I recently celebrated my professional birthday. It’s now been 10 years since I walked away from my last full-time corporate role.
Feeling like it was time for something new, I chose to move from the stability of a corporate role to the rough and tumble world of freelancer.
In my corporate career, I was the swiss army knife in our firm: design engineer (check) tech leader (check), mfg ops (check), global biz dev (check), org dev (check), r&d (check), corp transformation (check).
I had read all the “success porn” and knew it would just be a matter of time and hustle.
What I didn’t understand was how this decision would force me to work through all the internal imposter syndrome stuff that lurked in me just below the surface.
It’s dark, murky stuff that imposter syndrome. We tend to avoid it with massive amounts of hustle.
I moved to a new city + hustled.
I spoke to groups all over the country + hustled.
I began making new friends + hustled some more.
I drank gallons of black coffee during networking meetings.
Months went by + glacially, a quiet voice emerged and shifts started to happen.
It was during those meetings and months that I slowly discovered a powerful truth:
It wasn’t just me.
I hired some very competent coaching and learned that everyone from the C-suite to the loading dock struggles with “imposter syndrome.”
What is Imposter Syndrome?
Imposter syndrome is when a person is doing a new task and suddenly disregards their previous successful work as they become overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy and lose their confidence to persist. The roots of this vary, but the fear and the response are very real.
The challenge becomes that all the training they’ve had in maturing products and services really doesn’t equip them to lead under conditions of high uncertainty and emergent value. Yet, there is immense pressure to execute and scale – without setbacks – on the initiative exactly as stated.
These pressures lead many Growth Leaders to “bail” on the higher risk, higher reward path of Growth Leadership – and their firms are poorer for it.
When we don’t face the imposter, it has power over us. When we turn and face it down, we unlock the power to succeed and the clarity on what our next steps should be.
A Quick Analogy Might Help
Imagine that you are the pilot of a small aircraft, and you are guiding it through some weather. The left front seat is equal parts exhilarating and scary – you know it’s all on you. You also know that no one has a better view of the weather, your location, and the instruments than you do.
Things begin to shake from turbulence, but you have seen this before and know you can make it through…that is until you look down and see another problem that requires your attention: you’re also running low on fuel.
It’s at this point you realize the calculus no longer adds up – and the trip isn’t worth the reward. Not wanting to become a casualty, you wisely look for the nearest spot to land and walk away. All the while knowing that this was no ordinary trip…you’ve spent months planning and your passengers have bet big on your success.
It’s then that you discover there was an entire tank of fuel available – you just needed to flip a valve to access it. However, after you make the call to land, you feel so personally responsible that you lose your adventurous spirit and choose the leadership of something much, much safer.
The analogy here is clear: those who lead growth in firms walk away from these challenging projects early – and they do it much more often than you might believe.
The reasons for this are always hidden in rational explanations. Even though upon examination, there is often a way forward, it is the fear of both failure and not having a spotless resume that leads Growth Leaders to take a “safe” path out. When this happens, both the organization and the Leader lose out on the valuable development that only comes from stepping into high challenge and high support roles.
The internal stats on successful, organic projects shows how pervasive this issue is: only about 1 in 5 projects find success. Unfortunately, those 4 out of 5 that “land” perceive themselves as somehow inadequate and unskilled. The impact to the firm is two-fold: they lose the potential of an emerging leader, along with the benefit from the project.
It’s an unfortunate situation for the Growth Leader, as well. First, their internal measure of “success” was placed on the wrong measurement. Second, there was more gas in the tank than they realized.
You Have the Gas in the Tank
Properly structuring and supporting this work is critical to the current and future agility of the firm, setting the stage for leaders to step up and do the hard work of Growth Leadership. Setting yourself and your firm up for high-quality growth investments and outcomes is critical to serving all the stakeholders – including investors, employees, partners and the extended community that firms live in.
My super power is getting stuck teams moving. If you’d like to talk about how we can work together to enable acceleration in your firm, please drop me an email or put a call on our calendars using this link.
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