Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You From House to
Speaker 1: Works not comed. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Krystal and I'm Caroline, And this is part two of
Speaker 1: our special Stuff Mom Never Told You series on Cheryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg's book and foundation, Lean In, which is all about
Speaker 1: empowering women in the workplace. And last week for our
Speaker 1: inaugural episode, we talked about negotiation and how women can
Speaker 1: negotiate their way into better salaries and better positions and
Speaker 1: their jobs. And now we're going to talk about something
Speaker 1: that comes up for a lot of women and especially
Speaker 1: successful women, once they're in their jobs. Hopefully they negotiated
Speaker 1: their way in, and now comes the fear, right, the
Speaker 1: fear which could be called the imposter syndrome. Basically, now
Speaker 1: that you're in an awesome position, you're making some good money,
Speaker 1: you're making some good contacts, you're doing some good work
Speaker 1: during the day, but there's still this sneaking suspicion that
Speaker 1: it's all fake and that you have just fooled everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the book reference for this episode is chapter two
Speaker 1: called Sit at the Table. And the big question that
Speaker 1: we want to look into is why successful women are
Speaker 1: more likely to feel like frauds for their achievement and
Speaker 1: how we deal with this because personally speaking, Caroline, I'm
Speaker 1: no Ryl Sandberg obviously, but I do find myself undercutting
Speaker 1: my own achievements by even just saying something like that,
Speaker 1: we'll listen, I'm no Chryl Sandberg, or yeah, what I
Speaker 1: did was okay, I guess you know. Do you ever
Speaker 1: do you ever find yourself doing that? Sure? Sure? I
Speaker 1: mean when I do get praise for a project, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: they don't they don't understand that I didn't put like
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten percent into it, you know, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think maybe they're just used to getting something
Speaker 1: that's subpar. Yeah. And I think I've mentioned this on
Speaker 1: the podcast before as well, that even in the early
Speaker 1: years of stuff, mom never told you, and even recently,
Speaker 1: if someone would mention, oh, don't you do a podcast,
Speaker 1: I would brush it off as, Oh, it's just this
Speaker 1: thing that I do, it's women and such, and then
Speaker 1: mumble into the childer I I, well, I love telling
Speaker 1: people about the podcast, mostly because of the entertainment I
Speaker 1: get when people don't understand what a podcast is, and
Speaker 1: then I'm like, well, it's like a radio show. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then I have to explain the difference between a
Speaker 1: video and a podcast. But I digress. Well, if you
Speaker 1: ever get that feeling that you are a bit of
Speaker 1: a fraud, or you aren't deserving of your achievements, or
Speaker 1: that everybody's actually working harder than you and your somehow
Speaker 1: secretly just getting ahead, you might have a case of
Speaker 1: something termed the imposter syndrome. Right, And this was coined
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight by Oberlin psychologists Pauline Klants and
Speaker 1: Suzanne i'ms And really since ninety eight little has changed.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you just anecdotally, if you
Speaker 1: talk to a lot of women, a lot of women
Speaker 1: report feeling like this even now, even way after night. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In Lenan Cheryl Sandberg describes it as capable people being
Speaker 1: plagued by self doubt. And it's not just women who
Speaker 1: are more in the thick of it, in the weeds
Speaker 1: of their career trying to get ahead. It's even women
Speaker 1: at the top of the ladder, such as Tina Fey,
Speaker 1: who talked about it pretty directly in an interview with
Speaker 1: a British newspaper in which she referenced the roller coaster
Speaker 1: ride that she experiences between egomania and impostor syndrome. Say,
Speaker 1: oh I won this, Emmy, look at me. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: everyone's going to know that I'm a fraud. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think I totally can kind of get her there
Speaker 1: that rollercoaster, because like, let's say you do do something
Speaker 1: awesome and you're like, yes, I worked really hard. But well,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking personally, like if I do something awesome
Speaker 1: and I have worked really hard on it and then
Speaker 1: I get a lot of praise for it, I'm like, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I deserve all that, because in
Speaker 1: the moment, I'll feel like, yeah, I kicked that things,
Speaker 1: but and then if people are recognize me for it,
Speaker 1: then I start to feel a little awkward. So this
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome is really an underlying feeling of being a fraud,
Speaker 1: but particularly in male dominated fields. Maybe not so much
Speaker 1: in fields that are stereotypically dominated by women, but like
Speaker 1: a lot of women who are in maybe the stem
Speaker 1: fields or or other fields that are dominated by men
Speaker 1: report feeling like this, yeah, and it got a lot
Speaker 1: of ink. In the two thousand eight book The Sexual
Speaker 1: Paradox by Susan Pinker, and she talks about how studies suggest,
Speaker 1: for instance, that when success eludes men, they're more likely
Speaker 1: to blame external factors, whereas women are quicker to point
Speaker 1: to internal factors if they aren't successful. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: that comes back to, well, I just I guess I
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it that well, whereas men might say,
Speaker 1: well I didn't have enough resources or X y Z right.
