Leaders' Playground
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Leaders' Playground
2: Soothe Impostor Syndrome by Inviting Your Inner Critics to a Dialogue
Do you ever suffer from impostor syndrome? I do. In this episode, we'll peel back the layers of self-doubt and get to know our inner critics. There’s a voice in my head that sometimes (often) says, “Who do you think you are? You’re a fraud!” Well, today we’re going to sit down to tea with our inner critics.
You'll hear my growing up story. Learn about the work of Suzanne Imes and Pauline Rose Clance who described the impostor cycle. Get the scoop on the latest rage in therapy, internal family systems courtesy of Richard Schwartz. And sample a taste of an exercise that was the breakthrough moment for several women at last year's Mendocino leadership retreat. It's time to get good at impostor syndrome.
Resources:
- Pauline Rose Clance’s book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/8212
- New Yorker article pushing back against impostor syndrome: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/the-dubious-rise-of-impostor-syndrome
- Richard Schwartz’s book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55384168
- Richard Schwartz videos: https://ifs-institute.com/resources/videos
- “How to get good at impostor syndrome” blog: https://www.irenesalter.com/post/how-to-get-good-at-impostor-syndrome
- Heroine’s Journey Women’s Leadership Retreat: https://www.irenesalter.com/leadership-retreat
For complete show notes, transcript, and free downloadable resources go to: https://www.irenesalter.com/podcast
Welcome back to the Leader's Playground. I guess I'm doing something right since you came back for episode two. In this episode, you're going to hear about imposter syndrome. Do you ever suffer from that? I sure do. There's sometimes a voice in my head that says who do you think you are making a podcast? Or coaching CEOs? You're a fraud. Well, today we're going to have a good hard talk with those inner critics and I'll give you a strategy to quiet them down. Come and join me. Let me show you how to make the work of leadership feel more like play. Hi, thank you for listening to the Leader's Playground, the podcast for leaders who wish their work feel more like play. Leadership can be lonely, overwhelming and just plain crazy making. We are here to rekindle your spark. I'm Irene Salter, your host, and a PhD neuroscientist and science educator with a passion for helping people thrive, not just survive. Please click that follow button so you don't miss a single episode. Welcome back to the Leader's Playground.
Speaker 1:I wanted to tell you today about what is sitting above my desk. When I'm sitting at my desk and I look up to the left, I have a wardrobe there and on top of the wardrobe I have three toys sitting there watching over me. They are three Funko Pop characters. You know those little plastic toys with the huge cube shaped heads on tiny bodies. They've got big round black eyes. They're often drawn from movies, books or pop culture. Well, I have three of them sitting up there and in today's episode I'm going to introduce you to why I have toys staring at me all the time.
Speaker 1:But first let's rewind back to my childhood. I grew up in Dallas, texas. I was the eldest daughter of immigrants who had fled Communist China after the Cultural Revolution. I was one of only five people of color among a thousand kids at my middle school. To try to fit in, I got a perm and I took Catillion classes. Imagine me glasses, braces, a horrible 80s perm. In short, white lace, gloves and an ill-fitting burgundy Victoria secret dress. Here I was learning to waltz. It was not pretty.
Speaker 1:When fitting in didn't work, I tried pleasing people. I would let the cute boys copy my homework so at least they'd talk to me. When a blonde cheerleader asked me to design her student council posters, I was thrilled. I made dozens of the most amazing, witty, clever posters. After she won, she never talked to me again.
Speaker 1:It wasn't all that much different at home. I didn't really belong at home either. I was this heart-shaped human in a very square household. The only currency that mattered to my parents was grades, awards and success. So I became the ultimate overachiever and perfectionist. I got A pluses and then took my overachieving self to Stanford, and when that wasn't enough, I went ahead and got a PhD with all the awards. There were always these voices in my head Can you do this for me, irene? Sure, get all A's? Yes, all A pluses, okay At Stanford, all right, how about a PhD, I guess? So Leadership Check, awards and honors Check. I did it all as I entered adulthood. From the outside it looked incredible Nice house, nice fiance, nice job but on the inside it was utterly exhausting.
