The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (15 page)

Successful people who had the confidence to act on their goals despite a lack of formal training are great role models for the Expert. Take Jean Nidetch. When the overweight homemaker felt her resolve to diet waning, she invited friends to join her for weekly support meetings. Before long she was squeezing forty people into her small Queens apartment. Nidetch’s approach of mutual support and empathy coupled with sensible eating was so successful that a few years later she incorporated her business, rented space to hold her first public meeting, and set up fifty chairs. Four hundred people showed up. As you may have guessed, Nidetch went on to found what is now a multibillion-dollar international empire called Weight Watchers.

Notice, she did not have a degree in nutrition or exercise physiology. Nidetch was a high school graduate whose work experience consisted of
raising her sons while helping support the family selling eggs door-to-door for an aunt who owned a chicken farm in New Jersey. Her credentials were her success stories.

Finally, there’s the unlikely story of a
self-taught
weapons-system expert named Jeff Baxter. Baxter was initially interested in learning about the technology behind music-recording equipment and in the process discovered that it used hardware and software originally developed for the military. With his curiosity sparked, Baxter began to study weapons systems and ultimately wrote a five-page paper proposing a missile-converting option.

Despite having zero formal education on weapons systems, Baxter went on to chair the Congressional Advisory Board on Missile Defense and become a highly paid consultant to such military contractors as General Atomics and Northrop Grumman. What was his previous job? “Skunk” Baxter, as he used to be known by his fans, was a guitarist with rock bands Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. If a former rock star with no formal training is good enough for the Pentagon and major aeronautics companies, then trust me, you can become a self-made expert on just about anything!

The reason I’m sharing these stories is not to deter you from getting an education. It’s because I want you to know that there are many paths to expertise. You can get multiple degrees and never have the same knowledge as what can be gained from your own firsthand experience. If your approach works, then it’s just as valid as anyone else’s. If you have no track record or if there is no recognized path from where you are to where you want to be, then design your own “degree” program, minus the degree.

Think about the course topics you’d include, the books that should be required reading, the publications you’d subscribe to, and the field trips or internships that could provide valuable experience. If you need to establish a track record or credibility before applying for a job or hanging out
your shingle, then volunteer, run a pilot project, or offer a few freebies to prospective customers or clients in exchange for feedback, testimonials, and referrals.

On the flip side is the famous Clint Eastwood line in
Magnum Force:
“A man’s got to know his limitations.” And so do you. Having a healthy respect for the limitations of your own knowledge and expertise is also a sign of competence. You don’t want your financial advisor dispensing your medications or your pharmacist managing your investments. Why should you expect yourself to know it all? Instead of judging yourself, respect where your expertise ends and someone else’s begins.

As coaching legend John Wooden said, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” There is no “end” to knowledge. When you try to know everything, especially in such fast-moving and information-dense fields as technology and medicine, it’s like trying to get to the end of the Internet. It’s simply not possible. The quest for ultimate knowledge is based on a delusion. Instead relax and just do the best you can.

Besides, you don’t need to know everything. You just need to be smart enough to figure out who does and take it from there. Once you reframe knowledge this way, you no longer need to apologize or to judge yourself or to fret when you don’t understand something. Instead you know you have just as much right to ask questions or to not understand as the next person. Gone are the days where you sit in a group feeling hopelessly lost only to be totally relieved when someone else asked the very question you didn’t out of your fear of appearing “stupid.”

From now on, you’re going to confidently raise your hand and say,
Can you explain what you mean by that?
or
How would that work exactly?
or
I’m not following you; can you go over that again?
And if someone asks you a question about which you have no clue, channel Mark Twain, who said confidently, “I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

As a Rugged Individualist you’ve spent years quite literally laboring under the misguided notion that true competence equals solo, unaided achievement. Don’t confuse this with the Perfectionist, who prefers to do things herself as a means of quality control. The reason the Rugged Individualist likes to go it alone is because she believes she shouldn’t need help. The misguided thinking here is,
If were really competent, I could do everything myself
.

In your mind, the only achievements that really count are those you reached all on your own. If you acted as part of a team or were engaged in any sort of collaborative effort, then it somehow diminishes the achievement. Similarly, if you were admitted to college as a so-called legacy student or if someone so much as put in a good word for you with a potential employer or client, it doesn’t count. You see ideas the same way. If you are a writer or a scholar or a budding entrepreneur, you expect your work or idea to be totally new and original. If someone else got there first, you’re crushed.

The stereotype is that men don’t ask for directions because it’s a sign
of weakness. The Rugged Individualist feels equally vulnerable. After all, what if you do ask and it’s perceived as a sign that you really
don’t
know what you’re doing? That was Diane’s big fear. Shortly after a promotion into a role and at a level that were
both
firsts for a woman in her company, Diane was assigned to head up a major project three hours away from the home office. Complicating the situation was the fact that she worked in a very male-dominated field. Diane knew that, at least in the minds of some, asking for assistance may have been viewed as “proof” that women weren’t fit for the job. So she didn’t.

