The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It (33 page)
Authors: Valerie Young
[9]
Is It “Fear” of Success or Something Else?
1.
Sharon Hadary, former founding executive director of the Center for Women’s Business Research, “Why Are Women-Owned Companies Smaller Than Men-Owned Companies?”
Wall Street Journal
post, May 17, 2010.
2.
Ann J. Brown, William Swinyard, and Jennifer Ogle, “Women in Academic Medicine: A Report of Focus Groups and Questionnaires, with Conjoint Analysis,”
Journal of Women’s Health
10 (2003): 999–1008.
3.
J. McGath Cohoon, Vivek Wadhwa, and Lesa Mitchell, “Are Successful Women Entrepreneurs Different from Men?” Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, May 2010.
4.
Lorraine S. Dyke and Steven A. Murphy, “How We Define Success: A Qualitative Study of What Matters Most to Women and Men,”
Sex Roles: A Journal of Research
55, nos. 5–6 (2006): 357–71.
5.
Akira Miyake et al., “Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science:
A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation,”
Science
330, no. 1006 (November 26, 2010): 1234–37.
6.
Peggy McIntosh, “Feeling Like a Fraud: Part I,” Paper No. 37 (1989); “Feeling Like a Fraud: Part II,” Paper No. 18 (2002), Work in Progress Series, Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies, Wellesley, Mass.
7.
Response to a question following a 2006 appearance at the Women’s High-Tech Coalition, a Silicon Valley group.
8.
“Leaders in a Global Economy: A Study of Executive Women and Men,” joint study by Catalyst, the Families and Work Institute, and the Center for Work and Family at Boston College, January 2003.
9.
Lin Chiat Chang and Robert M. Arkin, “Materialism as an Attempt to Cope with Uncertainty,”
Psychology & Marketing
19, no. 5 (2002): 389–406.
10.
Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode, “The Psychological Consequences of Money,”
Science
314, no. 5802 (November 17, 2006): 1154–56.
11.
Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton, “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness,”
Science
319, no. 5870 (March 24 2008): 1687–88.
12.
Rosie O’Donnell interview conducted by Troy Roberts, CBS
Sunday Morning
, July 7, 2009.
13.
Mary Godwyn and Donna Stoddard,
Minority Women Entrepreneurs: How Outsider Status Can Lead to Better Business Practices
(Greenleaf, Stanford University Press, 2011).
14.
Gary S. Cross,
Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1993).
15.
Daniel McGinn, “The Trouble with Lifestyle Entrepreneurs,”
Inc.
, July 2005.
16.
“Chris Rock Is Ready to Rock Broadway,” interview by Harry Smith on
CBS Sunday Morning
, April 3, 2011.
[10]
Why “Fake It Till You Make It” Is Harder for Women—and Why You Must
1.
William Fleeson, “Towards a Structure- and Process-Integrated View of Personality: Traits as Density Distributions of States,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
80, no. 6 (2001): 1011–27.
2.
Erica Heath, “Incompetents Who Sing Strengths Go Far,”
Rocky Mountain News
, March 25, 2006.
3.
Steve Schwartz, “No One Knows What the F*ck They’re Doing (or ‘The Three Types of Knowledge’),”
http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-what-theyre-doing
, February 9, 2010.
4.
Traci A. Giuliano et al., “An Empirical Investigation of Male Answer Syndrome,” paper presented at the 44th Annual Convention of the Southwestern Psychological Association, New Orleans, La., April 1998.
5.
Rebecca Solnit, “Men Who Explain Things,”
Los Angeles Times
, April 13, 2008.
6.
Newsweek on Campus
, November 1985, 10.
7.
Harry G. Frankfurt,
On Bullshit
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
8.
Deborah Tannen,
Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work
, (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1995).
9.
Jeanne Wolf, “You’ve Got to Be a Fighting Rooster,”
Parade
, June 15, 2008, 4–5.
10.
Steve Schwartz, “No One Knows What the F*ck They’re Doing (or ‘The 3 Types of Knowledge’).