Speaker 1:All of that performing, pleasing and perfection left me with a whole host of little inner critics and inner voices inside my head. If the inside of your brain is anything like mine, you probably have some inner voices too. Some are probably really benign, like I open up the fridge and I hear myself think hmm, wonder what I should have for a snack today. Apple and cheese sticks is probably the healthiest choice. But that leftover chocolate cake looks so good. You want some. You know, you want some, that that voice? Well, actually, maybe that's not the best example of a benign inner voice. There are nice voices Like.
Speaker 1:The other day I was watching my kids chatter about video games. They weren't fighting, they weren't arguing, they were just chatting the way kids do. And they were sitting side by side on the couch cuddling each other and my heart just filled with love and inside my head I heard you know, those are some pretty darn awesome kids over there, except for the most stupid thing I've ever done. It's arocity and, honestly and I have absolutely no clue how to say absolutely horrible, it's only in my head. But, to be honest, the worst chatter comes from those inner critics and I've been hearing those voices for years, decades really.
Speaker 1:There's always voices that question myself. Maybe a voice that says I wish I had made a different choice. Darn you, irene. Or sometimes they say things like you don't belong here, just go back to where you came from. Or sometimes there's a really loud voice going on about how I'm not good enough, not working hard enough, I'm not caring enough, I'm not doing enough. It got really, really bad when I was learning to lead a school and I had to walk into a room full of white males school superintendents Then those inner critic voices would roar and they'd say hootie, I think you are pretending to be a principal. Just admit, you have no idea what things like LCAP and 504 plan mean. Go back to that science lab, where you belong. Do you ever have voices like that in your head? If so, you're in good company. You totally aren't alone. Clearly, I've got them. Those particularly loud voices are often known as imposter syndrome.
Speaker 1:Imposter syndrome is linked to an inability to internalize success. It's linked to feelings of self doubt, anxiety, depression or worry about being exposed as a fraud in work. It's also associated with perfectionism, superheroism, fear of failure and denying the places where you're competent Totally me. In a nutshell, there's some researchers Suzanne Imus and Pauline Rose Clance who described the imposter cycle, something that's very common in people that have imposter syndrome. First you get an achievement related task. Walk into a boardroom full of all sorts of people.
Speaker 1:There's two different ways that people with a posture syndrome tend to react. Either you over prepare or you procrastinate. I'm one of the over preparers. When I walk into that room, or actually way before I walk into that room, I have those inner voices going on in my head telling me work harder. You got to do more, you got to prepare, you got to study what LCAP and 504 mean. You got to go and read all of the articles. Then, when I walk into the room, the feeling inside of me, that inner critic voice said nobody else had to work this hard, I must be an imposter, I don't belong here. That leads to the outcomes. What happens afterwards? I have little, teeny, tiny moments of success, but those vanish quickly. But instead I have this lasting anxiety. That lasting anxiety feeds that cycle so that the next time I've got that achievement related test, I'm still anxious. It leads me to over prepare. It leads me to have those voices and on and on and on it goes.
Speaker 1:If you happen to be the other type of imposter syndrome with a procrastinator, when you have that task of walking into that boardroom with a presentation, what happens is that you procrastinate, you don't actually do the work because you worry about how do I even get started, what do I do, how do I look, what should I wear, how should I prepare? And you get stuck in the cycle and very little happens. And then, when you walk into the room, the voice goes look at me, overthinking, rushing at that last minute. I am such a fraud I don't belong here at all. That's the imposter cycle, and I'm here to tell you that having those voices and having imposter syndrome, with imposter cycle, is completely and totally normal.
Speaker 1:People experiencing imposter phenomenon often think that they're the only one having those feelings. Well, clearly, you and I share a lot alike, but at least 70% of working adults have felt it at some point in their careers. It's because our brain has this unconscious bias towards the negative, and there's several brain areas that are known to become active when you become really self-conscious and think about yourself. What neuroscientists do is they put people into a brain scanner called a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine More commonly it's known as an fMRI and they ask them to do tasks like listen to their own voice recording when they're talking about events in their life, or they have them recall moments from their past. Sometimes they have them watch home videos of themselves or read lists of words and click a button when they see a word that they self-identify with. And when they do that, they find that there's certain brain areas that light up. The anterior cingulate cortex is one, the medial prefrontal cortex is another and the precuneus is a third. Those brain areas are the underlying thread of why imposter syndrome happens.
