Lab Notes Blog

Intro: ready to rumble with imposter syndrome

Recently, one of my mentoring circles talked about the battle to belong in our workplaces.  The discussion was deep, vulnerable, and honest. We didn’t hold back about challenges like re-entering a technical field after a childcare-related career pause, being the “only” one of a particular identity, or struggling with confusing expectations of being a perfectly palatable self-promoter. We had diverse backgrounds but had all experienced structural limitations along with seemingly self-imposed* ones. *At least, that’s what we’d been told…

While this highly supportive discussion ended with constructive tips for everyone present, it also crystallized a long-running problem I’ve had with a common workplace diagnosis.

I’m ready to rumble with the self-imposed assumption of imposter syndrome. Let’s dive in. 🥊

When imposter syndrome isn’t a self-inflicted wound

My mentoring circle surfaced many common stories: overcoming the limiting habits we were raised with (as people born female, non-native to the US, etc.), navigating selective and mutually exclusive expectations at work, being disproportionately judged for appearing difficult or self-aggrandizing, just to broadly name a few. 

These experiences continue impacting how we feel and behave (more on this later!). Throughout my career people have been quick to reductively label this feeling and behavior change as imposter syndrome. I have a different take.

My mentoring circle’s members have very different experiences and careers, yet at that moment we were all still at a deficit for the actual types and amounts of practice that our more advantaged counterparts have had since their youth to actually say the things out loud without repercussion.

I’m talking about relatively recent history: even among my peers who were raised as American millennials and younger, the systemic and implicit practice and training (or correction and reprimand) of how we as young people were taught to speak about ourselves still exhibited demographic asymmetries. The situation might have been better than it was for Gen X and prior, but it's still a problem and obviously not limited to gender.

This problem is also, notably, not self-inflicted.

A benign personal example:

Several well-meaning yet misguided former mentors had previously labeled my "discomfort with singing my own praises" as imposter syndrome, despite being in a workplace where different standards were applied to who and how self-praise was sung. They advised me that: I was doing this to myself, I should just get over it and/or myself, I should fake it til I make it on performance reviews or job applications or whatever. No steps or tools for how to develop the new personality trait of “being comfortable" with self-promotion in a biased context. 😒

What my mentoring circle peers and I had in common is that we’re not the sources of our imposter problems. The problem is not about missing traits or attributes for confidence, etc.

The problem is we are given advice that expects us to believe in and behave in ways that completely ignore our lived contexts. We had internalized experiences of external othering and altered our behaviors accordingly -- which makes total sense from a biological perspective. Add in sneakily pervasive cultural marketing and the very real consequences for deviating from it that we were subjected to growing up as we did, and it becomes nearly inevitable. Marketing and consequences that still show up today, let's be real.

I’m curious how many of us “diagnosed” with imposter syndrome are living with serious, long-lasting effects from hidden harms. Consider this stark example: the risk of sexual assault while in public (especially public transit, often necessary to get to and from work) causes women to “adjust their [mobility] behavior and their travel patterns to accommodate this fear” according to studies from Finland, Sweden, the US, the UK, Canada, and Taiwan; this doesn’t even count the invisible and underreported threatening sexual behaviors women experience in public daily, all of which is exacerbated by a pervasive gender data gap (Criado Perez, 2021). 

We absolutely did not do this to ourselves. As someone who has experienced threatening behavior and harassment in public—and in multiple workplaces!—I did not do this to myself. Calling my resulting mental model “imposter syndrome” is hilariously, depressingly wrong. I know I’m not alone.

For the record, I am on board with the idea that one form of self-limitation can be driven by internally motivated fear about not belonging in a situation or group which has otherwise been neutral or made no attempts to prove our fear right. I'm fine with calling that imposter syndrome.

However, the completely reasonable experience-driven conclusion that “I don't belong” or “I'm not welcome to be myself” after experiencing systematic exclusion, othering, or discouragement from practicing assertive behaviors, is NOT the same thing as imposter syndrome.

It's a skills and training gap since childhood. And we can do something about it today.

The quality of advice matters

Anyone who receives counter-imposter advice deserves consideration for the complex context of their lived experiences, and anyone who gives counter-imposter advice deserves the same AND has a responsibility to level up their communication skills. 

I want to briefly address some arguments I've received that "well, it was your choice to react to your circumstances by developing an inner imposter, and you could've just chosen differently." (Real words from technical leaders with positional power.) 

