Doubting our abilities. Believe that all our colleagues are better than us. Even if you accomplish a multitude of tasks, tell yourself that you never do enough. Being afraid that someone will unmask us, point the finger at us and accuse us of incompetence. It is said that up to 75% of women and 50% of men suffer from impostor syndrome at some point in their careers. If you are part of the group, I hope that my testimony will help you to get rid of this perception which is as useless as it is invasive. There is a worse impostor than you: me.
A few years ago, a serious advertising agency, with the wind in its sails, had the funny idea of contacting me to support it in a contract. I said yes. (When you’re self-employed, you have to know how to seize the opportunities, otherwise you don’t work.) You had to create the image of a company. I was there to help find his name and tell his story. That we were going to have to invent, because it had nothing interesting, basically: gentlemen in ties merged two insurance brokerage agencies to form a single one. Not enough to make a thriller, let’s say.
I showed up to meet customers without a tie or a jacket, in my discount Old Navy clothes, once black, now dark gray. But I had a nice pen and a brand new Moleskine notebook.
Did I know what I was doing?
No way.
Did I look like I knew what to do?
Probably not.
My strategy for survival was simple: keep quiet. The less I spoke, the less risk there was of realizing that I didn’t know what I was doing there. My level of comfort: imagine a golden retriever trying his hand at playing chess.
The only tool I possessed was my impassive face, which perhaps gave me the air of a mysterious creative genius who only opened his mouth once his stunning idea had come to fruition.
I didn’t find the name. It happened while I was scribbling skulls in my Moleskine notebook. I clung to it like a buoy in a shipwreck during a storm.
I was also there to tell the story of this new society. I had understood, by dint of looking at examples, that there was an infallible trick to put the clientele in confidence and give them the desire to request services or to buy a product: to make believe that the company was born in the mind of a young, friendly couple with one or two children who live on a farmhouse with three hens and a goat, and presto, the public is won over.
With a few variations, that’s what I did. A beautiful touching little story in my beautiful little Moleskine notebook. Then, the agency’s pros wrapped it all up in a visual identity that was both modern and human. Contract completed.
Did I know what I was doing?
Absolutely not.
Did I deliver something drinkable?
I think so.
Did I pocket the money I was offered for my “work”?
Without a frown.
How could I do that with confidence and without any questioning? It’s quite simple; I am an impostor like any other. If I refuse a job for which I do not yet have the skills, I tell myself that another incompetent will take it in my place. So when the assignment tempts me, I accept it.
The key to getting rid of impostor syndrome is understanding that most people don’t know what they’re doing any more than we do. We learn on the job. “It is by forging that one becomes a blacksmith”, as the saying goes.
Just avoid overflows; impostor, that’s normal. Fraud is illegal. I stay in the things that seem to me in my capacities and, also, that I have the right to do. You won’t see me on all fours under your sink redoing the plumbing, or scalpel in hand in an operating room, ready to vasectomize you or get rid of your cataracts. Imposter syndrome is about underestimating or doubting the skills you have, not putting yourself in a position where you are definitely incompetent. It’s just an unpleasant impression, it’s not supposed to lead to prison.
The broker ultimately never endorsed his new identity. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered, randomly in the rows of the pharmacy, that the proposed new name was, within one letter, the same as an ointment against cold sores. Maybe I wasn’t the only impostor working on this case after all. But the advertising agency still had the lucidity never to call me back, and I didn’t insist either. After all, my incompetence still had many other areas to explore.