Coaching Impostor Syndrome in High Performing Female Leaders: You’re not Faking it; You’re Crushing It!
Spectacular Stephanie breezes through my open door, closes it slowly, and falls into the seat across from me: she’s the best of the best, and everyone knows it. Impeccable academic and professional credentials; meticulously dressed; meticulously prepared every day; razor sharp, great at her job, great mom, super active in her community, former college athlete, and in her spare time posts great family stuff on Instagram. You know, “baby she’s got it.” Ask her colleagues, her customers, her managers, her friends, she’s crushing it. But in the mirror…not nearly good enough. An imposter. A fraud. She falls into the seat in despair. Hands over face. Tears. Agonizing. “I’m so done Paul. I’m so done. I can’t. I don’t want to do this anymore. They’re laughing at me. I’m a total **** joke and they know it. I can’t do this. I’M DONE.”
If you’re a talented female leader and you’re carrying impostor syndrome like a private shame, I want you to consider a radical alternative: Maybe this feeling is not evidence you’re a fraud. Maybe it’s evidence you’re conscientious. Maybe it’s evidence you’re learning. Maybe it’s evidence you care. Maybe it’s evidence you’re leading at a level where the work is finally worthy of you.
Maybe you’re stretching to the point where the transformation hurts. Newsflash: that’s how you grow.
One of the greatest joys, no strike that, THE greatest joy of my time as CEO of NatWest US was watching our exceptional women rise—fast, visibly, and successfully—into the roles that actually run the place. Sales, trading, operations, chief economist, head of communications, HR, general counsel, and eventually, CEO and board chair as my replacement. GO GIRLS!!
These are spectacular women who made their ambitions clear: they wanted to rise. And not in the “nice story for the annual report” way. In the real way: the kind of leadership that keeps a place together, keeps colleagues in their seats and customers on the phone, when our business was hanging on by dental floss.
That era demanded change. We were reestablishing the success of our U.S. investment banking business while reducing risk, simplifying operations, and reducing costs. Compensation changed. Roles changed. People changed. But change creates opportunity: we call them battlefield promotions. A new cohort of leaders emerged; many of them women. These leaders had to hold together colleagues and customers in a period of severe disruption. Our new leaders needed to execute through ambiguity. And they DID.
What created this pipeline of ambitious and outstanding female leaders ready to step up? Our U.S. Women’s Network was pioneering in how it devoted its energy to the singular focus of professional advancement—bigger roles, bigger jobs, bigger paychecks, and a clear path to get it. They devised learning and development programs, targeted repeated exposure for their members to global senior management, spent quality time with senior decision-makers (these women were on the agenda for every VIP visitor into the states), and demanded the kind of senior sponsorship that doesn’t just “support women,” but actually moves women into seats of authority.
Here’s the part that still sticks with me.
These women were not merely high performers at work. Many were also running families, raising children, showing up as partners, friends, community leaders, volunteers, sports coaches—basically doing two full-time jobs and still managing to be effective, inspiring, kind, and recognized leaders. If you’re looking for the most capable humans in the room, you didn’t need a complicated search algorithm. Duh, it was
them.
And yet, more often than you’d expect, some of these women would confide—quietly, painfully, sometimes apologetically: “I can’t do this.” “Maybe this role is too big for me.” “Nobody’s going to listen to me.” “I’m going to let everyone down, just letting you know.”
Occasionally, they would skip all that and just go right to the diagnosis: “OK so I have imposter syndrome.”
If you’re reading this and nodding along, you’re not alone! A KPMG survey of executive women found that as many as 75% reported personally experiencing impostor syndrome at some point in their career. Destigmatizing imposter syndrome is an important step in escaping it.
The problem isn’t that you’re an impostor. It’s that you’ve mislabeled your internal signals. You are succeeding. These are mind games.
Good news: There’s a process to escape this. Coaching can help.
Imposter syndrome is insidious. Not only because it undermines great potential, but because it makes someone feel ashamed because they cannot see what is plainly true to everyone else: you are here for reasons obvious to everyone around you.
OK, so how do we coach imposter syndrome?
Coaching these special women requires important reframes and specific approaches:
Reframe #1: Having the most information is not what makes you succeed. The skills that make you succeed in life are the same skills making you succeed at work.
Impostor syndrome often causes talented leaders to reduce their self-evaluation and job performance to one narrow category—“subject matter expertise”—as if leadership is an exam you pass by memorizing enough facts.
WRONG.
Through that lens no one is ever successful because everyone always has room for growth and learning. Subject matter expertise matters. Of course it does. But at senior levels, what separates excellent leaders is rarely “who knows the most.” It’s who can see the big picture (EQ), decide, inspire, execute, influence, and recover—again and again—under pressure.
If you’re a senior leader, you didn’t arrive there because you absorbed a magical quantity of industry knowledge and know how.
You arrived there because you have a durable, transferable set of capabilities—what people call executive functioning:
- Your life requires you to be able to multitask effectively and to solve a multitude of
challenges and unexpected problems quickly, efficiently and calmly. - Under stress, you have learned to stay calm amidst the chaos, and to communicate a
path forward with clarity. - You prioritize your most important relationships and know exactly what it takes to
make the people around you successful. By necessity, if not nature, you are a
business and life coach day in and day out. - You understand the language of emotions, so you can understand and decipher them
at home and at work. Nevertheless, you can regulate your own as necessary
while maintaining authority, authenticity and vulnerability in your most important
relationships. - You find solutions without needing perfect conditions. You understand “good enough.”
