 Hi, I'm Jeff Watts and welcome to my new set of videos called Jeff's Top 10 Tips. This is the first episode and it's about impostor syndrome. And in this short video I'll explain what impostor syndrome is, why it's good, why it can be bad for us, and give you some actionable tips that you can take away and try to help manage your impostor syndrome. I hope you enjoy it. So what is impostor syndrome? Well, as the term suggests, it's a situation where you feel like a bit of a fraud, really, where other people have an over-inflated opinion of you, so they think you're better than you think you are. People will often put any success that they've had in the past down to good luck, or being in the right place at the right time, although they'll probably over-exaggerate what other people have done and not really give themselves as much credit as they should. Another symptom of impostor syndrome is when you walk into a room, one of the first sort of, it's kind of an unconscious thought, is that everyone in the room is smarter than you are, and you're probably going to end up making yourself look silly. Somebody's going to come along and say, who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing? You've got no authority to be doing that job. Get out of here. And I can lead to a crushing lack of confidence, really, certainly in increasing anxiety. But the one thing to remember is that it's incredibly common. I mean, really common. A lot of people would be surprised to know that I've in the past suffered from impostor syndrome, and to a large degree still do. So, I'm an agile coach. I'm a leadership coach. I've run probably hundreds of training courses, trained thousands of people. I've written three books, some of them won awards and been best sellers, and I've been invited to speak at conferences all over the world. But still, a couple of days before I'm about to give a training course, I'll have this onset, an impostor syndrome, this kind of self-doubt, thinking, you know, is this the course? Is this the one where somebody's going to ask me a question that I don't know the answer to? Or I'll say something silly. Or my mind will go blank. So, I'm going to share some techniques with you that I've used myself and I've used when I'm coaching other people to help manage impostor syndrome. And it's not about getting rid of impostor syndrome, but bringing it back into a more healthy, constructive balance. We've already said a few things about why impostor syndrome can be a bad thing. Basically, if we're struggling with confidence, we're not going to put ourselves out there. We won't volunteer for things as much. We won't be seen as confident. And we won't have those difficult conversations that we need to have. In short, we just won't realise our potential. It definitely leads to stress, burnout, and can even lead to things like paranoia and depression. But it's not all bad. You know, if we've got that voice inside our heads. I'm saying, you know, don't do this. You're not good enough. You're not clever enough. You're not experienced enough. These are all the reasons that it could go wrong. You could look silly. It's kind of a self-defence mechanism in a way. A lot of people's reaction will be, well, okay, I'm going to try harder. I'm going to study more. I'm going to practice and rehearse more. And you certainly won't get complacent. So an impostor syndrome can be a bit of a self-defence mechanism to avoid looking silly or messing up. But in general, the downsides do outweigh the positives. And so a lot of my work with people is about bringing the downsides back into a more healthy balance. So what can you do? Well, I'm going to give you 10 tips to help manage your impostor syndrome. Tip 10 is just remember it's normal. The chances are, when you walk into that room, everybody else in there either has experienced impostor syndrome at some point, or probably already are at that moment in time. But you just haven't noticed it in the past because you've been so focused on your own impostor. Tip 9 is to practice mindfulness. I've got a whole light bulb talk about developing a sense of calm and managing your emotions. And mindfulness itself is a big topic, something that we haven't got time to go into in a lot of detail now. But in short, mindfulness is about becoming more aware of the thought patterns that are going on, what you're thinking about, so that you can become more conscious and choosing which ones you spend your time and energy focusing on, and which ones you just let go because they're not helpful. So every now and again just take some time, especially when you are feeling a little bit like an impostor, to just find some quiet space, think about what's going on for you, notice the thoughts, the messages that you're giving yourself, and choose which ones you're going to listen to, which ones you're going to spend more time and energy and emotional investment on. Tip 8 is to set yourself up for success. What do I mean by that? Basically do anything you can to put yourself in a confidence inducing state. So perhaps you've got some particular clothes that make you feel more confident or comfortable. So wearing those are going to give you a much better chance of feeling comfortable and confident rather than anxious. And so why not wear them? I'm not one for superstition. In fact, I think it's bad luck to be superstitious. But if you have got something that you consider to be a lucky charm, something that you know what, things just go a little bit better if I have this with me, then have it with you. Personally I prefer something a little bit more comforting rather than a lucky. So if you've got a picture of a loved one or perhaps, you know, a pet or something like that, then just have it with you and it might make you feel a little bit more comfortable and confident. And smell can be powerful. Personally I quite like the smell of cut grass and coffee. And noticing that when I smell those I tend to feel a little bit more relaxed. So if you've got a particular cologne or perfume or something that puts you in a more confident and comfortable state, then use it. Do everything you can to set yourself up for success. One important thing to bear in mind here is that alcohol and caffeine make this imposter syndrome and many other types of anxiety a lot worse. So don't buy into the whole Dutch courage thing. Tip 7 is to create a career timeline. So this is something where you're going to basically map out a few highlights of your career. It can be done on paper, it can be done on a whiteboard. It can be done standing up with different areas of the room representing different times in your career and you move from place to place as you're thinking about and talking about those particular points in your career. Basically what you need to do is just think of say four or five really good highlights from your career. So they could be projects that went well, promotions that you got, maybe even just days when you had a good day. And when you've got those highlights try and really remember them and in particular try and remember what you did, what actions you took, what decisions you made, what skills you used, what strengths you used. You really vividly remember your part in that process. That will lodge, that will remind you that will be building up some