Choice is a privilege that doesn't exist everywhere equally all the time. The adaptations we develop because of contact with challenging forces are physiological and psychological self-protection that our fabulous brains aren't always consciously aware of. For example, the research on professional athletes who have trained under shame-based coaches shows how these players go on to perform less well, commit more technical fouls, and struggle to connect in healthy functional ways with teammates long after that bad coach has left their life (Brown & Grant, 2026, and Carleton et al, 2016). Given the extraordinary pay and prestige tied to high performance, it’s very unlikely those players actively choose to be negatively affected.

For the last several years I’ve sought ways to constructively transform interactions between people giving advice about imposter syndrome (advisors) and people on the receiving end of that advice (advisees).

It’s not always easy to spot advisors who are ignorant of such considerations. Ignorant advice is already bad enough; I’m not discussing malignant advice in this post. Some of the worst well-intentioned imposter syndrome advice I've received falls into these general categories:

❌ Advice that ignores context. This often shows up as ignoring identity or cultural details shaping the invisible forces acting on the advisee, and thus results in different outcomes if the advice is acted on by someone like the advisor vs the advisee.

❌ Advice that comes without any practical support in that ignored context. 

❌ Advice that asks the advisee to be boldly delusional (especially in situations with an unacknowledged threat), or that suggests the advisee's instincts are wrong without first-hand knowledge of root causes in context. Undermining the advisee’s trust in their own perceptions is problematic, to say the least.

We can do better. Feeling like an imposter is not a self-imposed flaw. Those feelings are often a signal that we have been operating in spaces where change is needed for more people to thrive together.

Better alternatives include: 

✅ Advice that acknowledges context, regardless of whether the advisor can accurately perceive the forces acting on the advisee (humility and willingness to learn are key). 

✅ Advice that affirms the advisee's instincts and motivations.

✅ Advice that invites co-ideation and solution co-creation.

✅ Advice that offers practical, intentional support for next steps when the advisee is ready. 

So let’s explore a more empowering framing for imposter-coded advice that takes a cue from the better options above and shifts the problem focus.

When “imposter” is a phantom menace

The skills gap that is often misleadingly labeled “imposter syndrome” was made possible through both intentional and unintentional acts by the people around us all our lives, and it started early. Therefore, advice suggesting that I am the source of, or outright blaming me for being the source of, my so-called imposter problem is a form of gaslighting. 

Good advisors don’t want to gaslight advisees. Good advisees don’t want to be gaslit by advisors (or themselves). Healthy functional human interaction involves zero gaslighting.

Instead of wasting time giving bad advice based on bad assumptions, we can address the mutual skills gap together. This is why I propose a new term for the shared problem: the Gaslight Ghost.

BUST: a framework for improving imposter-related advice

When I hear someone admit to struggling with imposter syndrome, I start by slowing things down. I ask questions, name what I'm perceiving, and validate what they've experienced across their life and the reasonable conclusions they drew to navigate a world forcing them to live smaller. Just that little bit of acknowledgement starts to tame the internal (often subconscious) shame spiral enough to better engage with creative problem solving, i.e. the real steps we can identify to start practicing small moments of self-promotion or assertion. Remember: shame "impairs performance" and "drives concealment" (Brown & Grant, 2026).

Realistically no single act will undo the histories we experienced. We might not even be able to close society’s systemic skills gaps in our lifetime. I'm not about to quit though.

I’m interested in practical solutions that anyone can use to get better at closing the Gaslight Ghost’s skills gap. That’s why I created the BUST framework based on practices that have helped me as both advisor and advisee.

Applying BUST to a real example

In this real example from my early career, I played the role of unwitting advisee during a performance review discussion with my manager. For context, we were both women on an engineering team.

Original conversation

Manager: “Sharon, you’ve done really well this year. I do have one piece of feedback you should consider.”

Me: “Great, I want to improve.”

Manager: “You need to be less of a people pleaser. I understand it’s probably because you feel some imposter syndrome.”

Me: “Umm...wow, ok. What do you mean?” *totally confused because project leads on this team were awarded budget based on how popular they were with the client and I'd won budget twice that year*

Manager: “You just need to get comfortable with the idea that not everyone is going to like you.”

Me: “Right…I’ll have to think about this.”

Manager: “Ok, that’s all for now. Keep up the good work, see you tomorrow.” *ushers me out of her office*

At that time, I didn’t have the skill to steer the conversation into a more practical and helpful direction. My manager’s feedback was about my supposed character attributes, not about observed behaviors contributing to a problem that was never articulated. 🥅Humans: 0, Gaslight Ghost: 1.

