ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

Why High Achievers Feel Like Frauds - Tara Halliday on Imposter Syndrome and Real Performance Ep33

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 2 • Episode 33

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In this conversation, Tara Halliday discusses the pervasive issue of imposter syndrome, particularly among high performers. She explains its root causes, symptoms, and the impact it has on productivity and mental health. Tara emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing imposter syndrome, offering strategies for overcoming it and highlighting the role of supportive workplace cultures. The discussion also touches on the misconceptions surrounding imposter syndrome and the necessity of calming techniques for stress relief.

Takeaways

  • Imposter syndrome affects over 70% of high performers at some point in their career.
  • It's not a confidence issue; it's an unconscious belief about self-worth.
  • The belief that worth depends on actions is a global phenomenon.
  • Imposter syndrome can lead to chronic stress and burnout.
  • Coping behaviors like procrastination and perfectionism are linked to imposter syndrome.
  • Workplace culture can exacerbate feelings of imposter syndrome.
  • Support and encouragement from leaders can help high performers cope with challenges.
  • Transformational leaders maintain calm and neuro-regulation during stress.
  • Calming techniques can significantly improve performance and decision-making.
  • Identifying imposter syndrome is the first step to overcoming it.

 


Links:
Offer: massively discounted Inner Success one-to-one programme: https://bit.ly/2025IS-Client
Amazon #1 best-selling books by Tara
‘Outsmart Imposter Syndrome’ (2023) https://amzn.to/44OKZ8D
‘Unmasking: The Coaches Guide to Imposter Syndrome’ (2018)
Website: https://www.outsmartimpostersyndrome.com
Free quiz: https://bit.ly/ImpostorQuiz
Online course: https://bit.ly/OutsmartIS

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-halliday-phd/
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@OutsmartImposterSyndrome
X https://x.com/tarahalliday1
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009513967101
Insta https://www.instagram.com/tara.halliday/

