The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (12 page)

When you hear these stories, do you think these individuals are any less capable? Do you now perceive them as less deserving of their success? As frauds? Of course not. Then why would you think this when serendipity plays a role in your own success?

Not only is luck an element in individual success, it factors into organizational success as well. So much so that accounting giant Deloitte insists that when it comes to business success, luck is not one factor, it’s the
central
factor. In a 2009 company white paper titled “A Random Search for Excellence,” Deloitte states that the overwhelming majority of research claiming to study unexpectedly successful companies “may very well be studying merely lucky companies.”
²

Looked at more broadly, if you are lucky enough to have grown up in an industrialized nation, then you had a better chance of not being born into severe poverty and hence a better shot at achieving financial success as an adult. Similarly, if you had the good fortune to attend a decent school, or to catch the attention of a great mentor, or to work in an organization that appreciates the benefits of a diverse workplace or of advancing people from within—then lucky you, because your prospects for success just went up considerably.

Indeed, the major premise of Malcolm Gladwell’s
Outliers: The Story of Success
is that many of the world’s most successful people rose on a tide
of advantages, “some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky.” When Bill Gates was about to enter seventh grade his parents sent him to an elite private school. Luckily for him the Mothers Club used proceeds from a school rummage sale to buy the students a newfangled thing known as a computer terminal. By the time the first PC came along a few years later, Gates was way ahead of the geek pack, with thousands of hours of programming experience under his belt.

Anyone can be lucky. It’s what you
do
with luck that makes the difference. Keep in mind that Gates’s classmates also had access to this early computer. Notice, however, that Microsoft Corporation was not started by the Lakeside class of 1973. It was co-conceived and built in part by the person who had the wisdom to work with the advantages presented to him, the initiative to take action, and the perseverance to see it through. As the American business tycoon Armand Hammer once said, “When I work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, I get lucky.”

For years I’ve preached that successful people really are “luckier”—however, not totally due to serendipity. Rather, successful people routinely put themselves in situations where good things are likely to happen. They show up in places where they’re apt to meet interesting people. They are lifelong learners who frequently attend classes, symposiums, and conferences. They set goals and follow through with deliberate action.

Successful people are also intensely curious. They talk to strangers seated next to them on airplanes, at their kid’s sporting event, standing in line for tickets, or working behind the counter of their local café. And because learning is so important to them, they ask lots of questions. These are all things that less successful people rarely do. But because successful people do them, it effectively positions them to attract good fortune in the way of contacts, advice, assistance, and collaborators. Of her own rise to fame,
Good Morning America
anchor Robin Roberts writes, “I learned how to put myself in a position for good things to happen to me. Even when I
felt outnumbered or afraid, I made sure I was ready to grab the ball when it came my way.”
³

On the flip side, there’s a danger in viewing success
solely
in terms of luck. You see someone who is living your dream of writing children’s books, being a motivational speaker, or hosting her own radio show, and you think,
She’s so lucky
. But what you really mean is,
Sure, that happened for her, but it will never happen for me
. And in this case you’re probably right. Not because you are inherently unlucky but because when you frame success as totally the luck of the draw, like the lottery, your chances of achieving it are one in millions. As famed success mindset expert Earl Nightingale said, “Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.”

Timing is the twin sister of luck. People who feel like frauds sometimes believe that they are where they are because they happened to be in the right place at the right time. If you’ve been dismissing your own achievements in this way, I’ve got more news for you: Sometimes timing really
is
everything.

In certain situations, Gladwell discovered, success can come down to the year or even the month in which you were born. For instance, in youth sports like Pee-Wee baseball and hockey there’s always a cutoff date based on age. The reason there’s a preponderance of future sports stars born in the months just after the cutoff date is that as kids they enjoyed a physical advantage over other young players. Yet you’re never going to hear these adult athletes discount their accomplishments as merely a matter of being in the right womb at the right time. Instead they know they did what all successful people do—they took advantage of the timing edge life gave them and got up every day and worked their tails off to make it into the
major leagues. And that’s what you need to do. If timing has worked in your favor, be grateful. Then put in the effort it takes to make sure your great timing pays off.

The key is to learn how to use timing to your advantage. Successful people understand that a timely follow-up with a valuable networking contact or hot sales lead can mean the difference between seizing the moment and blowing it. And when things do pan out, they give themselves full credit because they recognize that having a knack for knowing when to act—and then doing it—is a skill in itself.

From legacy admissions to college to nepotism in job hiring, the well connected do have a better chance of getting ahead, especially at high levels. It’s perfectly all right to acknowledge your good fortune in being given a leg up. Just as long as you don’t dismiss the role ability plays. Maybe your mother did graduate from Spelman or Vassar or an insider did vouch for you with an agent. But no institution, reference, or employer is going to risk its reputation or the bottom line if it doesn’t think you’re up to the task. Someone may have opened the door, but once inside you were the one who delivered the goods.