- You create trust.
- You read people.
- You recover from setbacks without drama.
- You’re accountable.
- You deliver.
- You learn fast.
- You make other people better.
If you’re also managing a family, a household, a calendar that looks like a logistics operation, and human relationships that don’t follow quarterly forecasts—congratulations: you’re running a complex system with incomplete information, competing priorities, and emotional dynamics. This is not a “separate life.” This is leadership training.
Stop using “not knowing everything” as your definition of fraud.
In my career at NatWest I have sat though countless performance reviews and promotion decisions. Success… is what got you here. Its how you show up every day. It’s not one decision. It’s all of your decisions. It’s not one interaction. It’s all of your interactions. It’s the sum total of how everyone experiences you every day. It’s the feeling and thoughts that people have about their interactions with you when those interactions are finished. Success includes factors you think are important and others you may dismiss. Yes, you need to have expertise at something. But that’s the tip of the iceberg, and generally not the basis for a promotion or compensation decision. And
often the easiest to acquire.
Reframe #2: Stop beating yourself up. Only leaders who are massively invested in their own success and the success of their business develop imposter syndrome. You CARE!
Do not be ashamed. This is not a scarlet letter. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: impostor feelings are often correlated with exactly the traits we want in leaders—humility, high standards, self-awareness, and a relentless drive to keep improving.
In other words: when a talented woman tells me she has impostor syndrome, I don’t see a red flag. I see a green one.
- She’s not complacent.
- She understands the complexity of the job.
- She’s not numbed by her own success.
- She’s still learning.
- She’s still stretching.
- She cares and doesn’t want to let anyone down.
- She’s self-reflective and has high standards for herself.
- She has a growth mindset and realizes there’s always a gap between where she is and where she wants to be.
Senior leaders like to refer to “growth mindset.” Impostor syndrome is often the dark, inconvenient cousin of growth mindset: the part that shows up when you’re expanding faster than your confidence can keep up. YOU’RE GROWING!
Reframe #3: Executives will sooner promote the woman with impostor syndrome than the woman who thinks she’s got it all figured out.
You know who I’m talking about.
The person who always knows. Always tells. Always corrects. Always has the answer before the question finishes.
They are rarely as good as they believe. And even when they’re smart, they are exhausting. Ironically, sometimes it’s also insecurity that makes this type of colleague act this way. There’s just no room in their ego to be wrong. It can’t be processed and it can’t be integrated. And unfortunately, as a result, there’s no room for growth.
See behind the imposter syndrome to the humility and the learning mindset, eager to grow, learn and be better. This will always be far superior to someone who thinks they know it all.
Coaching exercises to defeat imposter syndrome:
- Let’s flex your muscles. Time for some strength training; that means we go back to basics. We need to reset your performance assessment of yourself. Not based on any whimsical or temporary emotions brought on by a bad day, but on your history. You’re giving yourself a D- or F, but is it warranted? Let’s do an audit…an experiential evaluation of who you are and what got you here. Likely your career path is not littered in failures. Probably the contrary. Unless you were dropped here by aliens with no traceable history, we can track your story and convince you on an evidentiary basis that you’re not a fraud or failure, you’re crushing it and it’s not due to magic. It’s due to your perseverance, hard work and the character that has supported you all along and the people in your life who believed in you. Have they all been wrong? Let’s convince you that you rock!
- Invite your champions into the room. Quite likely that you didn’t do this on your own. Perhaps you’ve been supported by your friends, your family, your loved ones, great managers, sponsors, mentors, influential people in your life then and now. What do they have to say? If they were speaking to you now, what would they say? Reach out to them or at least imagine the conversation. They will show you the way out of this fog.
When your coach isn’t around, audit your evidence. If you want proof you’re not an impostor, you already have it: Your track record.
Your promotions.
Your outcomes.
The people who follow you.
The difficult conversations you’ve handled.
The crises you’ve navigated.
The trust you’ve earned.
Your allies. Your sponsors. Your mentors.
You believe in them. And they believe in you. Give them some credit. You don’t get to “accidentally” reach top tiers of an organization. And if you did, you’d be the most impressive accident in corporate history.- Reframe the confession. Instead of “I have impostor syndrome,” try:
- “I’m stretching.”
- “This matters to me.”
- “I’m leveling up.”
- “I’m in a higher peer group—and I’m adapting.”
5. Use your vulnerability as leadership—not as self-erasure. The brave move isn’t pretending you’re invincible. The brave move is being real without collapsing your authority. The best cultures are built when leaders can say, “I don’t have every answer yet—and I’m absolutely capable of figuring it out.”
The closing truth:
You got this.
When the thought shows up—I’m going to be exposed—treat it like weather. It’s information about stress and stakes, not a verdict on your competence. You know who you are. Force yourself to recognize your achievements.
At Stevelman Group LLC, I love working with women leaders who are already exceptional—and still hungry to grow. You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be honest, resilient, coachable, and committed.
And if your first sentence is, “I think I have impostor syndrome,” I get it. Now let’s do the work.
