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

by Valerie Young

  There aren’t a lot of men who worry that being “too successful” will hurt their love life. But depending on your age, I bet you remember the famous 1986 Newsweek cover-story prediction that “a single, 40-year-old woman had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married.” People magazine fanned the fear when it featured photos of Diane Sawyer, Linda Ronstadt, Donna Mills, and Sharon Gless with the headline “Are These Women Old Maids?” and warned: “Most single women over 35 can forget about marriage.” Years later the terrorist line was introduced to a whole new audience when it showed up in the 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle.

  As it turned out, there were no such dire consequences for women who put off marriage to focus on their career. In fact, twenty years later Newsweek admitted it had misrepresented an obscure demographic finding, tossed in a terrorist reference that was intended to be a joke, and generally created a scenario that had little basis in reality. But a powerful seed had been planted in the minds of many single women: You can be highly successful or you can have love, but you can’t have both.

  Even women who have found love admit to worrying about the consequence on their relationship of advancing too far in their career. Of course, most couples realize that a middle-class lifestyle requires two paychecks. However, if you happen to be one of the estimated 40 percent of women in the United States who outearns her spouse, unconsciously you may be concerned with the effect of your success on the male ego—something that’s even more of an issue for couples who work in the same organization or industry.

  If you identify with this success scenario, ask yourself:

  To what extent are you letting concerns that you’ll be less desirable to a man impact your career decisions?

  How much of your reluctance to say yes to success is a lack of confidence, and how much has to do with concerns about the impact on intimate relationships?

  Scenario 7: If I’m Too Smart, Self-Serving, or Bossy, People May Not Like Me

  The value you place on being liked can also impact how you behave—or, in some cases, don’t behave. According to New York University professor Clay Shirky, even when the situation calls for it, his female students “aren’t just bad at behaving like arrogant, self-aggrandizing jerks. They are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, antisocial obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so.” He adds, “Whatever bad things you can say about those behaviors, you can’t say they are underrepresented among people who have changed the world.”11

  His comments were made in a blog post titled “A Rant About Women.” As you can imagine, they caused quite a buzz, even catching the attention of National Public Radio and the BBC. Shirky’s rant was prompted by a male student who asked him to write a job recommendation. When he asked the student to elaborate on what the letter should say, the professor received a draft full of superlatives. It was only after sending off a toned-down version of the letter that Shirky realized that because of that over-the-top draft, the student got a much better recommendation out of him than he would have otherwise.

  It also caused him to worry that most of his female students couldn’t write a letter like that, explaining, “I’m not concerned that women don’t engage in enough building of self-confidence or self-esteem. I’m worried about something much simpler: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.” And what it takes, he argues, is not caring what people think about you. That’s a problem. Because women do care what people think about them—and as it turns out, with good reason.

  Shirky went on to predict that more of his male students will go on to become famous for no other reason than that “men are just better at being arrogant, and less concerned about people thinking they’re stupid (often correctly, it should be noted) for trying things we’re not qualified for.” Here we agree.

  However, the really big boat that Shirky missed was his initial failure to recognize the backlash for women who are self-aggrandizing. What we’re really seeing here is not so much female modesty or insecurity as women’s internal responses bumping up against certain social realities. Namely, even if a woman wanted to behave like an arrogant self-aggrandizing jerk, and even if she didn’t give a hoot about being judged or ostracized or isolated, if she does care about being considered competent, she can ill afford not to care.

  This is important to understand because it would be easy to assume that the reason you’re hesitant to do things like negotiate for more money or take on a leadership role is that you lack confidence. And that may well be true. However, as you are about to learn, for females, being too smart, or too bossy, or too self-serving, has consequences.

  IF I ACT TOO SMART, PEOPLE MAY NOT LIKE ME

  If you grew up near the top of your class you may have experienced at a young age the conflict between being smart and being liked. This is true of course for boys too. People who specialize in working with academically gifted students, however, will tell you that gifted girls often presume that boys do not like intelligent girls. Sadly, with good reason: Of the four categories of gifted and nongifted males and females, gifted girls were deemed least popular.12 When you consider the strong social pressure to fit in, it’s easy to see why a lot of gifted girls learn to downplay or devalue their abilities in order to avoid ostracism by their peers. It’s a lesson that may well be carried into adulthood.

  Being self-effacing or dismissing your abilities or accomplishments as “no big deal” in front of others sure sounds like the impostor syndrome. However, if you sense in certain settings that your superior intelligence is costing more points than it’s winning you, then you may unconsciously hold back.

  There is a difference between minimizing an achievement to guard against “bragging backlash” and believing you’re not actually responsible for it. In other words, you may be perfectly comfortable, even proud of your smarts. But if you believe you’ll be thought less of if you talk about your accomplishments, you may either (a) stay mum, or (b) downplay your success with statements like “It was nothing” or “I was just lucky.” After all, you don’t want people to think you’re “full of yourself.” Such behaviors look and sound like impostorism when, at least in part, they may represent a social strategy designed to maintain relationships.