Speaker 1: It's really just not realizing how valuable your own knowledge is,
Speaker 1: really kind of under undercutting yourself, but not even in
Speaker 1: a public form, not even being like, no, I didn't
Speaker 1: do that much. It's it's really internal. And Pinker's book,
Speaker 1: she points out that it's this intermittent, fleeting imposter feeling
Speaker 1: exists in the general population yea, so it's definitely men
Speaker 1: and women alike who are feeling like this, But in
Speaker 1: the workplace setting it does anecdotally seem to be something
Speaker 1: that persistently affects women are often and also persistently holds
Speaker 1: us back, which is one reason why Sandberg talks about it.
Speaker 1: And she initially heard about impostor syndrome during a speech
Speaker 1: called Feeling Like a Fraud that was delivered by Dr
Speaker 1: Peggy Macintosh from the Wellesley Centers for Women, and she writes,
Speaker 1: for women, feeling like a fraud is a symptom of
Speaker 1: a greater problem. We consistently underestimate ourselves. Right. So, in
Speaker 1: her book, Sandberg cites a study of about one thousand
Speaker 1: Harvard law students which found it in every category, women
Speaker 1: gave themselves lower scores than men, and the results are
Speaker 1: even more drastic when women had to evaluate themselves in
Speaker 1: front of other people. Well, that reminds me of what
Speaker 1: you said a minute ago about how when you're receiving
Speaker 1: praise from other people and all of a sudden, it
Speaker 1: puts that anxiety and fear into high gear all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Right, I mean, I don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on there. Like a minute ago, I might have felt
Speaker 1: great about what I just made or did or wrote.
Speaker 1: But but once you have an audience and then you're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not that good. Please leave me alone. I'm blushing. Well.
Speaker 1: Research also shows how imposter syndrome is reflected in gendered
Speaker 1: concepts not just a success, but also of failure, because again,
Speaker 1: when women fail, we're more likely to believe it's due
Speaker 1: to our inherent lack of ability? Why? Why why must
Speaker 1: we constantly undercut ourselves like that, I can't tell you,
Speaker 1: I really can't. Um, But so how does this end
Speaker 1: up affecting our actual work? I mean, are we are
Speaker 1: we losing confidence? Is it? Is it making our work
Speaker 1: taken nose dive kind of the opposite, because we think
Speaker 1: we have this inherent lack of ability, or we're just
Speaker 1: not comfortable with praise because we don't think we're doing
Speaker 1: a great job. We overcompensate by working two to three
Speaker 1: times as hard and over preparing, and that leads to
Speaker 1: kind of obsessing and getting burned out. Sure, and even
Speaker 1: though we might be working longer hour and arguably harder
Speaker 1: than employees around us, that kind of hard work is
Speaker 1: not necessarily setting us up for promotion because it's all
Speaker 1: rooted in this fear and this assumption that we're not
Speaker 1: good enough. So we're probably not spending the time we
Speaker 1: should be promoting ourselves and owning our own successes. Right,
Speaker 1: And it's what psychologist Julie Norum refers to as defensive pessimism,
Speaker 1: just that thing of like, I'm gonna work really hard,
Speaker 1: but you know what, it's probably not going to be
Speaker 1: great and I'm not going to do a good job
Speaker 1: and it's going to fail. But because you're you're pessimistic
Speaker 1: and fearful at the same time that you're also striving
Speaker 1: three thousand times harder than you would otherwise. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just it's not going to have a happy ending. However,
Speaker 1: you shake the dice out, sure, And it can also
Speaker 1: manifest too in procrastination. I know I've done this before
Speaker 1: as well, of knowing that something needs to be done
Speaker 1: and just pushing it and pushing it because of the
Speaker 1: risk of what happens when it is done, because it
Speaker 1: might be a marker of success or a marker of
Speaker 1: in my mind at least, failure. And I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of times in the workplace, what we might
Speaker 1: consider failure is so much greater in our eyes than
Speaker 1: in our manager's eyes, you know, unless it's something that