If I could have a do-over, here is one way I would apply the BUST framework.

✨Revised conversation with BUST✨

Manager: (...) “You just need to get comfortable with the idea that not everyone is going to like you.”

Me: [Brake first] “Hmm, could we slow this down for a moment? I do appreciate your concerns and have some questions. Could we explore the problem in more detail first?” 

Manager: “Sure, what’s your question?”

Me: [More context setting and Upskill check] “Could you say more about what problem I'm causing on the team, and what I'm saying or doing specifically? It seems important to get along with the other project leads as well as with the client given how budget is awarded. Was there an issue with how I earned funding for the last two quarters?”

Manager: “Oh… well, you haven’t done anything wrong per se. Nobody’s complained, in fact both the leadership team and the client praised you. But I’m concerned that your willingness to ‘get along’ might set you back... I don't want you to fall into the same traps I did.”

Me: [Upskill and Support checks] “Ok, if I heard you correctly, it sounds like there isn’t a problem yet, and that you want me to keep succeeding here. Right?”  *manager nods* “If you're worried my collaboration style won't help me be an effective leader, I need more details. And maybe some upskilling? What do you recommend?”

Manager: “Yeah that's a good way to put it... maybe we should get you a mentor. Let me pull some options.”

Me: [Test together] “Thank you. Could I get 20 minutes with you next week to build an action plan? I definitely want your support to improve my leadership and consensus building skills.”

Manager: “Glad to help and I appreciate how you’ve framed things! Let me pull up my calendar…”

Yes, I took some liberties in this imaginary revision of the original conversation. Even if my manager was originally well-intentioned and wanted to protect me from squirrely behind-the-scenes dynamics among the project leads, her original imposter-coded advice was ineffective and undercutting. We needed BUST to help us arrive at shared understanding and concrete, measurable skills I could build with her support. She might've even improved her feedback skills.
🥅Humans: 1, Gaslight Ghost: 0.

It's legit ridiculous to continue gaslighting advisees from increasingly global, multi-identity workplaces into assuming the blame for a systemic skills gap and then expecting they can act on context-insensitive advice in isolation to defeat it. It’s also unreasonable to expect advisors trained by workplace “individual contributor” incentives to suddenly manifest the situational leadership and emotional intelligence skills to recognize intersectional context and advise accordingly. Collectively, it's lazy. It's damaging. It does not drive the high performance we need from teams of respected, included, and empowered individuals.

It’s time we combined forces to BUST the Gaslight Ghost and close the skills gap behind imposter syndrome.

A call to action and puns nobody asked for

Here are a few more things that have also helped in my experience. 

Embed regular practice with people you trust: maybe it’s in weekly team meetings, lunch time chats, coffee chats, hangouts with friends, one-on-ones with a favorite mentor, etc. Asking for help is a sign of evolved leadership!

Embed regular practice into your daily routine: rehearse to yourself while brewing your morning drink, walking the dog, before bedtime, etc. Building up muscle memory in ways that fit your life will pay dividends.

Attune to your context: Be mindful and intentional about how to practice in your daily work with your specific colleagues within your local norms. 

The Gaslight Ghost is neither the result of one person’s solo cause nor any sole cause. It won't be busted by working solo, but rather by collaboratively working souls invested in common goals. Was that enough homophones? 👻🤓

Wait wait, one more pun: 

Getting our Gaslight Ghost-BUSTing exorcise reps in helps us pivot from blame & shame to name & tame. (Not sorry!🏋️)

Join forces with other ghostbusters and start your practice today.

References

1. Criado Perez, C. (2021). Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (pp. 52-55). Abrams Press.
2. Brown, B. and Grant, A. (Hosts). (2026 Jun 04). “Why Toughness and Kindness Need Each Other” [Audio podcast episode, timestamp 51:07] in The Curiosity Shop. Vox Media. https://thecuriosityshop.com/podcast/why-toughness-and-kindness-need-each-other/
3. Carleton, E. et al. (2016). Scarred for the Rest of My Career? Career-Long Effects of Abusive Leadership on Professional Athlete Aggression and Task Performance. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. 38. 1-41. 10.1123/jsep.2015-0333. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308202797_Scarred_for_the_Rest_of_My_Career_Career-Long_Effects_of_Abusive_Leadership_on_Professional_Athlete_Aggression_and_Task_Performance
4. Brown, B. (2019). “Which Book Do I Read First?” brenebrown.com. https://brenebrown.com/articles/2019/04/26/book-read-first/