more training to qualify for a raise. Maybe you find a way to sell the photography you did as a hobby. Maybe you find a way to turn your freelance writing into full-time work.

They all involve doing something new for you, but when you head down this path, you are probably going to run into this thing, this fear that you’re bumping up against the limits of your ability. Then, the voice inside your head may start saying things like:

■ “Who gave you permission to do that?”

■ “Do you have a license to be an artist?”

■ “Who said you could draw on cardstock with a Sharpie in Park City, Utah, and send those sketches to The New York Times?”

I think you get the idea. It’s at the moment when you’re most vulnerable that all your doubts come crashing in around you. When I first heard that voice in my own head, I didn’t know what to make of it. The fear was paralyzing. Every time I sent a sketch or something else into the world, I worried the world would say, “You’re a fraud.”

During a session with a business coach, I shared my fear. I was shocked when she told me this thing had a name. As you’ve tried new things or done anything outside of your comfort zone, you’ve probably felt that fear, too. The first step to dealing with this fear is knowing what to call it.

Two American psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, gave it a name in 1978: the impostor syndrome. They described it as a feeling of “phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” While these people “are highly motivated to achieve,” they also “live in fear of being ‘found out’ or exposed as frauds.” Sound familiar?

All About the Impostor Syndrome

Listen to the Sketch Guy’s financial advice.

Once we know what to call this fear, the second step that I’ve found really valuable is knowing we’re not alone. Once I learned this thing had a name, I was curious to learn who else suffered from it. One of my favorite discoveries involved the amazing American author and poet Maya Angelou. She shared that, “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”

Think about that for a minute. Despite winning three Grammys and being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, this huge talent still questioned her success.

I’m also a big fan of the marketing expert Seth Godin, and even after publishing a dozen best sellers, he wrote in “The Icarus Deception” that he still feels like a fraud. I’ve heard that American presidents can feel this thing, too. The first time they find themselves alone in the Oval Office, they think to themselves, “I hope nobody finds out I’m in here.”

So now that we know its name and that other people deal with it too, our third step is to understand why we feel this way. I think part of the impostor syndrome comes from a natural sense of humility about our work. That’s healthy, but it can easily cross the line into paralyzing fear. When we have a skill or talent that has come naturally we tend to discount its value.

Why is that? Well, we often hesitate to believe that what’s natural, maybe even easy for us, can offer any value to the world. In fact, the very act of being really good at something can lead us to discount its value. But after spending a lot of time fine-tuning our ability, isn’t it sort of the point for our skill to look and feel natural?

All of this leads to the final and most important step: learning how to live with the impostor syndrome. I recently listened to Tim Ferriss interview the clinical psychologist and author Tara Brach. In her book “Radical Acceptance,” she shared a really cool story about Buddha and the demon Mara.

One day, Buddha was teaching a large group, and Mara was moving around the edges, looking for a way into the group. I envision Mara rushing frantically back and forth in the bushes and trees, making plans to wreak havoc. One of Buddha’s attendants saw Mara, ran to Buddha and warned him of Mara’s presence. Hearing his attendant’s frantic warning, the Buddha simply replied, “Oh good, invite her in for tea.”

This story captures beautifully how we should respond to the impostor syndrome. We know what the feeling is called. We know others suffer from it. We know a little bit about why we feel this way. And we now know how to handle it: Invite it in and remind ourselves why it’s here and what it means.

For me, even after six years of sharing these simple sketches with the world and speaking all over the world, you think I’d be used to it. In fact, the impostor syndrome has not gone away, but I’ve learned to think of it as a friend. So now when I start to hear that voice in my head, I take a deep breath, pause for a minute, put a smile on my face and say, “Welcome back old friend. I’m glad you’re here. Now, let’s get to work.”