Speaker 1:So no, you don't have multiple personality disorder and, more importantly, it's actually a good thing to be self-aware. What do you mean? That's a good thing. It feels horrible, I know, I know, but feelings like these allow you to actually continue walking into the room where things happen. It is a springboard for growth. If you're not self-aware, you never grow. It's also more common with every new career or role or project that you might take on. If you're having imposter syndrome, it means you're walking into the room, you're taking on new things, and that is a good thing because you're growing. And the other thing that's really cool is that those people who've experienced imposter feelings are actually better at their jobs. Seriously, really, what happens is when your boss rates your performance on an evaluation. Those people who have had imposter feelings before are rated as more trusted, as more empathetic and having better interpersonal skills than those who don't. So I want you to feel really lucky if you're one of those special 70% who sometimes have those feelings.
Speaker 1:The question is what the heck do you do about it? How do you manage those voices in your head so that they don't take over your life and crush your sense of self-worth. Well, richard Schwartz comes to the rescue. He is a therapist who has developed a really popular technique used by therapists and counselors around the world. It's called internal family systems, and Richard Schwartz's idea is that you have not just one inner voice, but a whole family of different voices inside, and that is why I have three toys on my shelf. Those are the members of my internal family, the collection of different people that I have talking inside my head, and I'd love to introduce you to them now.
Speaker 1:My first one is my inner child. I call her little Irene. The toy on the shelf is a little girl and she's represented by boo from Monsters Inc. She has little pigtails and a pink dress and she's holding a little monster teddy bear. Well, she's my soft, squishy, vulnerable self. She gets super insecure and sometimes really lonely. Most recently, I had a fight with my husband and she broke down in a weepy pile of Dispressive tears. Don't worry, jason and I made up, and every marriage goes through those ups and downs, but it sometimes sends our little children into a breakdown moment who has to pick herself back up again.
Speaker 1:The second character is my inner Hermione. She's my doer, my planner, my achiever. She's a total, total perfectionist. She's the one who will freak out if I get an A and she can't Stand it if my plans go to hell in a hand basket. She always creates the most gorgeous, gorgeous plans and then when something like COVID hits, everything goes crazy and Hermione goes into a tizzy. Finally, I have my ego. I named ego after Draco the bully in Harry Potter because ego totally acts like Draco. He is sneering a Bully. He is the one responsible for my imposter syndrome, always telling me that I'm not good enough, that I don't belong. He always says go back to where you came from. Well, I'm here to say that those Three people that are inside my head actually have a lot to teach me.
Speaker 1:Richard Schwartz says everyone has parts and that these are a natural state of the mind and that those parts are often frozen in the past, when their roles were most needed in your life, that they're actually advantageous things that happen because of certain situations we've had to overcome and survive in the past. What happens is, as we grow up, those voices continue. They're like needy, squabbling members of a really large, messy family and they take on characteristics in our mind, and hence that's the name that he gives them internal family systems. If you let them have their way, they can be really destructive and can crush your self-worth. But Richard Schwartz says that there are no bad parts, that even the most destructive parts have good intentions and helpful qualities that serve you. And he should know, because he developed this work while working with some of the toughest cases People who had perpetrated sexual abuse, people who had committed murders, people who had done all sorts of horrible things and had these really, really devastating inner voices in their head. Richard Schwartz helped them understand those voices and make friends with them. And, more importantly, schwartz says that you also have a self, a true self, a wise present, you at your best self, and that that self, if you can put them in a position of leadership over all of those parts, then you can create a really healthy internal family system. So the key is to meet those parts, to get to know them, personify them and figure out not how to get rid of them, not how to make them shut up, but how to be curious and understand the roles that they play, so that you can then be in leadership. If you approach them with an open mind and go really slow. I've found that my voices actually have my best interest at heart. They actually have really deep inner wisdom for me, if only I take the time to listen. Let's pause.
Speaker 1:There are many ways to get to know your inner voices, and here's the one that really works well for me or other people who like to journal. I use this often with my clients, especially when you're just starting to get to know your inner voices. It's a strategy called inner dialogue and what you do is you write a dialogue between yourself and the voice you want to get to know better. The process is you get a piece of paper and a pen and what you're going to do is write basically a screenplay between yourself and your voice. So on the piece of paper you write self dot dot and then you write down a question, something that you'd love to know about your voice, and then the voice on the paper would write voice dot dot and you literally put the pen on the paper and wait. You wait for the voice to respond and you'll notice that your self voice and your voice voice actually sound different. They actually have a different personality and as you get to know them you can get into a conversation, a real deep get to know. You open your heart up conversation and you can understand who they are a little bit better.
