1 in 10. Why Imposter Syndrome makes them want to quit their job. Every. Single. Day. [Episode 60]

Welcome to episode 60 of the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast with me, your host, Clare Josa. And today we're talking about the one in ten. The one in ten people who will think about quitting their job due to imposter syndrome. Today, this episode is for you. Whether you're a line manager, HR professional, coach, consultant, or simply someone who really cares about other people and wants to help them be able to avoid ever getting to the stage where they think about quitting their job due to imposter syndrome.

And you want to know what you can get them to be doing instead? In today's episode, we're going to look at why is that one in ten figure so high? And what is the weekly figure? The five hidden triggers that lead to someone getting to the point where they just say, enough, I'm thinking about quitting. The real reason why they quit, the three secret drivers, and it's not the employee's fault.

Four core factors that can make a company's culture provoke imposter syndrome, and none of them makes good business sense. How to spot the hidden warning signs. They are masters of disguise. And the scalable solution you could start implementing today that would prevent most of these people from quitting and which cost less than the cost of rehiring. Just one of them.

You probably wouldn't believe how often I get told by people who are in the most senior levels of organisations, oh, we don't have imposter syndrome here. It's not a problem. In our organisation, people are happy and confident and they're just getting on with their jobs. So where does this one in ten figure come from? I mean, frankly, it's pretty shocking.

Yeah. One in ten of your colleagues and friends will consider quitting their job due to imposter syndrome. Today I promised you the figure for how many it is each week is one in four. Considers it at least once a week. That's 25% of your workforce is thinking about quitting their job every single week due to imposter syndrome.

And yet CEO's are saying, we don't have a problem with this. And when this one's thrown back at me, I'm always curious, what is it they're expecting to see? Are they expecting people to be going around with neon t shirts saying, hey, I have imposter syndrome and I hate it, or even tattooing on their forehead? You see, because imposter syndrome is an identity level issue rather than a mindset level issue, it means this huge shame attached to it. And people do incredible things.

They go to incredible lengths with their coping strategies to be able to hide it. So how did we get the one in ten figure? It's our 2024 research study that's going to be published very soon. The link to make sure you get the white paper is in the show notes soultuitiveleadership.com/research for that research white paper when it comes out. And to get to that one in ten figure, we have looked at data from over 5000 respondents and we haven't gone for self proclaimed impostor syndrome because it's often confused and conflated with self doubt.

I'm going to be doing a whole episode on that very, very soon. Make sure you have subscribed wherever you love to get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss out on that one. The difference between imposter syndrome and self doubt we looked at the behaviours, we looked at the self sabotage, we looked at what the data was really telling us, and then we asked people how often they were thinking of quitting their job. And here's the incredible thing is people will tell an online questionnaire things they won't say to their boss's face. Yet that's probably not much of a surprise.

And when we analyse this data, that is where the figure came from. One in ten people in your team will think about quitting their job due to imposter syndrome today, one in four this week. And if you look around you right now, if you're in your office, for example, it's kind of hard to tell which people they are because often they're the ones that outwardly seem pretty confident and like they've got their act together, but they wouldn't want you to hear their secret. 03:00 a.m. self talk.

So we've really got to stop ignoring this, because obviously not every single one of the one in ten is going to quit every single day. But a lot of them will. And here's the thing is, they don't sit there in their exit interview, if you have one, saying, oh yeah, it was imposter syndrome. It's horrible, isn't it? I'm running away, but that's what they're doing.

And it's what I did back in 2001 when I left the engineering career I loved due to imposter syndrome. I couldn't handle anymore. Lying awake at 03:00 in the morning, worrying that today would be the day they found me out. Today would be the day my luck ran out. Today would be the day they realised they made a mistake hiring me and I had blagged my way into the job and pulled the wool over their eyes and somehow convinced them that I knew what I was doing as an engineer.

Whereas in fact, I was actually completely and utterly clueless and I deserved to be fired and to die alone in a ditch. I know that sounds extreme and dramatic, but because imposter syndrome is an identity level issue, the chain of catastrophizing that goes with it is often pretty existential. It's that level of fear and anxiety that it creates. So actually, when we think about that and the other stat, that 62% of people are struggling with this daily or regularly, to an extent that is affecting their well being, their performance, their productivity, team dynamics. Actually, the one in ten figure thinking of quitting every single day makes an awful lot of sense.

And this figure has doubled since my last research study, white paper in 2019, that specifically looked into this. Why is that? Well, a lot of it is the impact of COVID of lockdowns, of the ways, the changes in the ways we're living and working that mean that people's base levels of stress hormones are routinely elevated. And there is a direct correlation between stress and imposter syndrome. The higher your baseline stress levels are, the more likely is that something small is going to trigger imposter syndrome, and coping with it is going to be harder.