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Business professors need to spend time outside of the classroom in companies

For business professors, time is always an issue. What do you think?  Originally posted in HBR.

business school

 

Today, more and more students, parents, and taxpayers are demanding a greater return for the cost of college education. The Economist has called it a “revolution” and a “cost crisis” in university education. People are justifiably asking whether there is a reasonable return on their tuition investment and business schools are arguably under the microscope most of all.

This is a pendulum swing from the 1950s when research by the Ford and Carnegie foundations found too much of a focus on vocational training, and business education was criticized for being overly technical and applied. Business schools responded. Now, years later, educators have been criticized for going too far. One notable critic, Warren Bennis, a renowned leadership scholar from the University of Southern California, states that business schools have “an overemphasis on the rigor and an underemphasis on relevance.”

Some business schools have responded by hiring professors of practice, or industry executives without PhDs. The question remains as to whether there is a role for classically trained professors in business schools of the future. Or is it time for business professors to go back to work?

One of us, Holly Brower, decided to put this question to the test. Brower designed a faculty “externship” where she left her university office and for two months become part of global pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly’s daily operations. Rather than act as an outside consultant, she would work as an insider. Brower, along with other colleagues, had from time to time worked as a consultant for companies. These experiences, while helpful to understand contemporary business problems, quickly placed her in the role of teacher/adviser and the company as client. Brower was looking for a different type of experience with a more level playing field. Though short, the immersion within Eli Lilly offered her a litmus test for the material she teaches and researches.

With a company sponsor who was clearly open minded and inquisitive, and her expertise as a leadership scholar, together they mapped out a problem that Eli Lilly was working to resolve — their leadership programs across the globe needed a streamlined framework. She provided both expertise and an apolitical lens to build the new model.

In a separate externship, as part of KPMG’s Professor in Residence Program, a tax professor worked closely with a global team of accountants on implications of tax codes across South America. The project gave the professor a fresh look at the challenges his students would face as tax professionals and gave the accountants a chance to offer input into the professor’s research. As academic articles become sources for textbooks, this early feedback into academic research is critical, and the relevant work experience enhances class examples and coaching of students.

Though faculty externships are rare and there is not a “typical” model, we conducted a series of interviews with interested executives and professors with their own faculty externship experiences to construct a beta-tested protocol for a successful externship. These include identifying an internal sponsor for the faculty extern; an extern who fits with the company culture; and a clear project that is both related to the extern’s expertise and offers value to the company. This project should have specific start and end dates, and clear deliverables. The extern and the company should also come to a clear agreement about confidentiality rules. Once the externship begins, the internal sponsor should communicate the nature of the project and the background of the faculty extern, and help plan interactions such as lunch and learns between the faculty extern and employees. Finally, every externship should end with a debriefing.

One marketing executive who hosted an extern at IBM said of the weekly lunch and learn presentation: “The professor’s lunchtime talk was highly attended and received great feedback. Since many of us do not have a legal background, it was helpful to hear her points of view on how the law is impacting advertising. It was also great having her in smaller group meetings, getting to hear her points of view.”

While externships offer value, both faculty and executives resist the practice for a number of reasons. For companies, including a professor in daily operations can come with angst about whether or not that professor will fit in a positive way that doesn’t require too much “handholding.” The selection of the right extern is critical to find an ideal match. For professors, aside from a few limited exceptions, university norms and incentives currently do not support externships. While the academy values primary research on questions with managerial implications, there are strong trade-offs between working within a company, even for a limited time, and crafting a journal article.

There is also the question of whether professors are in fact more effective having some distance from business. Can more enduring perspectives be better taught through an outside view? Is the real problem not what is being taught in business schools, but instead what is being practiced by businesses? Like most interesting questions, perhaps the answer is “both.”

Holly Henderson Brower (Ph.D., Purdue University) is an Associate Professor at the School of Business at Wake Forest University where she also is the faculty director of the internship program.  She consults and publishes on issues related to trust, leadership and effective decision making in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations.

Michelle D. Steward (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of Business at Wake Forest University. Michelle’s research interests are in the area of business-to-business marketing.

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