So a friend texted me recently and she said, do you ever get fed up of being underestimated? And
what she was talking about is that feeling when you're in a room and there's people maybe a lot
older than you, a lot more senior than you are, and you feel as though you have to like over explain
every single decision or you have to. I don't know where the clothes wear the makeup, like show up
110% best version of you because you feel as though you're underestimated. And my response to
her was, yes, I have absolutely got fed up of that before. Like being underestimated. Um, sometimes at
work, even sometimes to this day. I think it on social media, like occasionally, you know, and it's
definitely something that's in me internally is I think I'm like, oh, I wish people took me more
seriously. I wish people respected me more. But what I've come to realise over the years is being
underestimated is actually quite a superpower. You know what? I'm going to go as far to say as I hope
I'm underestimated forever, because the opposite is being overestimated. Imagine that. Imagine
people like overestimating what you can do, and then you showing up and letting them down like
that is worse for me. That is more fearful. This is the podcast where we open the box on all the
difficult conversations that usually only ever happen behind those closed boardroom doors, at
work and in leadership. And today, on today's episode, we're going to go around the houses a
little bit. We're going to explore the idea of imposter syndrome, talk about exactly what that is,
why it may be holding you back right now, and exactly what you are going to do to make sure it
never holds you back again. Because trust me, if anyone can tell you about imposter syndrome, it's
me. So I'm going to explain exactly sort of where I was when I felt it and why I felt it. But
alongside that, I want to explore this theme of being underestimated and people underestimating
you, and how that really links into this idea of being respected at work, being taken seriously at
work. To me, it's all one in the same thread. So for this first bit, I'm going to bring up my notes.
I've got some notes here on exactly what imposter syndrome is, and I've got like the Google
definition of where it came from and what exactly what it is. So imposter syndrome. Not kind of like
the watered down version, but the legit definition of imposter syndrome was first identified in 1978
by two psychologists, Pauline Glantz and Suzanne Imes. They said they were studying high achieving
women who, despite their success, were convinced they got there by luck and had this feeling of
they were about to be found out. It's a specific internal experience where you can't
internalise your own achievements. They feel like something that's kind of outside of us, even
though the external evidence may say we are capable. Our internal narrative doesn't quite
believe it yet. I can tell you the time when I felt the imposter syndrome the strongest. There's
two points in my career where it really kind of ring true for me. First of all was when I very,
very first started my management career. So I was working on the Harrod shop floor. I had a very
small team. I think we were 8 or 9 people and we were managing shift patterns. And if anyone kind
of works in hospitality, retail, you will know that you're you're generally managing a team who don't
see this job as their career job. So it is an extra layer of hard to kind of keep them
motivated, keep them coming in on time, keep them excited, because most of the time, a lot of those
people know that they're only going to be in this job for like a year or two. And I remember the
very first time I had to like, quote unquote, tell someone off or just pull them to the side, pull
them up on the fact that they were late. When you work in shifts on a retail shop floor, obviously
if you're late, it really negatively impacts the people around you. And it was the very first time
that I kind of had to pull someone to the side and say, look, your lateness is impacting the rest
of the team. I just went absolutely in on myself thinking, who am I to be having this conversation
with someone? Who am I to be telling someone that, you know, just telling them what to do, like
dictating their life, their day here on earth? And I just went completely in on myself, and that
feeling of someone is going to find me out could not have been more true. I remember being
literally stood on the shop floor thinking, at any given moment, someone is going to walk around that
corner and say to me, uh, Heather, I think you must have lied your way to get here, or I don't think, I
think we've chose the wrong person or we know this is. This was a big one. We know that. You know,
you don't know what you're doing. I was like, someone is going to say that to me at some point
soon, and they're going to drag me off the shop floor and send me back to Donny, aka, which is
Doncaster, where I'm from. And it was that just constant feeling of like, I felt like I'd been
lucky. I felt like I didn't deserve the opportunity and I couldn't see that. Even though I
had all these brilliant external achievements, I had absolutely done everything to earn the place
in that job. It was just a bit of growth. It was probably a little bit ahead of the experience
that I had, and therefore my internal narrative just like couldn't quite close the gap. There was
one other time, and this was a bit more recently, I was there was one at a time that was a bit more
recently whereby I was working at sage, so big corporate, I was an ops director inside sage. I
walked into this specific boardroom in the Manchester office, so it was about 25 other people
in this room, and every single leader in that room was at least 20 years my senior, incredibly
experienced, great at their job and we were discussing like a new company wide project
initiative. I just felt frozen. I thought, why on earth should I share my opinion on anything
that's going on here? Because as soon as I open my mouth, everyone that's looking at me in this room
is going to think who? Sorry, who? Why is she speaking? Why is that child speaking or why is
that? You know, why is she here again? And it was just this true, pure sense of like, I am an
