You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs, where we give you practical insights into jobs and careers. Today, we're going to talk about how to deal with imposter syndrome. Now, if you're not familiar with what that is, it's defined as feeling incompetent or unqualified, even though there's evidence to the contrary, right?

And so for me, that happened at LinkedIn, where prior to LinkedIn, I had to experience all facets of web marketing, whether it's on the strategy side, user experience, design, testing, development, I had enough under my belt to allow me to succeed at all the previous companies. The difference at LinkedIn was I joined a group that was essentially a startup.

Now it's LinkedIn Learning. Everyone knows what LinkedIn Learning is, it's part of the Talent Solutions portfolio. When I joined LinkedIn, they had just acquired lynda.com. And so there was a need to A, transition to brand, and B, build a new enterprise experience. And the challenge there was you have a very strong entity in lynda.com, you're building a new brand from the ground up, and there's things like SEO to take into consideration, and there's like your website, but there's also the product.

So all of them are competing, right, for SEO visibility. There's also building the web experience from ground up. So when it came to building web experience and SEO, like that was no problem at all. Where I ran into an issue was about seven or eight months into my job, I had launched everything.

And now LinkedIn, as you guys all know, probably, or not surprisingly, it's a very, very data driven company, which is fantastic. It's probably one of the best companies I've worked for where the data is so robust. The data hygiene is pretty valid, like you can trust it to make decisions.

So the expectation of insight was really, really high. Prior to joining LinkedIn, I've always leveraged data and gotten insight out of the data. What I had not done up to that point was pull the data, right? So you're talking about pulling data out of Google Analytics, pulling data out of Tableau, looking into SFDC.

I had experience with Google Analytics, very little exposure to SFDC and Tableau. And so my fear was always that if I'm pulling the data incorrectly, then all of my conclusions will be off mark. Or I'll be pulling the data set in a way that other people are not. And it'll be very, very clear that I'm looking at a different data set, right?

And there are a few meetings where I was exposed, where I would present a slide. And like everyone's smart enough where they could say, "Hey, look, that slide doesn't jive with something I saw 10 slides ago." Or "Yesterday I saw a slide from a PMM and they're using something totally different.

Like what's going on?" And so I was always feeling like I was behind the ball. And it came to a point, it was about the one year mark, where my manager, he pulled me aside and he was like, "Look, man, we hired you because you're supposed to know everything.

And your ability to deliver analytics and dashboards is just not up to par." And that hurt me so deeply because I thought I was actually making positive progress on my dashboards. And what I realized was I was just delivering what he was asking for, sometimes correctly, sometimes not. What I was not doing was bringing anything additional to the table.

And so I felt like I wasn't providing value. So I really questioned the value of my employment at that time. And remember, this is a company where when I came in and interviewed for the job, the senior director interviewed me as well. And the questions that they asked were so in the weeds and specific, they clearly understood my role.

And so essentially, I was surrounded by people who I looked to my left, looked to my right. I basically came to the conclusion that everyone could do my job. And I wasn't sure why I was there. And so I entered a period of depression. And that was the first time in my career that I felt this way.

And it wasn't until a change of managers where it totally flipped around, where he came in and I decided to kind of, like in a previous episode, we talked about kind of getting to our know our limits when you're feeling in over your head. I kind of drew on that where I came to him, I said, "Hey, look, let me tell you what I think I'm doing good with my job.

And being my new manager, let me tell you why I'm struggling a little bit. Here's what I'm trying to do. And here's the output I've been creating. And here's where I think I'm doing it wrong. And here's why I think I'm doing things not so well." I could really use some advisement.

For him, it was also his first time running a digital organization. So he was doing PMM before, now he's in web. And so now the situation is a different, we're kind of self-discovering it. He sent me to a lot of resources because I was very articulate about my shortcomings.

And then got proactive. I was like, "Hey, I was like, you know what, you know, for my OKRs or objectives and key results of which my performance is measured by, I want to add some things on there that are skills-based because I want to be held accountable to this.

