I had a really interesting, if a little unexpected, experience while coaching recently. I was starting an Executive PA Performance Coaching programme with a new client; she’s the EA to the Chief Executive of a large global corporate organisation and I was due to meet her at their glitzy and impressive central London offices.
As I walked into her company’s offices for the first time, I started to feel slightly in awe of my surroundings and the prestige of the organisation. Regardless, I pressed on with the usual rigmarole of getting security passes and finding the right reception area in the building, until I was finally sitting in the outer echelons of the executive suite waiting to meet her.
The moment we met I could tell she was a charming woman full of presence and hospitality; I immediately warmed to her and liked her immensely. We got settled with coffee in the CEO’s pin-droppingly quiet office and got down to the business of our first coaching session together.
As her executive coach I wanted to find out what made her tick, what her ambitions were, what she perceived as her challenges and development areas, what she wanted to get out of the coaching process. She has been with her company for 15 years and through dedication, hard work and ambition has risen to the very top of her career.
But I wanted to drill down a little deeper, and so I asked a question that unfurled a torrent of emotion. “Do you ever feel like an imposter in your role?” This was met by a contemplative silence, her body language sagged and she reached into her bag to get a tissue. Finally, a simple “yes” was her answer.
Now this EA has gone through one of the most robust recruitment processes I’ve ever come across to get her job, she works alongside one of the toughest CEOs in the world, has a great relationship with him and is liked and respected throughout the company. The subsequent conversation that unfolded was emotional and, from my perspective, in many ways heart-breaking.
What she was experiencing was punishing self-doubt that she was just not good enough. Although she is successful in her role, well-regarded, competent and effective, she lives with an underlying feeling that someone will walk into her office one day and expose her as a fraud. This is a palpable feeling that failure is just around the corner, and the higher the achiever, the higher the responsibility, and subsequently the higher the cost of failure.
And I personally experienced that self-same feeling sitting in the outer executive office waiting to meet this lady – it’s uncomfortable, it’s undermining, and it’s ultimately completely self-destructive. I allowed myself to be influenced by my imposing surroundings, by my own perceptions and interpretations of where I was and what I was doing.
What I did learn is that very few of us escape the phenomenon of what is commonly known as imposter syndrome; maybe it’s a reflection of how much we care about our roles and what we do, the way we impact and affect those around us. But I do know that none of us is alone in feeling this from time to time. So, can we all overcome and chase out this imposter within? Yes, absolutely, by accepting it for what it is, creating a shift in our thinking and applying specific strategies to our thought processes. It doesn’t mean it won’t rear its ugly head once in a while, but it certainly can be tamed.
We are all in our roles because we’re good at them, we deserve to be there, and someone else has seen that we have value to add to their lives. What makes me feel better when experiencing the imposter within is that, at least some of the time, everybody else does too.
Susie Barron-Stubley has been coaching and training Executive PAs and EAs for almost a decade. She is the author of Create a Business-Busting Partnership with your Assistant – The Executive’s Guide, creator and presenter of The Secrets of Top Performing PAs training DVDs and continues to run high-level public training programmes for senior level PAs. See castalia-coaching.co.uk for further information.