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Dr. Tara Halliday has a PhD in engineering and over 20 years of experience as a holistic therapist and coach. But her most powerful credential? She's cracked the code on one of the most pervasive challenges facing performance today. Impostor syndrome. As a specialist impostor syndrome coach, Tara has discovered something remarkable. Over 70 % of high achievers Experience Impostor Syndrome. Yet most people think it's just a confidence issue or something beginners face. She's here to shatter those myths completely. Tara is the author of the Amazon bestseller Unmasking the coach's guide to Impostor Syndrome and her latest book, Impostor Syndrome. She runs Inner Success, an eight-week intensive program for C-level executives to eliminate Impostor Syndrome permanently. What makes Tara's approach revolutionary is her understanding that Impostor Syndrome isn't about low confidence or lack of experience. It's about an unconscious belief that your worth depends on your performance. In today's conversation, Tara reveals why fake it till you make it is a terrible advice. and how high challenge with low support creates the perfect storm Get ready to discover why Impostor Syndrome isn't a personality flaw. It's simply a belief that can be changed. And Tara will show you how exactly you should start transforming this today. Welcome to Productivity Tree. Let's dive in with Dr. Tara Halliday. Hi Tara, welcome to ProductiviTree. Absolutely delighted to be here. Thank you Santiago. Tara, you have helped thousands of leaders transform their inner game. What exactly is imposter syndrome and why is it so common in high performance? Yeah, so imposter syndrome is the secret feeling of being a fraud when you're not a fraud, right? So you, when logically you know that you're capable and competent and successful, internally, you have this doubt that you're not quite good enough. And it's this tension between those two ideas that is imposter syndrome. It affects over 70 % of high performers at some point in their career. And um it shows up in high performers because they are experienced. So a lot of people think that imposter syndrome might be because they're a beginner and they're learning things. So when they're younger, they think, well, if I just get the next promotion or I just get the next business or I just get the next qualification, then I'll start to feel a bit better about myself. By the time they get to very successful positions, high performance positions, they've They have that experience, they have that knowledge, and they're still having this self doubt. And that's why high performers notice it more than most people. You said that it's not about low confidence or low self-esteem, but what is the real cause or the real root cause of imposter syndrome? Yeah, so a lot of people think it's a confidence issue and it absolutely isn't. As I said, high performers, they're doing well and they know logically that they can perform. So the rules of imposter syndrome comes down to a belief and it's an unconscious belief. So most people aren't even aware of it. It's like the fish swimming in the water. They don't even notice the water. They don't realize it's there. It's just all around them. And the root cause is the belief that your worth as a person depends on what you do. Right? So your worth is connected with your actions. So you do something good, you are a good person. You do something bad, you are a bad person. And this belief is right the way across the globe. All cultures, it's absolutely everywhere. 99.999 % of people have this belief. that was developed at an extremely young age and it shows up in high performers as imposter syndrome. That feeling that you're not quite good enough no matter how much you've done and how much you succeed. How can someone know if they are experiencing imposter syndrome or it's not that just nervous or having a bad day? Yeah, so firstly, you need to understand what imposter syndrome is, like the symptoms. So there are three kinds of symptoms. um There's the thoughts, there's the physiological stress response, and there's the coping behaviors. So the thoughts of imposter syndrome are that self doubt, feeling like not quite good enough, feeling that you maybe just got lucky, that feeling of who am I to be doing this? Who am I to be successful even? That creates stress in the body. So you've got a physiological response, trigger response to fight, flight or freeze response, which is the nervous system, different nervous system states. And that causes tension, anxiety, overwhelm, poor sleep. And then all of that stress drives coping behaviors, which most people see as the behaviors linked to imposter syndrome. So that might be procrastination, perfectionism, over-preparing. comparing, not speaking up enough, not expressing their opinions enough, um turning down opportunities and promotions, m feeling like you just need one more qualification to be better, or just gritting your teeth and pushing through. So all of those, that whole spectrum of these three behaviors, they drive each other in a cycle. There's a lot of self-judgment, self-criticism involved in it, because they think they should be able to get out of this. Hmm. And so how do people know? uh Probably the best idea is to take a quiz. So I have a quiz, can link it in the show notes and people can take that and that will give them a score. And if it's over 50%, it means that imposter syndrome is showing up in their life. If it's over 62%, the research says that it's having a significant effect and you do well to do something about it, get rid of it. Can imposter syndrome um lead to burnout? Yeah, imposter syndrome has been linked very closely with burnout. It's a chronic stress, the physiological stress response that I described, the fight, flight and freeze, the tension, anxiety, overwhelm, all of those on an ongoing basis just set people up for burnout. Actually, people go one of two ways. They either back off and they say, this is all too stressful. underperform as far as their careers go. They might not take a promotion, they might quit the business that they've started, quit their job, things like that, or it can lead to overwork, pushing through and burnout. Mmm. What productivity advice is not good for people that is going through imposter syndrome? What shouldn't they do? Well, you know, one of the things I've heard around imposter syndrome, which is absolutely do not do this. There's a phrase, fake it till you make it. And and fake it till you make it is great if you're an actor. Right. And you're playing a role and you pretend and the more and more you pretend, you'll get to be able to be in that role. Fake it till you make it is. really really bad advice with imposter syndrome because you already feel like you don't belong, you already feel stressed and not quite good enough. So if you then try and pretend you'll just make that worse, you'll feel even worse about it. And the problem with that is that the behaviors that I've talked