The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (27 page)

The next time you find yourself in one of those situations where you think everyone else is smarter, more interesting, and more informed than you, check your assumptions. Rather than let the situation knock you off base, realize that on some level or another everyone is faking it. And when you find yourself in one of those moments I want you to smile and say to yourself, “Good man, Smurf.”

W
hen it comes to risk taking there are two types of impostors. One copes with a sense of inadequacy by playing it safe. The other compensates by taking more chances. Which are you? Both types set and achieve goals. If you tend to err on the side of caution, then your goals may be more modest—or at least safer. If you’re more comfortable flying
without a net, you probably have both bigger goals and the success to show for it.

Either way you picked up this book because you want to feel different. To feel different, though, you have to do things differently, and that includes taking risks. As management guru Tom Peters says, “Unless you’re willing to walk out into the unknown, the chances of making a profound difference in your life are pretty slim.”

If you’re already a risk taker, then you’re used to walking into the unknown. Now you need to do it without all the impostor baggage. For you the focus needs to be on using what you learned here to credit yourself for the gambles that do work and learn from the ones that don’t pan out. Once you do that, you’ll find the courage to seize bigger and better opportunities.

However, if taking risks does not come naturally, your first task is to build your risk-taking muscles. The more risks you take, the more courage you’ll have and the more successful and competent you’ll feel. A good place to start is by understanding why you avoid risks in the first place and why others don’t.

For all the reasons we’ve talked about here, on average men significantly overestimate their abilities and women underestimate theirs.
¹
It stands to reason, then, that women take fewer risks than men.
²
But it’s not entirely a confidence issue. Partly we’re looking at differences in socialization.

It’s known, for example, that parents treat girls more gingerly while allowing boys more latitude around adventure seeking. Up until about age eight girls and boys are encouraged to explore their surroundings equally. After that universally boys are allowed a greater “home range” for independent
travel and activities.
³
Even if you were raised in a relatively enlightened environment, you may have gotten mixed signals. Aspiration-wise, you may have been told that the sky’s the limit. You can grow up to be anything you want, you can fly to outer space like Sally Ride … but don’t go outside of the neighborhood.

There are some who see a biological explanation for men’s propensity to engage in more risky behaviors. Women have long been mocked for their supposedly flighty, out-of-control hormones. Perhaps that’s why there was so much buzz about research linking higher levels of testosterone with high-risk behavior by Wall Street traders. The study was conducted by former Wall Street trader John Coates, now a senior research fellow in neuroscience and a finance researcher at the University of Cambridge.

Looking back at his own trading days, Coates recalls how, when his male coworkers were making money, they displayed almost physical symptoms of mania, punching the air and yelling and generally working themselves into a frenzy. He remembers thinking it was like they were on some kind of drug. In a way they were. Long observed in animals, the phenomenon is known as the “winner effect.” Decades of experiments have shown that succeeding at a task floods the brain with testosterone, causing lab animals to make decisions faster, try harder to win, and be willing to take more risks.

The same behavior happens among males in the wild. When two stallions fight, the loser’s testosterone plummets while the winner’s surges, making him more confident and aggressive. This can go on for several days, and then one day the victor essentially suffers from actual testosterone poisoning. Hopped up on hormones and less able to assess risk, the winning horse ventures farther outside his territory, taking on bigger competitors and generally putting himself in danger.

Coates wondered whether testosterone was having a similar effect on
traders. What he discovered was that traders who started their workday with high levels of testosterone were making more money. And a hot day on the market sent their levels of the natural steroid up even more. Remember, as long as you’re winning, confidence remains high; too much testosterone, though, can include feelings of omnipotence and carelessness. Under the swagger of their own hormones, male traders started to take bigger risks in hopes of bigger rewards, which, as with the stallion, led to reckless behavior.

This biologically puffed-up confidence led
New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof to ask, “Would we have been better off had it not been Lehman Brothers, if it had been Lehman Brothers and Sisters?” It’s an excellent question when you consider that being overly confident can be just as risky as being overly cautious. There’s reason why the billionaire Warren Buffett’s patient, research-intensive approach has been likened to “investing like a girl.” In certain situations a less impulsive, more measured approach can be a big plus. A 2009 report found that hedge funds run by women, for instance, fell only half as much during the financial crisis as those managed by men. Also during that time the value of female-managed funds dropped by only 9.6 percent, compared with 19 percent for the rest.
⁴

There’s another reason why the two genders may approach risk differently. When researchers at Columbia University looked beyond the surface data, they discovered that men weren’t necessarily more risk-seeking but rather that they placed a greater value on the perceived
benefit
of taking a risk than women did.
⁵
In other words, for women certain risks just aren’t considered worth it. This may explain the finding that female “impostors” who are risk takers also exhibited a strong desire to show that they can do better than others and therefore compete harder.
⁶
If it’s important to you to prove yourself, then it’s going to be worth it to you to take a shot.