imposter in this room and someone's going to find me out. And so I know there's a lot of talk around
the fact that imposter syndrome was just something that was kind of coined, the term that
was coined to hold women back. I think it's actually the opposite. I think imposter syndrome
is a really beautiful sign that you're in the right place, that you're growing, that you are just
pushing yourself. You're expanding into that like next stage of your growth. I honestly think now
when I get more scared, when things start to feel too comfortable, um, you know, if I'm, like, speaking
in rooms and doing workshops and those workshops start to feel really easy for me to deliver and
I'm really comfortable. I'm like, oh, I've stopped pushing myself here. I've stopped challenging
myself and growing something else. I feel imposter syndrome around right now is that I have recently
done a public speaking gig in the Cayman Islands, of all places. So, um, a conference HR conference
have flown me all the way to the Cayman Islands to deliver a public speaking talk. It's the most
amount of money I've ever been paid for one talk. It is the biggest stage I will stand on that have
stood on and will stand on for a long time. And my imposter syndrome, oh my God is flaring up. Like
the amount of times that I have been thinking, am I good enough to do this? Have they booked the
wrong person? Have I like oversold to them and they're going to be disappointed by me? Like trust
me, I don't think it ever goes away, but it is just a sign that you're in the right place and you're
doing the right things. Because I know I'm going to go on that stage and deliver the best talk of
my life because I know how prepared I am. I know how much effort I put into things. And they've
also already seen the talk on YouTube. So like, it's it's exactly what they want. I'm just I need
to now expand into this better version of myself. So whatever it is, you feel imposter syndrome
about. Maybe there's sort of moments, feelings, situations that you kind of feel the sense of
imposter syndrome over. I just want you to hold that and use it as reference. As we go through the
next few parts of this episode. Something that's always been interesting to me is the people who
feel imposter syndrome often are the ones who are actually the most capable. Because if you think
about it, imposter syndrome is almost like this gap between your actual competence meaning so
someone has put you in a role, has put you in this position because they believe you can do it,
versus your brain. Then having to catch up and believe that you can do it. And so therefore, I
often think the people who feel that sense of imposter syndrome usually are the high performers,
like they are the people who deserve to be there, sometimes more than a lot of other people in the
room. So no matter how much experience you have, how many decades of, you know, leadership roles,
whatever that you've got is someone who is consistently willing to learn more and more every
single day. If you just think about how much the workplace has changed over the last six years
alone. Six years ago, pre-COVID, we were. Most of us were going into an office every single day. I knew
I was going into an office every single day, having doing work on computers. A lot of us
weren't even using laptops. We had like fixed computers at our desks. Um, fast forward to now
2026. The world just did a complete 180 with the world of work overnight. We now know that remote
work is possible. It's productive, it's important. But also, Gen Z have also started entering the
workforce in rapid rates. They kind of brought with them a whole new set of expectations. If you
allow your leadership, if a leader that got their first management job even ten years ago, which is
me, that was me ten years ago, my first management job, and today X stopped learning and said, let's
say I've done my learning. I'm not willing to learn anything more. Imagine how dangerous that
would be for that team and for that business, because the world just moves on so much even now
in the age of AI. Like if you are a manager who is unwilling to learn more. Is it
unwilling to kind of go, let's experiment with this, let's test this. If you are completely closed
off from experimenting and trying new things, you will be one of those leaders in 510 years time
that was left behind. I know that you listen to this right now. Have your own example of a leader,
a manager who is in your life. Maybe they're in your company, maybe they're in your family who run
a business. They manage a team and they're stuck behind because they're unwilling to, like, grow and
learn. You will see the impact that that has on their team. And so imposter syndrome, just use it
as a signal, just feel it, use it as a signal. And that like, no, it's just pointing you towards
growth and wanting more. And something I always like to think with imposter syndrome is the one
thing that you feel the most vulnerable about. So for me, it was my age. It's my northern accent, just
the fact that I'm from the north and a lot of those rooms that I was in, there was some very
posh Southerners there who, you know, spoke very eloquently, could very clearly articulate
themselves. And they were the things that I started to feel imposter syndrome over, like my, my
age, my experience and my voice. Just my own voice. And if I could go back and tell Heather, like even
five years ago, six years ago, one thing, it would be all those things you feel the most vulnerable
about. You feel the most imposter syndrome over. They are your superpowers. Not only that, they are
the reason you're in that room. So the reason they needed me to be in those rooms was because of my
age, because of my lack of experience. It brings such an important quality to the team. A question
that I often get asked about managers is, what do I do when I manage a team who have a skill that I
don't have? So, for example, I used to manage a dev team development team in product development. I
had no coding experience whatsoever at that time. Okay, yet I was managing a product manager at full
development team QA. We were doing sprints, all that fun stuff. For anyone who knows the dev world.