about, the perfectionism, the over-preparing, the procrastination, they all make huge dents in your productivity. right, they really impact it, they slow you down, you're working for longer hours to achieve less and less. So it's that combination of that stress and then the behaviours that come out of it. So yeah, don't fake it till you make it. You've said that high challenge and low support is a recipe for imposter syndrome. And we see this often. We give high challenges to high performers and we're confident that we'll get through it. Why is this bad and how can leaders make sure this doesn't happen? Yeah, so the consequence of imposter syndrome is that people are exhausted, right? They're overworked to try and produce. And because they're high achievers, they can produce, right? So it's not like they're failing in any way at all. So it's the sheer effort that it takes to push through the constant distraction, the nagging voice in your head, to push through the over-preparing. push through, trying to get things perfect and feeling stressed if they don't. All of those really, really take a toll on um people. so they will still rise to that challenge, but the cost is going to be extreme. The cost is going to be chronic stress, chronic health, relationships issues at home, divorce, all of those kind of things. The more support you have, right? then the more you're able to cope with the challenge. what leaders can do for their team is if they do say to a high performer, hey, here's a good challenge, what do you need? What help do you need? Like proactively, because a lot of high performers also they don't want to accept help, they think maybe it's cheating or maybe it's a weakness or something like that. So encourage help, encourage support and the more support you can give them, the better they're going to be able to meet that challenge. What role plays workplace culture in healing or making imposter syndrome work? Are there places where people are more likely to suffer from imposter syndrome or cultures? Yeah, so the culture, so I've had clients who have imposter syndrome and they're in the most supportive culture you can imagine, right? It's fantastic. So that's good, but it doesn't get rid of imposter syndrome. So it's not a work culture issue. However, if you've got a toxic culture, a negative environment, if there's bullying going on, scapegoating going on, um or people who are uh rude or disrespectful, not psychologically safe, all those things that have been identified as a negative uh work culture, all of those can just increase the stress and that can make imposter syndrome worse. Is there people that doesn't have Impostor Syndrome at all? And why is that? So yes, yes is the answer. But a very, very small number. So the root cause we talked about is the belief that your worth is conditional. Your worth depends on what you do. studies that have been done on that, has been identified, this belief has been identified as the root cause of all human suffering. So back in the 1950s, Dr. Carl Rogers, real pillar of know, psychology and personal psychology, he identified way back then as the root cause of human suffering. So there are some people, 0.001 % of the population, who actually do have a sense of their worth being unconditional. And those are the ones that don't suffer from imposter syndrome. It's a very, very small number. And where it comes from, is, because I think I need to explain where people get this belief. When a baby is born, it just has all information coming in and it's no structure to it, no sense to it, no separation. doesn't understand, it doesn't have a framework. As its brain grows, starts to figure out, the brain starts to figure out what things are and mean objects and things like that. Between the ages of 18 months and three years old. the child develops a sense of self as separate. So I'm separate from the table, the parent, the cat. And so when they develop that sense of self, that would have been the time to teach them that their worth and their actions are also separate. Because most people believe that they aren't separate, unconsciously, Parents can't teach it so children don't know. So it's, if you like, it's a missed step in terms of what could have been separated out. So it's nothing to do with parenting, like technique and style or love. It's nothing to do with trauma or bad experiences or anything like that. It's a missed educational step. But the good news is that you can actually change this as an adult so people can change from believing their worth is conditional to their worth is being unconditional and that's the work that I do which gets rid of people's imposter syndrome. Let's go there. You just don't help people managing Buster syndrome. You help them eliminate it. What is the process? So the program is very structured. So it's an eight module momentum program that builds. The first three modules are getting people calm. So I talked about the stress response, right? So we get people calm. We calm their nervous system. We calm their environment. We calm their imposter syndrome behaviors. From there, then we've got three modules in which we are changing the way that people believe in themselves. The brain can't change without being calm, so calm, and then we change the belief, and then after that we do some creative work in terms of uh habits around success and productivity and authenticity and resilience. Those things then work very well because we've changed that belief. You've talked about calming the nerves and the nervous system, leveling the nervous system. Why is that step often overlooked in leadership coaching or normal coaching? uh Coaching, it's about performance normally, right? But you're saying that you need to calm down. Yes, yeah. Well, see what happens when your nervous system gets triggered and you're in fight, flight and freeze? have been studies done and what happens then is that um when the nervous system is triggered, blood flow gets sent to your arms and your legs, your large muscles to allow you to fight or run away basically. And one of the places that that blood flow gets taken away from is a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. Now, this is the logical thinking and planning, the strategic part of the brain, the emotional regulation part of the brain. So that has consequences in performance and productivity. So your IQ, your intelligence drops by 13 points, which is a lot. The average average intelligence is 100. So 13 points is a lot to drop. It makes you emotionally reactive. Hmm. ways that you've never intended to do. It makes you um less clear. You might get mind fogged. You can't think so well. You make poor decisions. You're more risk taking. So the consequences of not being calm in terms of performance are absolutely huge. That's one of the reasons why it needs addressing. Why it doesn't? There was a study from the Asada Business School Thank that they studied, they wanted to know the answer to what makes a transformational leader, what makes an amazing leader. And