11.
Robert Siegel, “Daniel Schorr: 90 Years in a Newsworthy Life,”
Morning Edition
, National Public Radio, August 31, 2006.
12.
In the 1988 vice presidential debate between Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle, Bentsen was responsible for one of the most memorable moments of the campaign. When Quayle compared his length of time in the Senate to that of the late president John F. Kennedy, Bentsen, famously replied, “Senator, I served with
Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
13.
Video interview with Harry G. Frankfurt,
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html
.
[11]
Rethinking Risk Taking and Cultivating Chutzpah
1.
Jacqueline Reilly and Gerry Mulhern, “Gender Differences in Self-Estimated IQ: The Need for Care in Interpreting Group Data,”
Personality and Individual Differences
18, no. 2 (1995): 368–73.
2.
Christine R. Harris, Michael Jenkins, and Dale Glaser, “Gender Differences in Risk Assessment: Why Do Women Take Fewer Risks Than Men?”
Judgment and Decision Making
1, no. 1 (2006): 48–63.
3.
M. H. Matthews, “Gender, Home Range, and Environmental Cognition”
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
12, no. 1 (1987): 43–50; and
Making Sense of Place: Children’s Understanding of Large Scale Environments
(Hertfordshire, U.K.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).
4.
Ruth Sunderland, “Women Hedgies Leave Guys in the Shade,”
Sydney Morning Herald
, October 21, 2009.
5.
Elke U. Weber, Ann-Renee Blais, and Nancy E. Betz, “A Domain Specific Risk-Attitude Scale: Measuring Risk Perceptions and Risk Behaviors,”
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
15 (2002): 263–90.
6.
Shamala Kumar and Carolyn M. Jagacinski, “Impostors Have Goals Too: The imposter Phenomenon and Its Relationship to Achievement Goal Theory,” Personality
and Individual Differences
40, no. 1 (2006): 147–57.
7.
Mark McGwire, interview by Ken Burns,
USA Today
, April 23, 1999, 6W.
8.
Richard Corliss, “I Dream for a Living: Steven Spielberg, the Prince of Hollywood, Is Still a Little Boy at Heart,”
Time
, July 15, 1985.
9.
Stephen Shadegg,
Clare Boothe Luce: A Biography
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970).
10.
James R. Haggerty,
Wall Street Journal
, February 19, 1999.
11.
Claudia Jessup,
Supergirls: The Autobiography of an Outrageous Business
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Thanks to my friend Barbara Winter for turning me on to these women’s stories.
12.
Denzel Washington, interview by George Stephanopoulos,
Good Morning America
, April 10, 2010.
13.
Elizabeth Alexander, interview by Erin Moriarty,
48 Hours
, January 2009.
14.
Presentation-skills tips come from the training company Communispond.
15.
Helen Gurley Brown,
I’m Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 67.
16.
Garrison Keillor, commencement address, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn., 2002.
[12]
Playing Big
1.
Marianne Williamson,
A Return to Love
(New York, HarperCollins, 1992).
2.
Marlo Thomas and Friends,
The Right Word at the Right Time
(New York: Atria Books, 2002), 364.
3.
Steve Young,
Great Failures of the Extremely Successful: Mistakes, Adversity, Failure, and Other Stepping Stones to Success
(Los Angeles: Tallfellow Press, 2002), preface.
4.
Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock, and Kathleen L. McGinn, “Constraints and Triggers: Situational Mechanics of Gender in Negotiation,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
89, no. 6 (December 2005): 951–65.
5.
Back in the early eighties a lot of my fellow students in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts created some groundbreaking educational materials. In our naïve desire to share and learn, many of us put our work out there for all to
use. Not only did it never occur to us to copyright it, but more often than not, we never even put our names on the document! This list of rights was one of those wonderful documents that circulated among the students in my department at the time, most likely from the Education of the Self program. I’ve modified it over the years, but the true credit lies with its very wise, generous, and unrecognized creator.
6.
