Imposter Syndrome for Career Transitioners, Finding Strengths in Differences
Most of us will suffer from imposter syndrome at some point in our careers. For career transitionsers this is especially pronounced. I am no exception. There was a time when I was working for a tech company where I was surrounded by the best and the brightest. All around me were people who had lived privileged lives as the champions in their extra curricular activities, attended the top ivy league university programs, then worked 1–2 years at a top 10 consulting firm before going to work for a Silicon Valley darling company. I came from a poor family where I started working very young to help support my 3 special needs brothers, when these privileged kids were probably taking violin and learning their 3rd or 4th language with a private tutor. I worked my way up from the bottom, supporting my family as a younger mom, and facing a lot of setbacks.
As a career transitioner who had worked in the trenches and held no fancy pedigree, it was intimidating. These top-tier hires spoke in their own language of acronyms and frameworks, as they chatted about all their contacts in the venture capital world. As an outsider it looked like they had it all figured out. Sometimes I felt like someone must have made a mistake to include me in this group.
However, there were 4 huge advantages that I brought to the team that earned me a seat at the table and quickly led to roles in executive leadership.
Soft-skills
My colleagues had read books about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, adaptive communication styles, and change management theory. They had fancy degrees to prove it. I’d had a decade of practical hands-on experience. I realized that what I learned by getting a team of entry level part-time employees to be motivated and function at a high-level, made influencing a customer without authority a piece of cake. At the end of the day, business happens with people, and intuitively understanding what makes people tick can’t be taught in a classroom. It’s hard won knowledge that comes from working alongside lots of different people, over a long period of time.
Resilience
People who have always been at the top; valedictorian, champion athletes, and prized interns get used to winning. When things don’t go their way, I’ve seen these golden-children have an identity crisis that shakes them to their core. However, people like us that have regularly overcome adversity have a confidence that they can persevere again. In the words of Harry Potter “It was me! I saw myself conjuring the patronus before! I knew I could do it this time, because… well, because I’d already done it!” Things will invariably go wrong sometimes in business. It could be a global pandemic, a competitor gaining a huge advantage, dementors, or a million other things. Professionals who are battle hardened by having lived through the worst and proven to themselves that they can survive, will be more level headed and confident to confront whatever life throws at them.
Practicality
My real-world experience allowed me to zoom in or out from the big picture to small details. I’d managed very complex work with many moving parts in my prior career, so taking on audacious goals and breaking them down to actionable steps didn’t scare me. My peers would want to make sure they knew the ‘right way’ to do something before taking it on. My experience told me there is seldom a single right way of doing anything, and we would learn as we went. I would ask simple pragmatic questions like ‘did we account for people being off for the holidays in our timeline?’ Often simple operational details like this were overlooked by people who’d primarily worked at the theoretical level. When MBAs or PHDs would err towards spending weeks or months in analysis paralysis looking for the perfect answer, my team would speed ahead with getting sh*t done.
Growth mindset
Since I felt like an outsider, I had no ego telling me I had all the answers. This advantage is not to be underestimated. I questioned my contributions, and stayed open minded to ideas coming from everywhere else. I spent my free time researching things I’d heard that I wasn’t familiar with. I read and watched everything I could get my hands on. Then as I proved my value and gained confidence, I worked up the courage to start asking questions. ‘Why was it always done that way?’ I wish I had done that from the beginning. I embraced my curiosity and valued what I learned from each and every person I worked with. As I moved up in leadership I brought in team members with varied viewpoints from all different walks of life, so they could look at things with a fresh set of eyes when as an insider, I could no longer be fully objective. I pushed myself to take on increasing responsibility and decided that if I no longer felt like an imposter sometimes, I needed to push myself further outside of my comfort zone.
You may not fit the mold of those doing the job you aspire to have, or the job you’re doing. Thank goodness! Being different doesn’t make you an imposter. It gives you big advantages, as long as you embrace your diverse viewpoint. Take a seat at the table and let your voice be heard. If you are debating a career change in 2022 and you’re reluctant to leave your comfort zone and push yourself, I can say from experience, it is not always comfortable but it is 100% worth it!