so they wired people's brains up to tracking devices, they monitored their physiology, they had cameras on them, they tracked all their words, all their actions, and they had a group of executives work on a case together, and they could identify who. were the transformational leaders in those groups. And what they found was that it wasn't the ones who had the most air time, it wasn't the ones who had the best ideas, it wasn't the ones who could express themselves the best. The transformational leaders were the ones that kept calm, the ones who had the best neuro-regulation. That's why it's essential, I think, for everyone. Wow. Tara, can you walk us through a real transformation? You have seen someone that went from, let's say, paralyzed by self-doubt or imposter syndrome to becoming confident, productive, a great leader. Yeah, so I think I'll start at the top because, you know, imposter syndrome affects people at all levels, including the very, very top. You don't get to outperform or out succeed imposter syndrome. So I'll give you an example of um Adrian, who was a CEO of a billion dollar pharmaceutical company. So very successful person. He'd been promoted from within the company, but he knew that he was this the board's third choice of CEO. So the first one was from outside and that didn't work out. The second one was from inside the company and they didn't want to move. uh He was a technical specialist, didn't want to move him. And then finally, Adrian got the job. And that really stung. He felt like, I'm not good enough. They hate me. They're just waiting to replace me. you enough came up for him. So when he had to produce his report for the board, he procrastinated and it was slow and slow and then he had to em work overnight to try and catch up. He didn't sleep for two nights before and he was so stressed and so anxious. And he'd go into the board meeting feeling like oh a naughty little schoolboy. handing in his homework late, he felt really disempowered. my program's a 90-day program, so three months into the program, so 30 days into the program, he was already feeling better in that he'd stopped procrastinating, so he's producing his report on time, he slept well the night before, we're talking about getting calm. and he walked into the meeting feeling like he belonged, so feeling like he was among his peers, which was just fantastic. Now, at the end of the 90 days, there was another change again, because now he had a month to go to the next board meeting, and what he was doing was calling up each of the board members individually, having conversations with them, getting opinions, feedback, aligning all of the board. offline if you like so that when they came together they'd already be um you know understanding all the issues, understand everybody's perspectives and being able to really make some good and strategic decisions so that was the difference so all of these skills he already had but the transformation before and afterwards phenomenal because now he's leading the board and he's having that impact and he's being a very powerful, impactful CEO. Tara, what's the difference between someone who pushes through imposter syndrome and someone who's truly free from it? Yeah, so it's a level of stress. If you're pushing through imposter syndrome, it's not going away, right? You're just gritting your teeth and pushing through. So you're experiencing all of this stress, all of these feelings of overwhelm. You're fighting against all these behaviors, coping behaviors. It's absolutely exhausting. When you're free from imposter syndrome, it looks very different. You are... effortlessly confident, right? You don't have to think about it. Things are automatic, right? Because these are the, we've changed the automatic belief behind it. You forget to doubt yourself. So an opportunity comes along and rather than saying, who am I to have that? what if I do it wrong? What will other people think? Well, that's an interesting idea. And wouldn't that be an adventure? And wouldn't that be a great thing to explore? It completely changes how you view yourself and the other people around you. You don't take things personally. So if somebody is uh critical or they're having a bad day and they're really stressed out, you don't make it mean something about you. So it's freedom, freedom from all of these reactive expressions. Let's talk a little bit about uh other people that surrounds you and how and why do we always mirror and look at others and sometimes we feel um somewhat inferior to other people and we think oh he or she is amazing I'll never be like that. How can you deal with this so you nurture yourself from colleagues instead of comparing yourself with others. Well, that comparing is one of the best stress behaviors of imposter syndrome. So what it is, is you look around at all your successful peers and they all seem to be doing brilliantly, right? So from the outside, they all look great. From the inside, you've got this self doubt. So it feels like there's a really big gap, which makes you feel even more like you don't belong. Now, some people say, just stop comparing, but... your brain is designed to compare, your brain is designed to always be looking out just in case there's any danger. So it looks out for differences in your environment, anything unusual. So if you're driving down the road, for example, and at the corner of your eye, you spot a cow that's bright purple, right? Your attention go, whoa, what's that? So that's your brain looking for differences just in case they're danger. So you can't stop yourself comparing. But what you can do is you can, you can deliberately change it. You can say, okay, I am comparing, but now let's look for the similarities and not the differences. How I made the same. What values do we have in common? What experiences do we have in common? And the more you find similar to other people, the more they'll feel like they're the same as you, the more you'll feel like you belong and the less you're going to feel like you're an outsider or inferior. What is the most misunderstood fact about Impostor Syndrome? ah I'm going to say there's two. think firstly that it's a beginner's issue. There's a lot of influence out there. There's some significant influences out there saying, well, you just need more experience. It's not an experience issue. That's probably the biggest one. And the other one is this idea that it's a quality of your personality. It's who you are. And it absolutely isn't a personality. uh floor tall or a personality trait at all. There's a lot of research done in 1980s looking for what are the personality profile tests, what are the personalities that have imposter syndrome or, and they couldn't find any. So it's not your personality. And that's really important because when you understand that imposter syndrome is not who you are, then that gives you a bit of breathing room as well. And it's like, oh, okay. This is not something, this is like me having a nail in my shoe. It's nothing wrong with my foot, it's a nail