Melinda Houston, “Diary of a Bluffer,” The
Age.com.au
, November 7, 2004.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/06/1099547433417.html?from=storyhs
.
1.
“The Most Powerful Woman in Media? Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR, Talks to Lynn Sherr,”
More
, September 29, 2009.
I would have undoubtedly continued to speak on the impostor syndrome for many years to come. However, this book itself would not have happened were it not for a few key people. The first is my agent, Elisabeth Weed. During the course of two days I received publishing inquiries from four literary agents all in response to a feature in the
Chronicle of Higher Education
about a recent presentation at Columbia University. I was flattered but felt obligated to let them know that a previous literary agency had tried and failed to find a publisher for me. At that everyone politely backed away—except for Elisabeth, who said, “That was them. This is me. I can sell this book.” And sell she did—brilliantly. Since then I’ve come to rely on Elisabeth as a savvy sounding board and advocate.
My journey with Crown Publishing began with two brilliant and enthusiastic champions of this book, Tina Constable and Heather Jackson. Heather was my first editor. We worked together for a year until, after two extraordinarily successful decades in publishing, she decided to leave to blaze her own trail. Gratefully it was Heather’s early edits that helped me to both shape the book and to find my own voice.
My new editor, Suzanne O’Neill, jumped in to pick up where Heather and I left off. I can only imagine the challenge of entering the editorial process so late in the game. Her many editorial suggestions were invaluable in smoothing out the rough spots and helping me to be more succinct. No easy task. Suzanne also deserves all the credit for coming up with the title of this book.
The instant I met my marketing team at Crown—Rachel Rokicki, Jennifer Robbins, Courtney Snyder, Meredith McGinnis, and Katie
Conneally—I knew I was in good hands. Also on a marketing note, thanks to the generosity of social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk and his brother A.J., I had the opportunity to learn firsthand from marketing staffer Sam Taggart about the behind-the-scenes mechanics of Gary’s bestselling book launches. Sam’s insights were invaluable.
I will be eternally grateful to two friends who, despite busy schedules of their own, diligently read and edited every page of the early versions of the manuscript. When my words were muddled or rambling, I could always count on Diana Weynand, a well-regarded author in her own right, to tell it like it was in her gentle old-soul way. As a fellow entrepreneur, Diana also helped to keep me (relatively) sane throughout the process of running a business while simultaneously writing a book. My multi-talented friend Cathy McNally brought her own keen writing and editing skills, from which I benefited greatly. Famous for her quick wit, Cathy also brought much needed levity to both this endeavor and my life.
As I was getting down to the wire, my friend Linda Marchesani was invaluable in helping me think through how to edit a particularly pesky chapter, during her vacation, no less. Others whose comments and suggestions helped tremendously are Kerry Beck, Susan Merzbach, Rita Hardiman, Lee Bell, Rene Carew, and Matt Ouellett. Also a heartfelt thank-you to Gerry Weinstein, who over the years has generously allowed me to adapt from his groundbreaking work on humanistic education and self-awareness training both in my workshops and in this book.
Everyone needs a cheering section and mine ran several bleachers high and a mile deep: My father, Edward Young, and the second love of his life, Leslie Fitzgerald; my aunt Marion Lapham and adopted uncle Art Warren; and my four siblings, Susan, Debbie, Peter, and Mark, and their spouses.
I feel blessed to be surrounded by family and friends who for three years waited patiently for the day I would no longer reply to their calls
and invitations with “Sorry I can’t talk/go/stay, I’m working on the book.” Among these are my dear friends Susan DeSisto, Ange DiBenedetto, Lynn Werthamer, and Keitheley Wilkinson. Thanks too for virtual support from Barbara Winter, Steve Coxsey, and Dyan DiNapoli, as well as to Suzanne Evans and all the members of my business mastermind group—you know who you are.
My work ethic I credit entirely to my mother, Barbara Young. While I was in graduate school doing the research on what would ultimately form the basis of this book, my mother was working tirelessly as a second-shift custodian at the same university. Were she alive today, I know my mother would beam with pride at her “author daughter.”