about letting other people down, we’re more likely to actually do so.
When we feel like impostors, we think we have something to prove.
Impostors may be the last to jump in, but they may also be the last to bail out.
Second, impostor thoughts can motivate us to work smarter.
When we don’t believe we’re going to win, we have nothing to lose by rethinking our strategy. Remember that total beginners don’t fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Feeling like an impostor puts us in a beginner’s mindset, leading us to question assumptions that others have taken for granted.
Third, feeling like an impostor can make us better learners.
Having some doubts about our knowledge and skills takes us off a pedestal, encouraging us to seek out insights from others. As
psychologist Elizabeth Krumrei Mancuso and her colleagues write,
“Learning requires the humility to realize one has something to learn.”
Some evidence on this dynamic comes from a study by another of our former doctoral students at Wharton, Danielle Tussing—now a professor at SUNY Buffalo. Danielle gathered her data in a hospital where the leadership role of charge nurse is rotated between shifts, which means that nurses end up at the helm even if they have doubts about their capabilities. Nurses who felt some hesitations about
assuming the mantle were actually more effective leaders, in part because they were more likely to seek out second opinions from colleagues. They saw themselves on a level playing field, and they knew that much of what they lacked in experience and expertise they could make up by listening. There’s no clearer case of that than Halla Tómasdóttir.
Plenty of evidence suggests that confidence is just as often the result of progress as the cause of it. We don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise to achieve challenging goals. We can build it through achieving challenging goals. “I have come to welcome impostor syndrome as a good thing: it’s fuel to do more, try more,”
Halla says. “I’ve learned to use it to my advantage. I actually thrive on the growth that comes from the self-doubt.”
While other candidates were content to rely on the usual media coverage, Halla’s uncertainty about her tools made her eager to rethink the way campaigns were run. She worked harder and
smarter, staying up late to personally answer social media messages.
She held Facebook Live sessions where voters could ask her anything, and learned to use Snapchat to reach young people.
Deciding she had nothing to lose, she went where few presidential candidates had gone before: instead of prosecuting her opponents, she ran a positive campaign. How much worse can it get? she thought. It was part of why she resonated so strongly with voters:
they were tired of watching candidates smear one another and delighted to see a candidate treat her competitors with respect.
Uncertainty primes us to ask questions and absorb new ideas. It protects us against the Dunning-Kruger effect. “Impostor syndrome always keeps me on my toes and growing because I never think I know it all,” Halla reflects, sounding more like a scientist than a politician. “Maybe impostor syndrome is needed for change.
Impostors rarely say, ‘This is how we do things around here.’ They don’t say, ‘This is the right way.’ I was so eager to learn and grow that I asked everyone for advice on how I could do things differently.”
Although she doubted her tools, she had confidence in herself as a learner. She understood that knowledge is best sought from experts, but creativity and wisdom can come from anywhere.
Iceland’s presidential election came down to Halla, Davíð
Oddsson, and two other men. The three men all enjoyed more media coverage than Halla throughout the campaign, including front-page interviews, which she never received. They also had bigger campaign budgets. Yet on election day, Halla stunned her country—and herself
—by winning more than a quarter of the vote.
She didn’t land the presidency; she came in second. Her 28 percent fell shy of the victor’s 39 percent. But Halla trounced Davíð Oddsson, who finished fourth, with less than 14 percent. Based on
her trajectory and momentum, it’s not crazy to imagine that with a few more weeks, she could have won.
Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re impostors.
They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight. They don’t boast about how much they know; they marvel at how little they understand.
They’re aware that each answer raises new questions, and the quest for knowledge is never finished. A mark of lifelong learners is
recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.
Arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. Humility is a reflective lens: it helps us see them clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses.