Imposter syndrome and tactics

I attended a Womens in Operations brunch recently for a equality-centric social network company. I was struck at how all of us had actually experienced imposter syndrome (a syndrome where you believe you don't deserve the benefits of hard work despite how you actually put in the hard work), and that it was still relevant to junior engineers. I was so baffled. I thought my experience was isolated and not current. I thought we had solved this problem, simply read LeanIn, practice  emotional self-regulation, talk to colleagues and we're all good. Sadly no, we haven't solved this as junior engineer was asking about it 2015.

More on the syndrome see the nice write up at Psychology Today and LeanIn.

Here's a tactic to defeat the syndrome and one of it's underlying causes not well covered online. If you're feeling the effect, a way to stop the effect is remember and vocalize your passion. Dive into your expertise and explain the aspects that you are most passionate about, the how and why the system or components work the way they do: in short geek out over your expertise. This will put your brain back into problem solving mode, as well as let you reaffirm all the reasons why you know the system or components, thus proving to yourself that you are an expert. Additionally since you've done the work, you do deserve it's benefits.

I've noticed that sometimes colleagues exacerbate this syndrome inadvertently or deliberately by ignoring or silencing female colleagues and their ideas. Unwinding why other colleagues may have ignored female colleagues or their ideas, could be because the idea wasn't conveyed in an expert and firm manner, or body language undermined the delivery and showing collapse of confidence. If that's a case, the TED talk by Amy Cuddy that explains body language and how to build or re-establish confidence.

With knowledge applied, we'll stop having the imposter syndrome preventing people from achieving their goals and dreams.