Speaker 1:Some of the questions that you might want to ask are just those initial get to know you. Questions like the ones that you would ask for somebody new at a coffee shop that you just met. Where do you come from? How old are you? Do you have a name? What's your personality like? Are you shy or extroverted, angry or sad? Then you can start to get a little bit deeper and ask questions like what are you most proud of? What's your job? What matters most to you? When do you tend to show up? When do you tend to hide away? And then the next layer is even deeper, because you can ask what are you trying to protect me from? What makes you most afraid? What are the? What are the burdens you carry? If you could change roles, what roles might you try to do instead? What are your biggest mistakes or regrets? When you can ask your inner voice those questions, you really get to know them. You get to understand who they are, why they're there and why they've been sticking around for so long.
Speaker 1:I led this exercise for women who attended my heroine's journey women's leadership retreat, the one that I lead annually in Mendocino with my best friend and fellow executive coach, tutti Taegerli. Several of the women there said that this exercise was their breakthrough moment, so I'd like to invite you to try it. When you try it, here's a few tips. First, write fast without analyzing what you're writing. Your first thought is your best thought. Ultimately, you can use abbreviations or initials to simplify the process, like you can use S for self and V for voice. Or if your voice has a name, like my inner Hermione, you can use H for your voice. And also, really don't worry about handwriting or grammar, just let the dialogue flow. This is entirely for you. If you do choose to try it and if you have an insight, I would love for you to share it with me. Go to my website, ireansultercom, and leave me a message there. I'd love to hear what happened for you. Okay, back to the show.
Speaker 1:When I got to know my parts, my imposter syndrome has eased. It has softened, so that those inner voices they still show up, but instead of having imposter syndrome, I have imposter moments. It's not like the voices have gone away. Little Irene, hermione and Draco are still a part of me, but they don't dominate my mind like they used to. I can hear them, but then I can also hear my true self talking back and making the choices and allowing me to move forward. I think of little Irene, hermione and Draco as advisors. Little Irene reminds me when I'm feeling lonely or insecure, to go and find connection and joy in other ways.
Speaker 1:Hermione she's become my best secret weapon. She gets shit done, but I can't let her be in control all the time, or else I drive everyone else around me absolutely insane, particularly my husband. Hermione is too perfectionistic. She is too committed to a certain specific plan and she is way too busy busy all the time. Instead, I use her strategically, like right before Christmas, getting all of the stuff done. I make sure that she can be in command then because she's so good with a to-do list, but I don't let her be in command all the time.
Speaker 1:And finally, draco oh, dear, dear Draco. He is the one that I'm still getting to know. The thing that I learned most recently about Draco is honestly just like the Draco in the Harry Potter movies. Draco just wants to be loved, draco just wants to be appreciated, and he pushes me to be better and better. He does it in a very destructive way, but he pinpoints the times in my life where I could put in a little more effort, where if I tried a little harder or stretched a little further, I could really do something that makes a bigger impact. Now I don't listen to him anymore not all the time, but it's helpful to know when those moments are. So it's useful for me to understand where Draco is, but the way that I can soothe his voice is by giving him a little bit of love.
Speaker 1:If you want to learn more, I really encourage you to try the exercise and get to know your parts. Or check out Richard Schwartz's book no Bad Parts. It's a fantastic source. There's a bunch of other resources for you inside of the show notes and I hope that you stay tuned for the next episode. Till then, bye. Thank you so so much for joining me here at the leaders playground and thank you to my producer, tyler Lakamy, for making this whole thing happen. Down in the show notes you're going to find links to Richard Schwartz resources on imposter syndrome and inner critics, plus that handout I mentioned to walk you through the inner dialogue process.
Speaker 1:And before you go, I have two favors. First, do you know any other leaders or friends that might really appreciate this episode? Perhaps they have very loud inner critics or suffer from imposter syndrome or have an overachiever perfectionist streak, just like me? If so, please tell them about the podcast and encourage them to listen. Maybe less than 30 minutes here at the playground is just the medicine they need right now. And secondly, please click that follow button on Spotify, google, apple or wherever you get your podcasts. I really don't want you to miss next week's episode. We're going to dive deep into the question what kind of leader are you? Hmm, good question. Join me next time to find out.
