Marc Reid is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the 糖心视频, author of 鈥�鈥�, and facilitator on . In this blog, he discusses the increasingly common phenomenon coined 'Imposter Syndrome', and tells us why he thinks branding this experience as a 'syndrome' is misguided.
"For those in our care who feel like an imposter, it is our duty to lay out the important and illuminating reasons why it is not a syndrome."
Sometimes, a rose, by any other name, would smell much sweeter than it does already. What makes an omnipresent term like 鈥業mposter Syndrome鈥�, for example, give off more stench than scent? And why should managers care?
The so-called Imposter Syndrome refers to the feeling that you are underqualified for your job. You label yourself a fraud among the genuine. Ever avoiding praise, you put your success down to luck and sense that, any day now, you鈥檙e going to be 鈥榝ound out鈥� and thrown out work.
You might understandably think of the imposter experience as low self-esteem. That鈥檚 not the case. At the core of this fly trap, experienced regularly by 70% of professionals (across gender and demographics) at least once in their career, is the fact that it occurs in high achievers. If you suffer from what you might know as Imposter Syndrome, the hard evidence of your graft gets overshadowed with the unsupported sense of being the phony who doesn鈥檛 know enough.
The coined term fading from view
It is relatively well-known that Drs Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes coined the Imposter Phenomenon (rather than Imposter Syndrome) back in 1978 with their seminal study on the topic. What is less often cited is that the name they gave to this particular psychological rose reflected a concerted effort to signal that the imposter experience is not technically a syndrome of any sort. In a graduate speech decades later, Clance was more direct. Those of us suffering from imposter experiences may develop clinically diagnosable conditions like anxiety or depression鈥ut the altogether common experience of feeling like an imposter is not, in and of itself, a pathological one. Clance reserved the term syndrome for symptoms leading to an 鈥渙fficial clinical diagnosis鈥�.
Feeling like an imposter is not a syndrome. I experienced this misconception first hand in my own research on the phenomenon. In a reflective survey capturing imposter experiences, some 40% of respondents cited specific factors at the root cause of their experience, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Origins of the term 鈥業mposter Syndrome鈥�
Let鈥檚 push our noses deeper into the petals of 鈥業mposter Syndrome鈥� versus 鈥業mposter Phenomenon鈥�.
It began in 1982. Dr Carol Tavris wrote a piece about the Impostor Phenomenon for Vogue magazine. In her article, Tavris made the first recorded reference to 鈥業mposter Syndrome鈥� alongside 鈥業mposter Phenomenon鈥�. These terms, innocently typed together, seeded the term 鈥業mpostor Syndrome鈥� to later crawl the walls of the zeitgeist, and leave 鈥業mpostor Phenomenon鈥� to remain comparatively hidden in the underbrush.
In the academic literature, article titles containing both terms 鈥� 鈥淧henomenon鈥� and 鈥淪yndrome鈥� 鈥� have trickled along at equal pace since the 1980s, increasing more rapidly after 2015. In 2018, consistent with their apparently interchangeable use, the Oxford English Dictionary created draft additions for both terms. Yet, search both terms in Google Trends and see for yourself that it鈥檚 not even close. Impostor Syndrome beats Impostor Phenomenon.
Pathologizing the plain ordinary
So, why is it worth your time reclaiming imposter experiences as being a garden-variety phenomenon rather than a thorny syndrome? The alarm bell rings with the word 鈥渟yndrome鈥� having multiple definitions. Back to the dictionary, the first of three definitions of 鈥渟yndrome鈥� places it in the realms of a pathology:
"A concurrence of several symptoms in a disease."
Government, scientific, and other official literature is full of inconsistent uses of words like 鈥檚yndrome鈥� and 鈥榙isease鈥�. In 2003, a team of medical professionals called it out. To draw some necessary distinctions, a 鈥檚yndrome鈥� was defined as:
"鈥 recognisable complex of symptoms and physical findings which indicate a specific condition for which a direct cause is not necessarily understood."
When the unknown cause becomes more clearly diagnostic and treatable, it becomes a 鈥榙isease鈥�. Ultimately, reference to the imposter experience as a 鈥榮yndrome鈥� is misguided. While the experience does involve a collection of symptoms, they are not the same for everyone, and there are no 鈥減hysical findings鈥� as such. In my own research, over 800 participants recording their imposter experiences gave 800 unique stories.
Marrying the imposter experience to a dictionary term linked to pathology reinforces the notion that feeling like an imposter is a diagnosable illness. As a leader, it鈥檚 you鈥檙e privilege to bring those in your care to the productive realisation that feeling like a fraud is a perfectly pervasive part of our collective human condition.