I often talk about impostor syndrome being the gap between who we see ourselves as being and who we think we need to be to do or achieve something. And in order to get to that end result, because you can succeed despite imposter syndrome, we build what I call the bridge of coping strategies. Ken, I am doing a whole episode on the bridge of coping strategies in the next few weeks, so make sure you've subscribed so that that arrives wherever you love to get your podcasts. So this bridge of coping strategies, it's not great, but it can work. It takes effort, it takes energy.

It makes us play small when we should be really going for it. It means we're surviving instead of thriving. But what can happen is the tiniest little trigger can widen that impostor syndrome gap, meaning the bridge of coping strategies is no longer wide enough and it falls into the ravine. And as I said, these people are not showing up at exit interviews wearing t shirts saying, hey, I quit because of imposter syndrome. And some of them aren't even quitting.

I've been working with clients recently who found that their leave of absence and sabbatical requests are going through the roof. And if they're accepting them, then it's getting to the stage where the rest of the team simply cannot cover the workload anymore. And stress related and anxiety related illness is skyrocketing too. This secret 03:00 a.m. self talk colours your whole day.

And the stress and anxiety of pushing on through, pretending that you're okay, becomes too much. So there are five hidden triggers that can cause somebody to suddenly jump into that thinking you're quitting every single day due to imposter syndrome. I want to share these with you right now. One of them is being offered a promotion. Even the tap on the shoulder so and so is getting promoted or leaving or moving department.

You might want to apply for their job. That on its own, can be enough to mean you open up the imposter syndrome gap and the bridge of coping strategies falls into the ravine. And one of the things that we found in our research studies is actually particularly for female respondents. They would rather leave a company they love to apply for a promotion than take the risk of applying internally, not getting it and feeling what they perceive as public shame. Because my secret definition of imposter syndrome is it's the secret fear of others judging us the way we judge ourselves.

So if you are already running mega doses of self judgement, meaning you take an external behaviour and you make it about who you are and not being good enough, the idea of going for that internal promotion and not getting it brings you so much shame, so much anxiety that people are simply not applying and it makes them leave their company. Another reason is you want a promotion and you see others getting it. So you self sabotaged because you didn't go for the promotion, or you didn't prepare properly for the interview, or you didn't sell yourself well enough in the interview, or you've been doing what 44% of our research respondents do, which is when you're praised, you offer a but and criticise yourself in public, and then you see somebody else who isn't as qualified or experienced or skilled as you getting that promotion, that can be enough to make you want to quit. That resentment, that's combined with kind of self judgement. Yeah, that's a pretty painful place to be experiencing things.

Another hidden trigger is burnout. So I did a research study in 2022 that shows there's a causal link between imposter syndrome and burnout. It's not correlation, it's causality. So when somebody is burning out, when they've been pushing on through, when they've been working too hard, when the stress levels are too high. When the workload is unmanageable, it means that their imposter syndrome has a hair trigger and the tiniest thing can kick it off.

And you very quickly reach a point where you just say, enough, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm leaving. Another one of the hidden triggers is returning from maternity leave. So many women, when they've taken nine or twelve months maternity leave, have created a story in their heads that everybody else is still part of the team, they still belong, whereas you have missed out and you've not been involved and you don't understand what's going on and they've coped without you. And if you're running that internal dialogue of what if they find out I'm not good enough? You can imagine how returning from twelve months maternity leave, which is a massive identity level shift so it can trigger imposter syndrome.

How feeling that somehow you're superfluous and replaceable and not needed and no longer good enough, and you don't have the network yet. By the way, if this is you, none of that's true. Yeah, none of that is true. It's just imposter syndrome speaking. There are things you can do about this.

It's easy to imagine how that can actually cause women in that position to quit the job they loved and to not come back, or to sabotage their career by taking a demotion in order to feel safe inside. A fifth trigger is menopause. The hormone changes that happen for women around perimenopause through to menopause really fire off imposter syndrome badly. And I have lost count of how many women every single month who were fantastic at their jobs. I see going and setting up as freelancer or consultants, or taking semi retirement, or taking on mentoring and coaching roles, rather than doing what they might previously have loved and having that driven, ambitious impact, because the symptoms of perimenopause mean that it's affected their performance so much.

And also the anxiety and stress that those hormonal changes trigger inside that impostor syndrome has become unignorable for them. And there is a bonus hidden trigger I want to share with you here today, which is actually one of the biggest toxic working environments. This might be a toxic boss, toxic colleague, something I call toxic resilience. That expectation to be able to take it on the chin and bounce back the next day as though nothing had happened. All of this makes imposter syndrome so much worse.