of the positive messages that you're giving yourself to outweigh some of the negative messages that the imposter is giving you. Bear in mind in this situation it's very tempting for you to say well I was lucky or the circumstances were right. Just catch yourself when you notice yourself doing that and bring yourself back to the part that you played. It's not arrogant to give yourself credit for what you've done. Tip six is get some feedback and in particular people whose opinions you trust and respect and most importantly won't just tell you stuff that you want to hear. In my book, The Coaches Casebook, Kim and I give you a template called 555 for gathering some feedback. It's called 555 because you choose five questions, you ask five people and it should take them about five minutes to give you their answers. So these are questions about you. So they'll be asking things like what skills do you think I have? What do you think some of my biggest achievements are? What do you value about me? What do I add to the team in your opinion? Once you've given these questions to five people they can either send you your answers and you can read them or if you're feeling brave get them to verbally read their answers to you face to face. I know that might seem a bit weird and it would seem a bit weird there because if people with imposter syndrome find it very difficult to internalise and accept positive feedback about themselves it could be incredibly powerful to hear those words firsthand. And if you're brave enough to give that a go then try this as well because this increases the power even more. When somebody gives you some feedback, say it back to them in the first person. So for example somebody might say, Jeff when you were on our team you were always really good at thinking up creative solutions when everybody else was just seeing the problems. So then I would repeat back, thank you. So what you're telling me is that I can be very good at being creative when other people just see problems. And by doing that it's lodging here, I'm agreeing with it. Again I'm building up the positive messages to balance out the negative that the imposter is giving us. Tip five is to do a magazine interview of yourself. So here you're going to imagine that you're a journalist for let's say a leadership publication and you're going to be doing an article apiece on a really inspiring leader. That's you by the way. So write in the third person. So you're writing about yourself as if you were somebody else. It'll make sense when you do it. So focus on that person's, yours, achievements, promotions, successes, values, behaviors, character traits and be as kind as possible to yourself. This technique is quite powerful because it gives you permission to be kind to yourself. It's a little bit easier to say nice things about yourself when you're talking as if you're somebody else. Strange but true. Tip four is to practice reading the feedback that you've gathered about yourself. You've had two techniques here, the 555 and the magazine interview. So what we're suggesting you do here is capture that, maybe write it down or print it out and then every day for a while just read through it to yourself. Especially at times when you know this imposter is going to be running right and it can give you that little boost of confidence bringing you back down to reality rather than those panic stations that you might have been in in the past. Tip three is to thank your imposter. What do you mean thank your imposter Jeff? You've just been telling us that all he's been saying is negative things and undermining my confidence. True but I did say also that there's some benefits to it. So this imposter has helped you be more conscientious. They've helped you identify risks. They've helped you preserve yourself image. So they're providing a service. So thank them for that. Turn it from a battle into a partnership. So if you can thank them for the value they're adding and then say that's great. Thank you. Now I'm going to move and shift my attention and my energy into some other thoughts. Then you're going to get the best of both worlds. Tip two is to set some realistic goals. What do I mean by realistic goals? Well, bear with me on this one. Perhaps when we're taking my example of the training course, maybe subconsciously I'm thinking this course has to be perfect because if it's not then people are going to jump on the little mistakes that I make and people are paying money to come along and so it has to be perfect. That perfection goal, if you like, is allowing my imposter to really go to town because I'm now measuring myself against the quite possibly unrealistic and impossible goal. If, however, I was to change my goal to be more realistic, then my imposter will probably be a little bit quieter. And also what might the consequences of failure be? Would my mind go in blank or not being able to answer the question that somebody asked me be a good thing? Well, I teach honesty, transparency, courage, respect, collaboration. So I could turn that back and model those values that I'm teaching. So I could say genuinely, openly, honestly. You know what? I don't know the answer to that question. But there's 15 of us here and I reckon between us, some of us might have some opinions and some experiences that we could use to craft a useful answer. Will you help me with that? That takes a bit of courage, like I said, but it could be a positive thing. It could be the best thing that I could do. And my final, number one tip for managing your imposter syndrome is to get a coach. Now this might be somewhat of a conflict of interest you think for me to say because I am a coach, but I genuinely believe it. Having somebody neutral, objective, you know, on your side who can help you think through these patterns, these experiences, these behaviors over a longer period of time to see your development, your growth and help you notice and capitalize on the successes that you're having along the way that you might not see on your own. A coach can also help you craft your own bespoke techniques for dealing with your imposter syndrome. Something that you can then over time work with the coach to put into practice. So those are my top 10 tips. Hopefully something resonated with you in there and you're inspired to try something as a result. Remember, it's not about getting rid of your imposter syndrome. It's just about bringing it back into a more healthy, constructive balance. So a recap very quickly. First of all, remind yourself it's normal. Practice mindfulness. Set yourself up for success. Create a career timeline. Get some feedback from people. Do a magazine interview. Read that feedback regularly. Thank your imposter. Create realistic goals and get a coach. So that's the end of my first top 10 tips video. I hope you found it useful. I talk more about this in my book, The Coaches Casebook and if you're interested in one-to-one coaching for imposter syndrome or anything else then the details are on my website and you can sign up for a discounted taster session. The final thing for me to do is to politely ask you to subscribe to this YouTube channel and to like the videos so that we can increase the reach of them for other people who might find them useful. That's it. Thanks for watching. See you next time.