Speaker 1: can maybe be measured out in numbers and statistics. I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of times we see things as
Speaker 1: exponentially greater than they are unless it's a success, in
Speaker 1: which case we minimize it. Yeah. Well, in that same vein,
Speaker 1: Valerie Young, who's a long time lecture on the topic,
Speaker 1: told Forbes that there's a real bias against female competence
Speaker 1: that persists. She says, being female means you and your
Speaker 1: work automatically stand a greater chance of being ignored, discounted, trivialized, devalued,
Speaker 1: or otherwise taken less seriously than a man. So, whether
Speaker 1: that's conscious or unconscious, you know, maybe we do have
Speaker 1: that fear of well, it's it's not going to be
Speaker 1: that great, and nobody's gonna think it's that great. I
Speaker 1: think there's definitely a degree of overcompensation that will happen
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, even though those biases might
Speaker 1: be unconscious, I think we're pretty aware of them. We're
Speaker 1: pretty aware of of kind of the risk of putting
Speaker 1: female work out there to be judged. If that makes sense. Well,
Speaker 1: so what do we do? What do we do with
Speaker 1: these fears and these inherent feelings of failure. We got
Speaker 1: to get rid of them, Caroline, we do, um we
Speaker 1: One thing that we have to do, I think is
Speaker 1: really just allow ourselves to make and learn from mistakes.
Speaker 1: We have to realize. So if we already are pessimistic,
Speaker 1: we have this inherent defensive pessimism, why don't we just
Speaker 1: take a deep breath kind of relax and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, if I'm going to make mistakes, I'm
Speaker 1: going to make them, but I will learn from them
Speaker 1: and move on from there. And Cheryl Sandberg also says that,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's also okay that you react emotionally
Speaker 1: to criticism. Now you need to move on from it
Speaker 1: and quickly. But trying to separate all of that emotion
Speaker 1: out of it is going to be probably impossible. So
Speaker 1: it's gonna be probably healthier to react in an authentic
Speaker 1: way and then who move on to the next thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if the work you are doing is
Speaker 1: tied up in your identity, like if if if you
Speaker 1: know you're you know, an editor, for instance, like my
Speaker 1: background isn't editing. If someone comes to you and it's like,
Speaker 1: well you're not. You missed the stuff, you didn't edit
Speaker 1: this correctly or well enough, then it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know that almost reflects something about you, not just
Speaker 1: maybe you made some mistakes at work, right. And another
Speaker 1: thing that she suggests, which might seem counterintuitive, is go
Speaker 1: ahead and just fake it till you make it, sort
Speaker 1: of embrace that fear in a way, oh and and
Speaker 1: move forward. Use it as a motivating factor. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I you know, I in college. You know, I went
Speaker 1: to a very like uh college, preppy type of private
Speaker 1: school growing up, and the all of my classes were
Speaker 1: super writing intensive, and so when I went to college,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a breeze writing paper. So I
Speaker 1: felt like a total fraud. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm getting all these a's, but like they don't understand
Speaker 1: like I just you know, like I didn't think that
Speaker 1: I was doing as good a job as they thought
Speaker 1: I was doing. But that did give me kind of
Speaker 1: the confidence to go forward and do more interesting things
Speaker 1: or things outside of the box because I felt like
Speaker 1: I have more room. But anyway, I mean I realized
Speaker 1: that sort of rambling. But I guess that leads us
Speaker 1: to the point of having to remember that your point
Speaker 1: of view, just like you said earlier about your boss,
Speaker 1: and your point of view is not the same. Your
Speaker 1: point of view of what you're doing is probably not
Speaker 1: the same as the person who you think is judge
Speaker 1: in you. Yeah, and that's one reason why she talks
Speaker 1: a lot about finding your authentic self. And this is
Speaker 1: something that we could even devote a whole podcast to
Speaker 1: um And there's a lot of research and talks have
Speaker 1: been given on this idea of the authentic self and