To the extent that you would find in those organisations, the one in ten figure is likely to be closer to one in five. But there's a real reason why people are quitting. That reason deep inside and thinking about quitting that one in ten and one in four. People would rather leave a job they love than risk being found out as a fraud. Yeah, they would rather leave a job that they love.

People they're friends with, something they know that actually, really, rationally, they're good at, rather than being found out is not good enough. And this is the secret sauce with imposter syndrome. It is the fear of being found out. This means that you second guess everything. This means you are lying awake at three in the morning wondering if today will be the day.

This means that overthinking means a two hour report takes two days. It is exhausting. Then we've got the four P's of imposter syndrome, the perfectionism, procrastination, project paralysis and people pleasing again. I'm doing a whole podcast episode on those in a mini season I'm doing very soon. Make sure you subscribe to wherever you get your podcast, free of charge.

When you add all of this together, it's not really surprising people find their coping strategies are no longer enough. And the effort and anxiety that goes into those coping strategies, and trying to prevent self sabotage and trying to play catch up with your inner critic as it's ripping you to bits while you're trying to be courageous and strong and brave and confident, it's not surprise. It wears you down, it wears you out. And these coping strategies stop working. That bridge of coping strategies is not enough.

There are three secret drivers for this in an organisation, and it's not the employee's fault. Again, I'm going to be doing a mini series soon to celebrate the launch of my new book, coaching imposter syndrome. Make sure you are registered to get a copy of that as my gift in launch week at coachingimpostersyndrome.com model I'm about to share with you, there will be a full podcast episode on very soon. These three secret drivers are the three pillars of imposter syndrome.

The culture, the environment and personal habits. The culture might be company culture, faith culture, national culture, family culture, departmental culture. This is the values, what's important. How do things work around here? The environment is the physical, practical embodiment of that culture and those values.

What does that mean on a day to day basis? How do we achieve our results in the context of that culture? That can be everything, from the number of meetings you're meant to attend in a week through to how quickly you're supposed to respond to pings on slack or teams. And the third pillar is personal habits. Now you can do work on your personal habits to clear out imposter syndrome.

And that is what I specialise in teaching. I run certification programmes for line managers, HR professionals, coaches, consultants and therapists, from practitioner level up to imposter syndrome master coach level, to be able to help people with the habits. But you also need to deal with the cultural factors and the environment factors that have been causing the problem. This is why you can take somebody from a team where they're thriving, put them into another team, and suddenly imposter syndrome is their daily internal mantra, because the culture and the environment in that team were different, meaning that the old bridge of coping strategies is no longer enough. So you need to address all three pillars, the culture, the environment and the personal habits, to be able to have an organisation where you no longer have the one in ten thinking of quitting due to imposter syndrome every single day.

And there are four core factors that can make a company's culture provoke imposter syndrome. And none of these, no matter how much you want to defend them, none of these makeshi good business sense. One, the fear of mistakes. One of the problems with imposter syndrome is something called hypervigilance, where a person's nervous system becomes wired and stuck on looking for threats. If there is a culture where there is a fear of making mistakes, because you're going to be publicly criticised, or called out, or ridiculed, or even privately, so by a toxic manager, then this means that that is going to be firing off the hypervigilance red alerts for that person and it's going to make their imposter syndrome so much worse.

I've got an episode I did recently, episode number 58, that it's really worth listening to. If you're identifying with this in your organisation, it's all about radical candour and the problems with feedback and imposter syndrome and what we need to be doing differently. That's episode 58, ditching imposter syndrome, wherever you love to get your podcasts. Another core factor can be public criticism and even public praise. We found in our research studies, when we were looking at feedback, that 72% of people wobble when they are praised, and that's because their internal dialogue that judging themselves, has taught them to expect a but 44% of people will actually volunteer that, but.

And criticise themselves out loud in public. So anything where feedback is public but the people havent had the opportunity to resolve their fear of feedback risks triggering imposter syndrome and making it worse. Another factor is comparison and ranking. Now I know that some teams, particularly in sales and consulting, love to do this, but there is no faster way to drive terror into the heart of somebody experiencing imposter syndrome than to have them publicly ranked, risking them, proving that theyre nothing good enough. And that hypervigilance that creates this is one of the fourth 4th core factor that constantly on the lookout for threats, that wired on of the fight flight freeze response triggers adrenaline and cortisol, that changes the blood flow in the brain to prioritise the primal survival area that actually negatively impacts performance.