in my shoe. And I don't need to tough it out or pretend that it's a good thing. No, you just need to take out the nail. What is one um behaviour that secretly feels self-dubbed? Oh, that's a great one. So all of those behaviors that I've described, the procrastination, the over-preparing, um the comparing, all of those fuel that self-doubt, because the self-doubt underlies it all. It's that belief that my worth depends on what I do. So it means that even if you're going, even if my things are doing really, really well, In the back of your mind, there's an idea, but yeah, but what if it doesn't? What if the next thing goes wrong? You know, I've been successful, but I'm not convinced I can actually repeat it because it might go wrong. And that causes the stress and the self-doubt. What is a calming strategy that anyone can try today? Okay, all right, well, there's three steps and I can demonstrate it. So I mentioned the blood flow going to your brain, being taken away from your brain. So the first thing you can do is shake out your arms and shake out your legs. So this is standing up and shaking everything really vigorously. And what you're doing is balancing the blood flow and getting your blood flow back to the brain. Then after that, you do a four, a four step called box breathing. It's what the special forces use to get calm because they know how important it is. And the box breathing is you breathe in for a count of four, hold for a count of four, breathe out for a count of four, hold for a count of four. You're going around in a box. So you go around this like two or three times. And what that does is that very regular controlled movement of the diaphragm under the ribs actually calms the vagus nerve, the nerve that it gets triggered when we get into fight, flight and freeze. So that calms the nerve. And then the third part is to look around the room and look for anything that's blue. Right. And just notice it and then, okay, that's blue, that's blue, that's blue or any color you like, but pick one and then listen out for what you can hear. and try and identify it is that birds, dogs, people, traffic, and then stroke your arms down from your shoulders to your elbows. So focus on the sensation of touch. Really feel the pressure of your feet on the floor or the legs on your chair, the back of your legs on your chair. And what that's doing is then you're feeding back to your brain. Look, I've checked out all the senses here. the visual, the hearing, the touch, and there's no danger, there's no tiger in the room. And those three things calm the three parts of the nervous system stress response, and it'll get you feeling very calm very, very quickly in just a few minutes. What do you wish CEOs and leadership in general understood about their top performers? So I think that there is an idea, certainly not more old fashioned idea now that leadership top performance is about talent. And so when people often get promoted to higher and higher levels, unfortunately, they tend to get less and less support training back up. When you look in... say for the athletics world, and somebody gets down a higher, like we've just had Wimbledon, higher and higher tennis players, they have coaches, they have nutrition coaches, have physiotherapists, have, know, coaches teach them each of the strokes, they have more support than the average tennis players, whereas in the business world, it's the opposite, the top performers, they're expected to just get on and do it. And I think if more CEOs, more leaders, understood that their performers will perform better with better support, better training and things like programs to get rid of imposter syndrome, programs to get them calm. All of these things would actually make them perform even better because even the top performers, have imposter syndrome, they're underperforming for what their capacity is, what their capability is. So the better support they can get them, then the better they're and happier and smoother the company is going to run and the better off all the employees are going to be. Does Impostor Syndrome make people less productive? Let me explain that. Do you think people uh that is doubting themselves are less likely to ask for help, advice, and ultimately they are less productive because they are not maximizing the network around them? that's a great way of doing it. Yeah, I would say absolutely they're not maximising the network around them. And also when you have imposter syndrome, you're not as efficient. you know, you're, you're, you'd say you've got perfectionism and you're so you're stressing over making things, you know, perfect. So you spend more time on it. So the project for the results takes longer. or the over-preparing doing far more work than they needed to do for a project. Again, time, time, time, and that's causing stress and that's causing them to be um less efficient. But yes, I'm not asking for help. They will be less productive. Tara, if someone is listening right now and they're hiding behind success or they're having questions or doubts about themselves, what is the very first step they should take? The very first step is to see if this is imposter syndrome. So that would be the quiz. Take the quiz. Is this imposter syndrome? If it is, now they know what to do about it. The problem with imposter syndrome is it seems so nebulous because the root cause is unconscious. People can't see an immediate solution to it, right? So they see only the symptoms, like they see their procrastination. So they think they have to do, you know, a time program, know, time management program to make them more focused in time. Well, actually, you know, the driver of this is this unconscious belief. So check out whether it is imposter syndrome and then you'll be able to put a plan together to resolve that. Can you give us the URL, the website where we can um find this test? Yes, we can put it on the show notes if that's okay. Yeah. you. Tara, I want to thank you for this conversation about imposter syndrome. I'm taking many things away. I want to take the test myself. um This is something and we were talking before we started the recording that this is something that almost everyone at some point in their lives or their careers goes through. and I'm taking away the calm keyword being calm and understanding that as a human, you're not able to fix nor should, should you know everything that is happening around you or have almost knowledge about everything and being calm and also maximizing the network. As I said before, um, being humble enough to say, well, I don't know about that. And. again, being calm enough to not be bothered about asking these kind of things just because it's not gonna look good and someone might say, my thing that I'm, you know, what is this guy doing here? How did he reach this position? So I wanna thank you for that. And I'm sure a lot of people will benefit from your wisdom and the actionable advice that you gave today. Thank you. I'm delighted to share it. Thank you so much, Tara. Thanks, Santiago.