Seven days a week Diane left her house at four in the morning and often returned past midnight. This madness went on for months. Everyone could see that both Diane and the project were floundering, but still she refused to ask for help. The impossible hours and workload finally took a physical toll, to the point where Diane was forced to take a medical leave.

In her absence the project was assigned to a man named John. John took one look at the job and said, “I’m not going to do that job. That job will kill somebody! I want an apartment near the new facility, four more staff members, and complete access to all of the division heads back in the home office.” And he got it. Was it because he was a man? Maybe. Especially when you consider the work environment. However, Diane’s belief that the only true achievements are those accomplished entirely on her own certainly played a role as well.

On some level you really do know that all of the things you are being asked to do cannot be done—at least not as fast as is expected or as well as you’d like, and definitely not all by yourself. Even if you didn’t feel competence was contingent on doing it all yourself, women don’t want to be a bother or put anyone out. So you knock yourself out sacrificing your health or personal life in order to perform miracles. And when you
do somehow manage to pull it off, you think,
What a fraud I am. If they only knew I’m just holding on by a thread, they wouldn’t think I was so great after all
.

Of course the major competence reframe for the Rugged Individualist is to reject the myth that in order for an accomplishment to “count,” you have to do it completely on your own. That’s why I wanted you to meet Diane. Her story contains a powerful lesson for counteracting the go-it-alone mentality. The truth is that Diane
couldn’t
handle the job. But under the same circumstances neither could John or anyone else. The critical difference is that he knew it, which is why he felt perfectly entitled to ask for what he needed in order to do it.

Even taking double standards into account, the real story here is that John understood a cardinal rule of competence:
Competence doesn’t mean knowing how to do everything yourself. Instead, competence means knowing how to identify the resources needed to get the job done
. Whenever I tell that to my female audiences, every woman in the room reaches for her pen.

Resources come in different forms. For example, you may need

In addition to recognizing what to ask for, you need to know
how
to ask for what you want. Obviously, having a confident demeanor helps. But you also always want to frame your request in terms of the requirements of the project and not your needs as a person. In other words,
“I’ll never meet the deadline without help”
could be construed as a personal deficiency rather than an objective analysis of the situation. Instead take yourself out of the mix with,
This is what’s required to meet the deadline
, or
In order for X to happen, the project requires Y
.

Recognize too that only a true impostor would be afraid to ask for help. Years ago I heard Secretary of State Henry Kissinger nonchalantly tell a reporter about a potential nuclear crisis he didn’t know how to handle. What did he do? He picked up the phone and called the guy who’d held his job before him. Not only did Kissinger see no shame in seeking outside counsel, he seemed downright tickled with himself for thinking of it. “I make progress by having people around who are smarter than I am—and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am,” he said.

As the nature of the work becomes more complex, sometimes all you need is someone to help you think things through. If confidentiality is an issue, hire a consultant or a coach to serve as a sounding board. You also need to be cognizant of where
not
to seek help. As the thirteenth-century poet Rumi warned, “When setting out on a journey, never consult someone who has never left home.” If your dream is to license an invention or you
want to quit your job to attend cooking school in Paris, don’t seek advice from your well-intentioned but uninformed friends and family. Instead ask for counsel from people who have done it.

Truly competent people not only ask for advice, but they delegate wherever and whenever they can. In some cases it really does take less time to just do it yourself than to train someone else. In the long run, though, delegating will save you time and stress, and if you are self-employed, delegating saves money as well. The rule of thumb is to assign a task to the lowest level in the organization at which it can be performed competently—not perfectly, competently. If you don’t have the option to delegate, see if you can tap some coworkers now and then.

And what about all that stuff that’s been delegated
to you?
Now that you understand that your being competent does not hinge on being a combination of the Lone Ranger and a miracle worker, you may want to practice the art of “delegating up.” The next time another major project, client, or function is added to your already overflowing plate, put the ball back in your boss’s court by asking which deadlines need to be completed first so you’ll both know which will have to wait. Better your boss put some deadlines on the back burner than you knock yourself out.

Finally, not only don’t you have to do everything yourself, but you don’t have to come up with everything yourself either. Students, aspiring entrepreneurs, and writers are particularly prone to thinking their work or idea has to be totally groundbreaking and original to be of consequence. This belief that
If I didn’t think it up first, then it’s too late
is utter nonsense. Whether it’s coming up with a new cookbook or doing scholarly research, there is always more to say on any subject.

Competent people (scholars included) are always building on the work of other competent people. Dale Carnegie wrote one of the bestselling books of all time. Where did he get all those great techniques he included in
How to Win Friends & Influence People?
“The ideas I stand for are not
mine,” said Carnegie. “I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book.” Even Einstein understood that “the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” (If you are a student, I hasten to add that he was not talking about plagiarism!)