Speaker 1: seeing and speaking your own truth. And that really has
Speaker 1: to do with what you're talking about in terms of
Speaker 1: recognizing that there is your point of view and there's
Speaker 1: someone else's point of view, and that you know what
Speaker 1: you have weaknesses and that's okay, but you also have
Speaker 1: strengths as well, and sort of learning, I guess, to
Speaker 1: accept who you are in the workplace and be authentic
Speaker 1: about it rather than trying to hide behind some sort
Speaker 1: of shell of perfection, because nobody is ever going to
Speaker 1: be completely perfect. She even talks about us. Sandberg does
Speaker 1: how there's a motto at Facebook which is better done
Speaker 1: than perfect, and how at first she was like what,
Speaker 1: how No, and how she's learned to kind of embrace that,
Speaker 1: just sort of getting rid of this notion of perfectionism
Speaker 1: and saying, let's just get it done. And one thing
Speaker 1: that Sandberg talked about that I actually really enjoyed because
Speaker 1: I was like, finally she speaking right to me directly
Speaker 1: to Caroline Irvin, she says that instead of putting on
Speaker 1: some kind of fake all work persona, I think we
Speaker 1: benefit from expressing our truth talking about personal situations and
Speaker 1: acknowledging that professional decisions are often emotionally driven. And well,
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure about the like emotional part, although
Speaker 1: I see what she's saying and I agree with her.
Speaker 1: I I do struggle with like a work persona and
Speaker 1: and a regular Caroline at home persona and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to to merge them or have separate them. Well, no,
Speaker 1: separate them because I can't. But she would say that,
Speaker 1: of course you can't. That there's a if there's a
Speaker 1: phrase that Sandberg is not a fan of its work
Speaker 1: life balance because it's that mental reality that you have
Speaker 1: a work life and that you have a home life,
Speaker 1: and that the two should not inter sect. It's like
Speaker 1: a separation of church and state kind of thing. Whereas, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you don't want to take everything from
Speaker 1: your home life into your work that the stresses from
Speaker 1: there and vice versa. But it's it's gonna it's gonna
Speaker 1: blend at some point. Yeah, it is unrealistic to think.
Speaker 1: I mean, just think about like, you know, let's pick
Speaker 1: on moms in the workplace. I mean, you know, they're
Speaker 1: going to be issues, like your kid's gonna be sick,
Speaker 1: or you have to pick somebody up from a practice
Speaker 1: or something like. It's unrealistic to assume that your life
Speaker 1: will never interfere with your work, just as your work
Speaker 1: will never interfere with your life. These things do blend,
Speaker 1: like you said, right, and I think circling back to
Speaker 1: that idea of finding your authentic self, speaking your truth,
Speaker 1: those are things that can be applied to both the
Speaker 1: work realm and the non work um to maybe merge
Speaker 1: those two identities into one so that you're not just
Speaker 1: jumping back and forth, because that can also be exhausting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also maybe a reason why we should just wear
Speaker 1: power suits all the time. Shoulder pads give us power.
Speaker 1: That's right. But she also talks about how, you know humor,
Speaker 1: use humor too, because we get so bent out of
Speaker 1: shape over all of these stressors that are going on,
Speaker 1: not just in work but also in life, and it's
Speaker 1: good to just not take ourselves so seriously all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that is something I do struggle with
Speaker 1: as far. Not that I can't see the humor in things.
Speaker 1: I definitely try to. But you know, when when a
Speaker 1: project is stressing you out and you're having a nervous
Speaker 1: breakdown or you know, I don't know, have to code
Speaker 1: your car and cry. Not like that's ever happen to me. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is important to remember that, like, Okay, you
Speaker 1: have that other person's point of view, which is probably
Speaker 1: going to be more lenient than your own crazy point
Speaker 1: of view where you're like, you know, slaving over this
Speaker 1: project and killing yourself over it, when really it's probably great.