Whether you embrace risk or run from it, you’re probably defining risk too narrowly. The fact is, women take chances every day. It’s just that society doesn’t recognize and appreciate them as such. Once you expand your notions about what constitutes risk, you may discover that you’re a bigger thrill seeker than you thought.

The risks I’m referring to are easy to miss because, as you learned earlier, it is society that determines which traits get valued and rewarded. When people think of risk in a career context, most picture behaviors that have do with the quest for power, money, or status, all of which occur in the public arenas historically associated with men. Yet in the private realm of relationships, long the domain of women, risk taking happens every day. We just don’t often think of it that way.

When it comes to spending and investing money, women are generally more conservative than men. Yet on the relationship front, women take calculated financial risks all the time: putting all their eggs in one basket by expecting a man to be a retirement plan, interrupting a career to raise children, or supporting a spouse/partner through school with the promise of future reciprocity.

You don’t have to bungee-jump to engage in physical risks. In the developed world, childbirth is considered relatively safe. But women in poor countries routinely put their very lives at risk to bear children. If men did that, they’d erect shrines to those who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

Then there are emotional risks. In four out of five types of risk—financial, health and safety, ethical, recreational, and social—women were found to be more risk-averse than men. The exception was in the social arena. This includes things like voicing your opinion about an unpopular subject at a social occasion or admitting that your tastes are different from
those of a friend. Society may not always value the ease with which you share your innermost feelings, but it really does takes courage to make yourself vulnerable like this.

Emotionally speaking, women take death-defying leaps, plunges, and falls all the time—risks that would terrify most men. Just as men consider shooting the bull to be a fun pastime, you may feel the same about sharing. Opening up is so much fun for some women that some are actually holding “shrink parties” complete with a guest psychologist brought in to help guests work through their “stuff” over a few cocktails. This may not feel high-risk to you, but to a lot of men it’s scary as hell. As former Major League Baseball player Mark McGwire once remarked, “It’s probably harder for somebody to open up and show their sensitive side than to hit a baseball.”
⁷

The reason I want you to recognize just what a big deal having easy access to your emotions really is, is so that you don’t miss the opportunity to reap the benefits. The new buzzword in business and government sectors is “transparency.” Being able to speak frankly, to share weaknesses and admit mistakes, is suddenly all the rage. To be credible today, business leaders and entrepreneurs must demonstrate vulnerability, humility, intuition, and sensitivity, all things that come more easily to women. As you assess your own appetite for risk, give yourself extra competence points for your willingness to be vulnerable, transparent,
and
on the cutting edge.

Finally, one thing all risk takers share is a zest for intensity and uncertainty—in a word, they love the thrill. Temple University psychologist Frank Farley even coined a term to describe them: the type T personality, with the
T
signifying
thrill
. Just because you’re not into extreme sports or you aren’t going after venture capital doesn’t mean you’re not a thrill seeker. Farley cites women such as Margaret Mead and Helen Keller as famous female risk takers who were thrilled with the adrenaline rush of
their original thinking. Keep that in mind the next time you’re going full creative throttle in a brainstorming session!

Why be content with taking your garden-variety risks when you can experience the even greater benefits that come when you take bold action on behalf of your dreams? In the last chapter you learned three things that relate to risk taking. One: You don’t always have to feel confident to act confident. Two: There’s actually an element of creativity, play, and expansiveness in being able to “fake it till you make it.” And three: Some people who identify as impostors see the ability to wing it a bit as a skill. Convincing other people that you know what you’re doing is only a problem if you see it as such.

On this last point, the American essayist and journalist H. L. Mencken once said, “All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.” All truly competent people know that to a certain extent they’re “impostors.” In other words, the difference between them and you is that they don’t see it as a problem. They know they may have to fake it a bit, especially in the beginning, and they’re fine with that. They feel comfortable bending the rules a little, relying on gut instinct, and having faith that they can learn as they go.