It's a whole like another complex project management world. And I was managing that. I was
managing this group of devs who had studied, gone to uni for a very long time to learn this
specific skill and honed this craft. And then the day I would say to them things like, so when can
you get me this work for? Or why has the deadline moved? Why has this fallen down? They could tell me
anything, oh my God. Like they could tell me literally anything and I wouldn't have a clue
what they were talking about. And I my imposter syndrome really kicked in then because I used to
think, well, I can't tell them what to do, I can't correct them, I can't kind of challenge them and
coach them and push them, because I don't have a clue, like I don't know what they're doing. I
reframed it, of course, and I was like, okay, what if my biggest vulnerability here is actually a
superpower? What if the fact that I don't have development skills actually gives me almost this,
like external perspective on project management, on features that the product needs on timelines?
Because I can say I remember one thing so clearly, which was like one of the devs would come back
with a timeline for a feature being added, and I could question them by saying, I completely
respect your timeline. If we had to get that down by a week, how does the scope of work need to
reduce? So you know, we have to deliver it for this time. But I appreciate you can't get all of it
done. So can we get half of it done? Can we get, like, the minimum viable version of that feature
ready. And we ship it on this date? If I was a developer with a developer head on inside the
code and inside that work, I would have really struggled to give that external perspective. Do
you see how we're just kind of flipping those things that we feel really insecure about, really
vulnerable about into? This actually makes me a great leader. This is actually my USP is my
superpower. A lot of the times things people say about imposter syndrome is like, well, just find
the confidence. You just need to build up your confidence. And I know better than anyone else
that you can't just find confidence. Like if we have a sense of nervousness over something or, you
know, maybe public speaking is a really good example because I used to feel really nervous
over like presenting at work, public speaking at work. What I had to come to realise was you can't
just get confident. Confidence is a skill and it's a muscle that we have to build. And I learned at
some point in my career that I was terrified of public speaking. But in order to be a great leader,
to be the leader that I wanted to be, I needed to kind of learn that skill. I didn't need to be
perfect at it, but I just needed to know how to present in a way that inspired my team. And, you
know, I could say the things that they needed to hear instead of just constantly focusing on, am I
saying the right thing? Do they think I look stupid? Am I going to make a mistake? And I realise
this very early on that I had so much like nervousness and weirdness around presenting. So I
started flexing the muscle, I started practising, I started watching YouTube videos like learning and
understanding how to deliver good talks, how to inspire people, how to bring people along for the
journey and then just start doing it, like start going to small Toastmasters things. So
Toastmasters is just an organisation where you can get in a room. They have them all over the
globe. You can get in a room with like five other people who also want to level up in public
speaking, and you just do a pitch, you do a five minute pitch, and then you just score each other
and you give each other feedback, and you help each other to feel confident. If you want the
confidence to improve in a skill. If you want to build that confidence, muscle and skill in any
area, you do just have to go and practice it. I'll tell you something else. I feel this is a random
one, but I was really scared of flying until very recently. Um, not to the point where it would, like,
stop me getting on a plane. I would still get on the plane, but to the point where I would be a
complete, like frozen, anxiety driven, like tears in my eyes, ball of nerves on a plane.
And I could just about relax. Probably if we were mid-flight and it got really smooth and, you know,
you couldn't feel I could just relax. But other than that, I was that person who, you know, when you
were on a long haul flight and you can put the altitude thing on, on the screen, like you can
watch the pilots. I would literally just sit and stare at that and just make sure that the
altitude was staying exactly as it was. I still to this day, I've never been on a long haul flight on
my own because I can't. I always find an excuse for someone to come with me if I'm travelling for
work, I'm like, oh, we need to bring someone along to take content or to just be my support person, I
don't know, but now I'm actually not scared of flying. I don't want to say it's completely gone
away. It's still very strange. I actually sometimes get confused by people who are like, completely
relaxed on flights. I'm like, you do realise you're in like a tin can flying through the sky. Anyway,
it's got so much better to the point where now I'm not a ball of nerves, I can relax, I can chill
out. I actually had a sleep on a plane a few months ago. On the way back from Thailand. I
managed to get three hours sleep, which is never. I would have never done that this time a couple of
years ago because I would just be. It doesn't matter what time of night is, it doesn't matter
how much melatonin I've taken. I am wide awake because I'm just full of anxiety. But I knew that
this and it's not imposter syndrome. It's more just phobia, it's fear. But I just needed to flex
the muscle. And so something I used to do was I would listen to flying podcasts, listen to pilot
podcasts to understand the world of flying. Like understand why it's safe, understand what pilots
do in emergency situations, why turbulence isn't dangerous, watch YouTube videos eventually. Now my
algorithm is just all planes like I could literally name every plane in the sky, but it's
because I had this fear and I it was almost like I needed to kind of take control of that one area
of my life and learn and understand it and get better at it. And I did that with public speaking.