  After all, if you care about what people think of you, then you’re also going to go out of your way to protect the other person’s feelings. And being modest helps you do that—that is, if you’re a woman. In one study, college students who scored higher on an intelligence test were asked to disclose their scores to students who did not perform as well. When women shared their scores with another woman in a modest (i.e., non-bragging) way, they assumed that the other person liked them more. They also thought that by being modest, they allowed the other person to feel more intelligent and confident. For men the opposite occurred: Men who bragged about doing well assumed that women liked them more and that the other people felt better about themselves.13

  Finally, for some females the concern is not that people won’t like them for being too smart but for not being smart enough. After fourteen-year-old Melissa Rogers tied for twenty-second place at the 1999 National Spelling Bee, her hometown held a parade in her honor. When she made the competition again the next year, the pressure was on to at least improve on last year’s performance. While cramming for the contest, Melissa says she “had a breakdown.… I was thinking, you know, What if I just totally spell my first word wrong and then I’m out in the first round? I was, like, Then nobody in my town will like me anymore.”

  IF I ASK FOR TOO MUCH, PEOPLE MAY NOT LIKE ME

  Make no mistake about it: A lack of confidence is a huge reason why most women undervalue themselves in salary negotiations. At the same time, a reluctance to ask for more money may also be based on a keen understanding of the social realities for women who do ask.

  For inst
ance, observers who watched videos of men and women in mock job interviews not only perceived the women who asked for more to be “less nice” and “more demanding,” but also said they’d be significantly less willing to work with a female candidate who attempted to negotiate her salary than with one who did not.14 It’s worth noting that while the men in this study penalized female candidates who asked, women penalized both male and female candidates who attempted to negotiate.

  Just because you may be judged more harshly doesn’t mean you should walk away empty-handed for lack of trying. What it does mean, say the researchers, is that while a collaborative approach benefits all negotiators, for a woman it may be crucial to make an extra effort to be liked during negotiation.

  IF I’M TOO BOSSY, OTHER WOMEN MAY NOT LIKE ME

  Earlier you learned that impostors sometimes attempt to skirt detection by keeping a low profile. If that rings true for you, it may explain a reluctance to step into the role of leader. However, it may be that you’re simply weighing the benefits of being in charge against the interpersonal repercussions of being seen as too “bossy.” In a 2008 survey by the Girl Scouts, a third of girls aged eight to seventeen who indicated a desire to be leaders worried about making people mad at them, being laughed at, not being liked, or coming across as bossy.15

  Typically we think it’s men who label female leaders as bossy. What you hear less about is the negative response women have to other women whom they perceive as bossy. For all the progress we’ve made, management experts Pat Heim and Susan Murphy observe, “women are somewhat more comfortable with a powerful woman who plays down her importance than one who does not.”16

  After all, women are used to men exerting power. It’s the reason a male executive can drop a file on his female assistant’s desk with a curt “Have this ready in an hour” and get away with it. But if you do that to another woman, it’s going to cost you major points on the likability scale. It has to do with an unspoken dynamic between women that Heim and Murphy call the “Power Dead-Even Rule.” The Power Dead-Even rule says that in order “for a positive relationship to be possible between two women, the self-esteem and power of one must be, in the perception of each woman, similar in weight to the self-esteem and power of the other.”

  That’s why your male counterpart can head off to his meeting confident that his demand will be met with no real consequences to the boss-assistant relationship. But if you want to maintain a good relationship with your female assistant, then the two essential elements of self-esteem and power must be kept “dead even.” This means that before you can delegate you need to first invest time and energy chatting about the weekend, the family, or otherwise psychologically balancing the relationship.

  This desire to keep things even is one reason that women issue so many more apologies then men—something that can make you both look and feel less capable. You probably apologize for things that aren’t your fault. Not because you really think you’re to blame but as a leveling device. For example, let’s say a coworker named Deb sent you the wrong information. You don’t want Deb to feel bad, so you start out by apologizing for not being clear about what you needed. At which point Deb probably offers her own apology for misunderstanding. Since you both apologized, everything is “even.” With the balance restored, the relationship is intact and you can get back to the business of getting the correct information.

  But if Deb’s name is Dave and Dave doesn’t understand the game, he might respond to what was a purely ritualized apology on your part with Well, obviously you weren’t very clear, because I sent you exactly what you asked for. Okay, now you’re pissed because you weren’t really sorry! You were just trying to help him save face and preserve the relationship.

  If you identify with this success scenario, ask yourself:

  How much of your being afraid to say yes to success is because you think you’re an impostor, and how much comes from learning to act less intelligent and knowledgeable than you really are in order to fit in?