Besides, connections are only as good as the people who use them. Flip through a high school yearbook from any affluent community, and I guarantee you will find people who, despite having every advantage including phenomenal connections, failed to rise to their potential. In certain situations being
too
well connected can actually hurt a person’s credibility. Being related to the rich or famous means you face a certain amount of skepticism as to whether you could make it on your own merits. That’s why Ivanka Trump doesn’t take her position in her famous father’s
company for granted, once telling an audience, “There may be more intelligent people, there may be people who are more experienced … but I’ll work harder.”
⁴

The term “winning personality” exists for a reason. Just as luck, timing, and connections play a legitimate role in success, so does likability. Women especially tend to underrate its importance. It’s rare to hear a man talk in the same dismissive “Oh, they just like me” way women do. Rather than consider personality to be an excuse for their success, men tend to see it for what it is—a form of competence.

If you’ve ever been on the hiring side of a job interview, you probably know that all things being equal, the more likable candidate will almost always get the job. It may not be fair, but the reality is that in most situations, a great personality trumps even supposedly nonnegotiable qualifications such as training or experience. When you understand this, you can stop being so consumed with proving how smart you are and put equal effort into demonstrating that you’re the kind of person these future coworkers would want to spend forty-plus hours a week with.

Even in fields often thought of as less people-oriented, it’s understood that personality is a legitimate element of competence. In fact, when electrical engineers at the famous Bell Labs think tank were asked to name the most valued and productive engineers on the teams, they didn’t name the people with the best academic credentials or the highest IQs. Instead they chose those with the highest levels of social intelligence.

If you happen to be blessed with a great sense of humor, it’s all the more likely that you falsely believe that the
only
reason you got where you are is that “they just like me.” The fact is, it’s been found that the people
who rise to the top of organizations not only possess social intelligence but are also considered funny by others.
⁵

Of course some people do initially skate through on charisma alone, but ultimately those around them catch on. Charm and personality are the frosting on the performance cake, but it’s your underlying ability to do the job that is the cake itself. Being the kind of person others want on their team is on a par with any other skill. So if you’ve got it, work it!

Now that you see how luck, timing, connections, and personality are part and parcel of the success equation, your old excuses are gone. To prove it, take out the list of accomplishments you created at the start of this chapter and look for instances where any of these factors really did play a role. Next to these write down actions you took that built on your good fortune, timing, connections, or charm that ultimately led to your success. This is where you want to make sure to give yourself well-deserved credit for things like persistence, initiative, going the extra mile, making use of breaks or contacts, or that winning personality.

Hopefully now you see that there really are times when external factors enter into your success equation—and everybody else’s. What the impostor in you truly needs to get is that luck, timing, and all the rest may have helped success along, but
you
were the one who made it happen. Once you really understand that outside factors take nothing away from you or your achievements, it will forever change how you frame your past accomplishments as well as your future performance.

For starters, now when you look at the achievement history you created earlier, hopefully you will see it for what it is—unqualified evidence that you are indeed the bright, capable person everyone thinks you are.
Viewed with a fresh eye, all those successes you’d previously given away can now be put back into the
I did it
column, where they rightfully belong.

From here on you’ll want to practice doing things to strengthen the mental link between you and your accomplishments. For starters, pay more attention to when and how you minimize your accomplishments. Maybe you don’t run around telling everybody you lucked out in getting the big promotion, but you may notice that you wave off compliments more often than you think.

If so, instead of pushing the compliment away, practice responding with something more appropriate, like
Thank you
. Once that becomes second nature, step it up a bit with statements like
I really appreciate you saying that
or
Thank you—it makes me feel good that all my hard work paid off.”
Simply hearing yourself say these words in reference to something you did can help you internalize your accomplishment more fully.

You probably think that you’re just being modest. But did you ever consider how constantly pointing out why you don’t deserve praise may feel insulting to the person giving it? When you think about it, there’s an element of arrogance involved in the impostor syndrome. After all, what you’re really saying is
You people are so stupid you don’t even realize I’m inept!
Imagine that you and I met and you told me that you enjoyed my book and I responded with something outrageous like
Really? Then I guess you don’t read many books, do you? I mean, do you even get out of the house much or what?
Pretty arrogant, right?

All of us like to have our work noticed and appreciated. But remember, you’ve got that impostor thing going, which means that the person who most needs to recognize your achievements is
you
. One way you can do this is by giving yourself some kind of reward following the completion of a big project or a win. In addition to being fun, learning to appreciate yourself helps break your old pattern of seeking and then dismissing approval from others. The simple act of rewarding yourself is a concrete
way to serve our goal of making that stronger mental connection between you and your achievement.

How you reward yourself is not important. You could treat yourself to a massage, a fancy dinner, even a simple walk in your favorite park. When I finished this book I bought a piece of art for my home. Every time I look at it I’m reminded of all the time and effort I put in. When I told this to a friend, she worried that if the book flopped, the painting would wind up serving as a painful reminder. To the contrary, rewards are not reserved only for the victories. If you gave something your best shot, you still deserve kudos for effort.

Another way you can cement your accomplishments in your mind is to make them more visual. Just because you’re not a kid anymore doesn’t mean you can’t proudly adorn a wall with letters of recommendation, certificates, and other tangible evidence of success. If you don’t feel comfortable with such public displays of self-appreciation, take a more private approach and create a success folder you can refer to when impostor feelings creep in.