I did it also with difficult conversations. This is another big one. If you are someone right now
who's sitting there thinking, I hate conflict, I avoid conflict like the plague, then the only way
to get better at having difficult conversations in your leadership role is to just go and have
them and have them messy. I would also say go and ask for feedback. First. See how it feels to be on
the receiving end of that feedback. Because feedback is a gift. And even though you'll realise
getting the feedback will hurt in the moment. So just go and ask your team a question in a one on
one. Something like, um, you know what? One thing would you change about the way I manage you? It
might take asking them a few times before you get a proper answer, but when they tell you the answer,
it will sting a little bit, like it's going to hurt a little bit. You know, no one likes hearing
negative things about themselves, but what you'll realise is as you go away and start to work on
that thing and change that thing, it very quickly becomes a gift. It's a gift because you see that
that feedback was really important for you to learn and to grow. So when it comes to imposter
syndrome, when it comes to nervousness around a skill, around a very specific thing in your life,
lean into it like explore it more, don't shy away from it. Go and really lean into it. Test it, figure
it out and you know, try. Just try the thing. Just test the thing. Go and watch YouTube videos about
the thing. I saw something on social media the other day, and I'm telling you, it was on social
media because I don't actually know how true it is, but it was someone's social media video, so
please go. Fact checked me, but someone said that the thing that often you are the most like
obsessed with. So if you have an obsession with something in your life, is can often be the same
thing that you are fearful of. And for me that was planed because it's like, what are you trying to
control? What is the thing that you almost think about so much that it reveals a bit of an
insecurity in yourself. Another step to overcome imposter syndrome that I found really useful is
stop treating feelings as facts. Like we really have to separate feelings from fact. So when I'm
sat in that room with all those people who are 20 years my senior, I am feeling inexperienced. I am
feeling as though my voice is not important. I am feeling as though if I speak, everyone's going to
think I'm stupid. Those are feelings. Feelings are valid. Feelings are important. But I have to
separate those things from the truth. Which are the facts? The facts are I have been promoted. I
have been given a pay rise. I am put in this room because people want to hear my opinion. Maybe not
everyone, maybe not everyone, but at least a few people in this room value my opinion, want to hear
it and respect that opinion. Also, the fact is I come from a very different perspective. There's a
lot of people in this room because I am younger than them, so I've kind of experienced the
workplace in in a slightly different way from a slightly different angle, and therefore my opinion
is equally as important as theirs. And maybe we'll bring some diversity to the room too. So I need
you to find a way to whatever you're feeling the most imposter syndrome around that thing that you
named earlier in the episode. Write down the feelings versus the facts, because I guarantee the
facts are so much more of a positive story than the one that kind of like your inner monologue is
trying to convince you of. Which brings me really nicely onto my next point, which is you need to
have like an evidence audit. So once you write those things down, I want you to go even deeper.
Start thinking, what is some great feedback you've had? If you don't already have a folder within
your drive where you just screenshot good feedback and whack it in there for a rainy day,
when you're feeling a bit down and you need to go view it, you need to get one of those set up like
we have one about the business. Anytime someone tells me that we've kind of impacted their life
in a really positive way, I screenshot it. I throw it in a folder, I send it around to the team
because there are many, many dark days, especially being on social media. The amount of really
difficult comments I get about my work and my body, my face, my everything. It can get you down.
Trust me, it can drive you to the pits of hell. So you need those positive things to pull you out.