  Do you downplay your accomplishments because you feel undeserving, or are you trying to make the other person like you?

  How much of your reluctance to ask for more is your impostorism, and how much is your concern that you’ll be disliked if you do ask?

  Is it possible that one of the reasons you think people won’t like you if you negotiate is because, like the women in the negotiation study, you don’t like it when others negotiate?

  How much of you not taking on leadership positions is your lack of confidence, and how much is a desire to maintain positive relationships with other women?

  How much of your apologizing has to do with actually believing you did something wrong, and how much is a ritualized mechanism to help the other person save face?

  The Bottom Line

  There are significant benefits to the female culture of care, concern, and connection. At the same time, being other-oriented can complicate the decision to say yes to success. That’s because on some level you understand that in different scenarios, your success can have an impact on your relationships with others. As a result, when you’re faced with a career decision it can be difficult to tell whether you’re dealing with a confidence issue or a connection one.

  It’s unlikely that you’ll totally stop caring about what people think of you or about the effects of your decisions on others. And that’s okay. Instead, strive to not be so consumed with other people’s needs and opinions that it keeps you from moving up, speaking up, or otherwise saying yes to success.

  What You Can Do

  Review the seven success scenarios to see which, if any, you identify with, and answer the related questions.

  Moving forward, when success anxiety strikes, pay attention to how much is the impostor syndrome and how much has to do with a finely tuned and often realistic awareness of what may lie on the other side of success.

  What’s Ahead

  Success is complicated for everyone, and even more so for women. As you are about to discover, there are additional factors other than the impostor syndrome that may cause you to hesitate in the face of success.

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  Is It “Fear” of Success or Something Else?

  It is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

  —J. K. Rowling

  If you’ve done well in the past in work or in school, then it would be reasonable to expect that you will continue to be successful in the future. At least that’s how it works for most people. But you’re not most people. You’re someone who believes that the achievements you’ve managed to pull off until now have been on a wing and a prayer. So naturally the idea of becoming even more successful is going to be stressful. There’s more responsibility. More people will be counting on you. The stakes are higher. There’s farther to fall. And of course with each new success, the chance increases that they’ll find out you’re really not that competent or talented after all.

  On a day-to-day basis you may not think a lot about success per se. That is, until either you decide to raise the bar or something happens to raise it for you. It was the latter scenario that caused my friend Sharon to call me in a panic. She was being recruited for a great position at a significantly higher level. The new job would put her in charge of more people and a larger operation. It also came with a huge salary bump.

  Sharon was excited—and anxious. I’d been in enough of these conversations to know that my job was to talk her down off the impostor ledge. I was supposed to remind her of how normal it is to feel nervous when faced with a new challenge. That she was more than capable of handling any challenge that came her way. How she’d be crazy not to take what was clearly an incredible opportunity. But that’s not what happened. Instead I said simply, “Maybe you just don’t really want it.”

  In seconds Sharon went from shock to relief. Make no mistake about it, my friend was
afraid to take the job, although not totally because she didn’t think she could do it. What happened to Sharon happens to a lot of impostors. You become so used to those niggling voices of self-doubt that you totally forget to heed other voices. Voices that may have far more to do with who you are and what you want than with how much you know or what you can do.

  Personally I hardly ever talk about impostors being afraid of success. That’s not to say that success can’t be intimidating or even downright terrifying, because it can, and all the more so if you think you’re a fraud. However, I believe everyone has a powerful inner desire to succeed. And that includes you. At the same time, I’ve met hundreds of women who, like Sharon, find themselves standing hesitantly at the crossroads of success.

  In the last chapter you learned that there are other reasons you might hold yourself back that can easily be confused with a lack of confidence. Here the focus is on whether there are aspects of success itself that may be causing you to pull back. By bringing to your consciousness some of the legitimate reasons for your success anxiety, you’ll be in a better position to decide for yourself: Am I afraid because I don’t think I can do it—or is it because I don’t want “it”?

  Are There Downsides to Success?

  There are so many obvious benefits to success that they hardly require mentioning. And I certainly do not want to go on record as advocating that you or any woman not take her rightful place at the table or in any way contribute to the already diminished economic status of women. In fact, further into this book, I’m going to encourage you to shoot even higher.

  At the same time, you really are allowed to define success for yourself. Which is why I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out some of the less talked-about aspects of success that may be giving you pause. For instance, hopefully when you began in your career it was because you had a passion. Maybe you loved solving complex programming issues or working directly with kids or doing in-depth research. The problem is that organizations are famous for taking people who are happy as individual contributors and turning them into managers or bureaucrats, and for pulling them away to serve on committees or perform other good-citizen functions. All of which only takes you farther away from what drew you to the work to begin with.