I Am An Impostor (and So Are You)
Over the past few months, I’ve been challenged professionally in ways I never have before. I’ve come face to face with The Imposter and The Imposter is me. And I’m okay with that – now.
After moving into a Director level role a couple years ago, I was asked to build a Design team and help bring user-centricity to my organization. This was something I could do. I am an advocate for users and for the value of human-centered design. I’ve built successful teams before. I was in my sweet spot. I could do this. And I did. Very successfully. Over the course of two years, I grew a UX Design team from one person, me, to 20+ UX Designers and Researchers.
To do so, I faced challenges for sure:
An organization that wasn’t fully committed to the course; one that didn’t put its money where its mouth was
An organization that was allocating funding to build this new UX org
Engineering leaders who were reluctant to exchange engineering roles for UX roles – the type of ‘horse trading’ I learned to excel at
Product Management leaders who saw UX as a threat to their throne. Who wants designers who will call your knowledge ‘assumptions’ and build a testing framework to challenge those assumptions?
So many other challenges that I can’t even begin to share fairly
But I was ready for these challenges. I had built the skills to do this over the course of my career. I was also an ardent activist and advocate for my field. I truly believe that Design can change the world. As a Designer, I could spin up justifications and frameworks that solved for so many concerns. And once I built a head of steam, it was easy to just keep the ball on the right track once it started rolling down hill.
Sure there were mistakes - wrong fit hires, ego clashes, goals misalignment – but I’m proud of the team I built. 20+ Designers and Researchers who contributed to the evolution of a vast portfolion of clinical solutions products, and who helped drive new product innovation. A team that helped raise the visibility of user-centered design and contributed to the organization’s eventual true embrace of user-centered design.
As the team, and our visibility grew, I was asked to take on more responsibility and a very different role – middle manager and politician. Gone were the days of storming the castle, bucking the system, breaking, and then creating our own, rules. They were replaced by days of discussing ROI, product prioritization, finances (amortization, BAU and investment cases).
About this time, I met The Imposter. The Imposter was a monster who tried to undermine everything I did, questioned my ability, my competency, and sometimes my sanity. I went to design school (never finished actually). How was I fit to sit in conversations with Senior Vice Presidents, CTOs, CPOs, and so many other CESomethings and VPs of Important Stuff? Sure, the company offered some online training in things like Finance Basics, but did that really make me qualified to debate a CFO about the value of investing in innovation? The Imposter insisted I wasn’t and so I sat in conversations that I believed were over my head and I kept my mouth shut or muttered feebly when asked to contribute. I deferred to those with the credentials that marked them clearly as competent – MBA, PHD, MD, DO.
Sure there were places where I learned quickly and added value. Sometimes even shone beyond my comfort zone. I helped drive a transition for our product teams to the Spotify squad model. This was change. This was rebellion against what came before. I could throw up the devil horns and crash the gates!
Over time, The Imposter began to eat away at those spaces and eventually eroded my confidence even in the spaces that were my strength. Should the team be more rigorous? Is this the right alignment of people to problem? How could we possibly attack this massive challenge? How could I think I was good enough, smart enough, to be the one to solve this problem? Things got pretty grim.
I’d love to tell you about some miraculous turnaround, some fantastical story about how I banished doubt, conquered fear, and saved the world but I can’t. What I can tell you is that I’ve come to an important realization – I am The Imposter. Always have been. Always will be. Every time I take on a new challenge, accept a new responsibility, or learn a new skill, I am The Imposter. I am “faking it until I make it.” That’s okay. It’s the only way to grow and remain relevant.
You are The Imposter. And always will be. That’s okay.
We live in a world in turmoil, in flux, where the skills and competencies needed to thrive are evolving on daily – seemingly hourly – basis. When you try something new, you’re pretending to be competent until you’ve actually done it and succeeded. When you take on a new responsibility, you are “faking it” until you make it work. When you move into a management role for the first time, you are an imposter in the leadership suite until you’ve won, and lost, enough times to know what works – and what doesn’t. You are The Imposter. And always will be. That’s okay. Embrace failure, learn quickly. Embrace The Imposter.