You know, my suffering isn't any worse than anyone else's. Like you will have those days as well,
where you feel as though people work on making you feel like that. Maybe someone's made a comment
that it's just ringing around in your head over and over again. The way that you pull yourself out
of that is by having this almost like evidence audit good feedback. The days that you do feel
good, like when you are feeling your best self and you are feeling on top right something to
yourself to remind yourself how you're feeling when you need it the most. So just keep some sort
of audit, whether it's in a notebook, a drive folder, just something that's like almost your
internal monologue in the most positive way possible that you can keep dipping back into when
you need it the most. Something that's really helped pull me out of insecurity. Feeling
vulnerable about myself. Something that really pulled me through over the years is taking it
away from me and focusing it on other people. What I mean by that is when I step on a stage and I'm
feeling nervous as hell, right? I remember the TEDx talk I did last year and I was feeling so
terrified, like literally dripping, so shaky. I've never felt so scared in my life to do a talk
because all my family were in the audience. It was being recorded and put up on YouTube. Obviously,
Ted is just like a bucket list thing to do. It's a dream. And so I just felt all the nerves, the the
mantra. I kept repeating. The thing I had to keep, keep reminding myself of is this is not for me.
I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this for just one person in the audience, one person watching on
YouTube who really needs to hear the words that I'm about to say. And when you take the focus away
from you and really put it on, I'm just helping people. I'm growing people. I'm moving people
forward. And that's what leadership is. When you take the insecurity away from you and think, you
know, I need to not be insecure about this thing because people need me. I know that you are
listening to this because you are a great leader. Whether you're one right now or you're going to
be one in the future. I know that's why you're listening, because the shit managers don't listen
to this kind of personal development. So trust me, you're already up there, okay? The world needs you,
is what I'm going to say. The world really fucking needs you right now. And so it's almost like my
insecurities. I can sometimes help them to feel a bit smaller when I put it in the context of, I
need to take this away from me and just focus on helping other people, helping my team, helping my
business, helping my friends, helping my family. Um, and that's where imposter syndrome in my head can
shrink a little bit if, you know, just going back to that room again with the people who are 20
years my senior, going back to that specific boardroom, if the people I'm doing it for, then is
the people in my team who are also a lot younger than I am, who are also a lot more inexperienced
than I am, who I need to bring their voice to the table. I need to advocate for their voice in this
room, and the company are thinking about new company wide initiatives. If I don't speak up,
their voice isn't going to get heard. I represent them, I represent their voice. And so something
that has really helped me is taken it away from me. Another huge one is just normalised not
knowing, like when did we as humans decide that we have to be perfect and say the right thing all
the time? I think the internet has a big bearing on this and it pisses me off a lot. It's like we
don't have to know everything, normalise just getting it wrong. Normalise just saying. Hmm, I'm
not sure. Let me get back to you on that one. You know, I think sometimes imposter syndrome will
come up in a difficult conversation whereby if you go to give your team member difficult
feedback, we worry that they're going to come back and say something that then we can't respond to.
Do you know what I mean? Like, we worry that they're going to get really assertive with their
opinion to the point where we're like, shit, okay, maybe I was wrong. I'll back off. And that as a
manager is terrifying because you're like, oh, okay. I just kind of lose all the respect. Why did I go
in there in the first place? I convinced myself that I'm in the wrong, and that is a form of
imposter syndrome as well, because it's this like insecurity that sticks in your head that tells
you, maybe I shouldn't be delivering this conversation. Maybe I'm not qualified enough. Maybe
they're going to come back to me and tell me something and just normalise in those moments, not
knowing the answer. Maybe they will come back to you and say something that's really assertive and
you won't know how to respond. That's okay. We don't need to know how to respond perfectly in
the moment. I would just go away if I truly, truly did not know how to respond. If the conversation
was maybe getting heated, sometimes I would just go away and say, look, this conversation doesn't
feel like it's getting getting solved. It doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. Can we just come
back to it in an hour's time? Can we come back to it tomorrow? Obviously, that's not the first thing
I would say to someone, but also like normalise silence. If they say something and you're not
immediately sure what to say, just say, can I just have a minute to think about that and then also
come back around to the conversation? So I'd say, okay, I appreciate that's how you feel, but it
doesn't remove the fact that X, Y, and Z happened and had this impact. So you may feel this way and
I appreciate that. And we can talk about that but it doesn't remove the impact that your actions
had. And therefore we're having this conversation. Still, we trust people so much more. Who say, I
don't know than people who pretend to have all the answers. That has never been more true for
leadership. As a leader at work, you cannot focus on the concept of perfection because perfection
just doesn't exist for human beings. You have to focus instead on just growth, just getting better.
Growing every single day. Do not focus on perfection because it will just keep you stuck.
This is the third episode of this podcast now, and something I really, really want to hear is your
feedback. Please click follow. If you're on Spotify, you can rate review the episode wherever you're
listening. Honestly, it helps us so much. Drop a comment on the episode. Like the episode? Share it
with your friends. You can DM me. But please review those episodes. Please subscribe. All of it helps.
All of it helps. Just getting that feedback from you. Thank you for listening into the boardroom.
I'll see you in episode four.