Speaker 1: So like to be able to step back and have
Speaker 1: that sense of humor and be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: like at the newspaper, for instance, I would be stressing
Speaker 1: over designing and editing and getting it all done and
Speaker 1: is this perfect? And oh my god, is this headline
Speaker 1: the right point size and all that stuff, and then
Speaker 1: you have to remember tomorrow morning it'll be lining bird cages.
Speaker 1: That's what I always told myself to to stop myself
Speaker 1: from freaking out. And I mean, and that's such a
Speaker 1: good tool to bring into conflicts that might arise in
Speaker 1: the workplace, Like it's such humor is such a perfect
Speaker 1: deflector not just for the issues going on within you,
Speaker 1: but also with that other person sitting across from the table,
Speaker 1: because if you can share a laugh, then it's probably
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot easier to hash things out well true.
Speaker 1: And I mean also, you know, if you have already
Speaker 1: the reputation of a hard worker and somebody who does
Speaker 1: his or her best, then you know, maybe maybe you
Speaker 1: can lighten up on yourself. Maybe there's a little room
Speaker 1: to lighten up on yourself, because I mean, if people
Speaker 1: think you're a slacker, then yeah, you probably do have
Speaker 1: to bust your butt a little bit. But if you're
Speaker 1: already a hard worker and people know that, then they're
Speaker 1: not gonna, you know, they're not going to punish you
Speaker 1: for doing your best. Do you think that maybe this
Speaker 1: whole issue of the impostor syndrome and feeling like a
Speaker 1: fraud and how do we deal with it, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a bit about taking a breath and relaxing. Do
Speaker 1: you think maybe we're just like asking too much of
Speaker 1: ourselves and just assuming that no one sees anything that
Speaker 1: we do. It could be it could yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I do think we need to step back and realize that,
Speaker 1: you know, our hard work is evident. You know, people
Speaker 1: people would not rely on us if they didn't think
Speaker 1: they could rely on us. Right, Well, I can tell
Speaker 1: you that it definitely resonated with me reading that, because
Speaker 1: I know that it's something that affects me, and I
Speaker 1: know even more importantly in a way, that it's something
Speaker 1: that does hold me back and I hate it. It's
Speaker 1: like when I'm in yoga. For instance, I was in
Speaker 1: yoga last night. It's time to do headstands. I've never
Speaker 1: successfully done a headstand. You know why, Caroline, because I'm terrified.
Speaker 1: I know that I probably won't break my neck, but
Speaker 1: whenever I even approach getting up to the top and
Speaker 1: I feel the ground going away from me, I'm scared,
Speaker 1: and so I stopped trying. And I feel like it
Speaker 1: is such an analog to these kinds of workplace things.
Speaker 1: So you're feeling like a yoga fraud, even though you've
Speaker 1: been doing yoga forever years. But to extend the yoga
Speaker 1: metaphor in the same way that my teacher came over
Speaker 1: and actually grabbed one of my legs, was like, come on,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this, and she stood there to be
Speaker 1: my support person. Sandberg also says that there are institutional
Speaker 1: supports that we need to put in place, recognizing that
Speaker 1: this kind of imposter syndrome runs rampant. She writes, if
Speaker 1: we want a world with greater equality, we need to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that women are less likely to keep their hands up.
Speaker 1: We need institutions and individuals to notice and correct for
Speaker 1: this behavior by encouraging, promoting, and championing more women. And
Speaker 1: women have to learn to keep their hands up because
Speaker 1: when they lower them, even managers with the best intentions
Speaker 1: might not notice it. Yeah, so there are things that
Speaker 1: need to be done on both sides. Well, let's be brave,
Speaker 1: right and and don't be afraid to be your own advocate.
Speaker 1: Absolutely So, now we want to hear from you. Does
Speaker 1: this issue of the imposter syndrome of fear resonate with
Speaker 1: you and is it something that you've been able to overcome?
Speaker 1: Please let us know your thoughts. You can email us
Speaker 1: moms have Discovery dot com, or we highly encourage you
Speaker 1: to head over to our Facebook page Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash stuff mom Never told you and share your experiences
Speaker 1: with us and come back to us next Friday when
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about unbalancing that's so called work life balance.
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll see
Speaker 1: you next week for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics isn't how stuff works. Dot com