Conquering Impostor Syndrome
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Tools to quiet self-doubt and reclaim confidence
In this course, you’ll:
- Learn how to reduce negative self-talk
- Use compassionate imagery to avoid feeling like an imposter
- Counteract effects of imposterism with boundary-setting and behavioral experiments
Do you feel like you tricked someone in order to reach your professional position? Do you dismiss compliments about your work? Maybe you’re afraid people will find out how little you actually know? All of these are signs of imposter syndrome, and they’re more prevalent than many people realize. Studies show that in high-pressure jobs, up to 76% of people may experience imposter syndrome. These feelings can lead to procrastination, reluctance to take on big challenges or establish important professional boundaries, and may cause you to struggle with significant anxiety.
Join expert Jonobie Ford to explore the common causes of imposter syndrome and pick up a variety of techniques and tips that'll help manage and overcome these feelings. You’ll work through exercises in the course to change your negative self-talk, to experiment with new behaviors, and to improve your self-compassion—all strategies that have been shown to help with imposter syndrome.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
- Understand why you and others experience imposter syndrome
- Mitigate the effects of imposter syndrome and work with greater confidence
- Help others who are experiencing imposter syndrome
This live event is for you because...
- You sometimes feel like a fraud at work, despite all your professional accomplishments.
- You want to be able to look more clearly at the evidence of your success and put doubts to rest.
- You manage people who are new in their careers and want to learn how to help them become more confident.
Prerequisites
Recommended follow-up:
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Introduction (25 minutes)
- Presentation: What is imposter syndrome?; Why does it happen and why is it a problem?; causes of imposter syndrome (perfectionism, need for external validation, family or systemic causes); effects (overwork, burnout, poor boundaries, lack of confidence, procrastination)
- Hands-on exercises: Write down two areas of life in which you can imagine having a better frame of mind about yourself; share what effects of imposter syndrome you have experienced in an anonymous poll
- Group discussion: How do you think imposter syndrome affects people’s lives?
- Q&A
Tools in the “fix it” toolkit (35 minutes)
- Presentation: Fighting the negative internal chatter; thought replacement; exception seeking; building self-compassion to counteract imposter syndrome
- Hands-on exercises: Complete a self-talk worksheet to express your negative thoughts, assess their truth, and explore exceptions and examples that support a new thought; create a compassionate thought diary
- Q&A
- Break
More tools for the toolkit (30 minutes)
- Presentation: Imposter syndrome, boundaries, and overwork
- Hands-on exercises: Explore setting boundaries when you feel like an imposter; consider experimenting with new ways of doing things; complete a new behaviors worksheet
- Q&A
Fixing it in a community (30 minutes)
- Presentation: How organizations (and managers) can minimize imposter syndrome; connection is (almost) a panacea
- Hands-on exercises: Answer a poll about your organization; engage in a visualization exercise
- Q&A
Your Instructor
Jonobie Ford
Jonobie Ford graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Masters in Computer Science, and then spent the next 20 years working at IBM and Microsoft. At those companies, she held a variety of roles -- technical program manager, manager of program managers, content developer, and manager of content developers. She's worked on multiple software products, primarily in the enterprise management and cloud space. She's also an accomplished speaker at industry conferences.
At work, she was a sought-after mentor and coach, particularly by minorities in the field. Love of this type of work as well as becoming a certified coach through SeattleCoach! eventually led to beginning a coaching career and starting work towards a Masters in Counseling degree.