So ironically, putting somebody into this hypervigilant, fear based, stress based state become self fulfilling. They will then not perform, they will not thrive, they will feel more anxious, they will take more time off sick, and there will come a point where they feel they've got no option other than to quit. But the single biggest factor here is that toxic resilience. Being expected to toughen on up, to push on through, to pretend that everything's fine even when it's not. I'll never forget right at the beginning of the pandemic, doing a virtual keynote for an international organisation.

And the session had gone really well. It was organised by one of their diversity groups. We had about 300 people join us live. The feedback was fantastic. And then the CEO came on at the end to do the wrap up.

And normally what would happen at that point is the CEO would be saying, absolutely everybody, here's the support you need. You don't have to feel this way. Let's thrive. You know, we are here to help you to clear imposter syndrome. Instead, what he said was that classic with the greatest of respect, which we all know means with no respect at all.

And he went on to tell me that everything I'd said was rubbish. People just needed to toughen up, to grow a pair and get on with it and stop feeling sorry for themselves. That kind of toxic working environment is the kind of place that is going to make someone who's running imposter syndrome that's 62% daily or regularly, really think about quitting. So what can you do? Well, it's about prevention, not sticking plasters.

Yes, there are things that you could do that are those classic low hanging fruit right here, right now, in the moment, to be able to ease the symptoms, but you actually want to be looking at the root causes. You want to address all three pillars that culture, the environment and the personal habits, and actually researching what's really happening in your organisation rather than guessing. It is amazing what people will tell an anonymous questionnaire that they will not tell you to your face. Doing that research is easy when you've got the right tools. If that's something that interests you, come and talk to me.

I'll make sure my contact details are in the show notes. We can run that research study for you actually pretty quickly and really cost effectively to give you a prioritised action plan of the quickest wins on the culture and the environment factors, and then having scalable solutions to support people with clearing out those habits with moving beyond the bridge of coping strategies to close the imposter syndrome gap, to allow themselves to become all of who they really are and to thrive, to have the impact that their ideas and their dreams deserve. When you close the imposter syndrome gap, allowing yourself to become that version of you, having cleared out the root cause triggers for imposter syndrome, you no longer need the bridge of coping strategies. So I've got scalable solutions that can help you with this. We've got the imposter syndrome hacks app and you can add in specially trained, in house coaches.

These don't have to be full time coaches, line managers, HR professionals, mental health first aiders, the kind of people that people naturally go to when they've got a challenge. They can have training that actually means they can help people to start clearing this out at a foundation level. And you also need line manager training to be able to spot the warning signs and to preempt and prevent imposter syndrome, to be able to spot who might need help, but who's working really hard to hide it. And you can implement these solutions and potentially stop a huge number of those one in ten who's thinking about quitting every single day from actually doing so for less than the cost of rehiring just one of them. Yeah, you can help hundreds for the cost of coaching, a handful.

And if we're looking outside of organisations, I personally think that all career coaches, for example, should be trained in this imposter syndrome work because it is the single biggest block on promotions. Yeah, pushing on through the fear will work for a while, until that subconscious hypervigilance, primal part of your brain decides that you're going to self sabotage. And we don't even realise we're self sabotaging until after we've done it. So prevention is always the better option, looking at the root causes rather than the surface level symptoms, so that people can truly set themselves free from this. If you want to take the next step if you're listening to this and it's resonating for you on a personal basis, make sure you've got the imposter syndrome hacks app.

It's available from the Apple Store and from Google Play, and there's also a web version if you'd rather not download it to your phone. You can find out more about that at impostersyndromehacks.com the imposter syndrome Hacks app is designed to get you shrinking your stress levels and cranking up your confidence and waving goodbye to imposter syndrome and burnout in just five minutes a day. If it's resonating with you and you actually want to learn how to help others with this work is come and find me at ditchingimpostersyndrome.com/train and you can find out about my practitioner and through to master coach training programmes.

Make sure you're on my feedback workshop that I'm running in November this year. If you're listening to this podcast episode when it comes out, there's a link to that in the show notes that's all about how to do performance reviews in ways that don't trigger imposter syndrome. So that can make a huge difference. And also in the show notes is get your imposter syndrome risk score and a personalised action plan absolutely free as my gift. It's a quiz style, research backed assessment tool that helps you understand your imposter syndrome risk score.

It gives you feedback based on the three core categories of what drives imposter syndrome and the self sabotage symptoms, and it gives you a fast track personalised action plan so you could start making progress on turning this around today. All of those links are in the show notes, so if you're listening to this on your phone in one of the podcast apps, just go to the blurby bit. Yeah, scroll down and you'll find the resources section. And I will be back next time with episode 61, where we're going to be looking at how to talk about impostor syndrome without talking about impostor syndrome, which can actually be the key to breakthroughs. I hope you have a fantastic week.