And I also want you to know I'm serious about overcoming these shortcomings." And so part of it was like presentation, pace of speech, slide design, and then analytics. So those are all things I ended up putting on my OKRs. And that was the way that I was able to kind of break through that.

And he said something to me that really broke me out of my imposter syndrome mindset. And he literally sat down to me and he said, "Look, Tim, you were hired because you knew what you could like, wait, sorry, you were hired because you knew how to do the job.

The only person who's telling you that you can't do your job is you. So get out of your head, pull yourself together and just be you and do you." And so that was just so, I needed to hear that. And so every time now when I talk to someone and they're struggling with them, I usually throw that piece of feedback first because they just, you know, like, "You're hired because you know how to do your job.

Don't set yourself short." That was my first, like, that was my example. It sounds, you know, the thing I take away from your example is how our professional lives can, we can, I think the sense is that they're somehow dispassionate that we apply objectively our skills. We objectively apply our skills and experience to solve problems in a rational and reasonable way that were logical, you know, that the plans are logical and proceed in a logical fashion.

But in fact, so much of this is underpinned by emotions. And so when things go awry, why wouldn't we take it personal? And I think that's okay because that's a reminder, if we have ever forgotten that, that emotions are really at the heart of so much of who we are as people.

And yeah, it just really struck me how, you know, clearly you have a lot of experience, Tim, and you've achieved a lot of success in your career. And yet you had this experience that hurt you deeply, as you said, pain, it was painful. It was mostly painful. I can imagine, you know, you sought out, you know, various ways to kind of both find answers, but also find consolation for that.

And I think it's just something for folks out there that feel like they need to be perfect, that, you know, perfection is really impossible. It's sort of a non sequitur when it comes to just people in our careers anyway. Do you want to share your imposter experience, Troy? Yeah.

Well, I mean, just thinking about it a little more, I mean, honestly, it's every day, right? And what I have been doing almost exclusively for the last five years is ghostwriting. And that means basically pretending to be somebody on some level, right? And, you know, that process is always a little bit uncomfortable, but it's especially uncomfortable at first.

You know, over time, if I have a long-term client, that's always the best because I get to know them and I can really start to sort of hear their voice in my head, right? But the first time can always be a little bit daunting, painful, nerve-wracking. Like, can I really pretend to be this person?

The best example, maybe the most overwhelming example was this article that I wrote that ended up getting placed in the Financial Times, which I'm really proud of, but it was writing for a really well-known British philanthropist who had started an institute that focused on digital access back in the early 2000s, but I wasn't working with her directly.

So I was working with a VC that sat on the board of that foundation with this person. And so she was basically my point of contact for ghostwriting for somebody else. So it was like the old game of phone, right, where you pass the phone and it's, you know, two generations later, the story is totally, totally different.

And anyway, so it was a really uncomfortable process, but I had to keep reminding myself that even though I'd never met this woman, I was writing for a different dialect of English, in British English, I knew a lot about the evolution of technology from the period of this institute because I'd been working in technology ever since then and certainly was aware of the rise of social media and the big challenges of misinformation, disinformation and some of the things that we wanted to cover in the piece.

And so, and I had to let go of the like, you know, the tone of this might not be perfect, but I know how to put, I know how to string together a story. And so that's what I did. And I submitted the draft and to my VC contact that was here, and it eventually worked its way to the philanthropist and, you know, the feedback I got was, was really positive, still never had any direct interaction with her.

They did change a little bit of the, you know, the California English, if you will, to British English, but the core of the story, the thread was there, and I'm pretty proud of how that worked. I guess that, you know, the takeaway is, again, it's easy to feel overwhelmed, it's easy to feel like an imposter, it's a very emotional and natural response to being uncomfortable in certain situations.

But again, I was hired for a reason, for my experience and my abilities, and I had to let go of the idea that I was actually going to be this person that I'd never met, right, and just do the best that I could with the tools that I had.

My experience, just if I could jump in, is maybe more of a view of my experience over many jobs, as opposed to like one job where, Troy, you felt perhaps that you weren't sure how you were going to show up for it, and then you overcame that. I had an experience a few years ago where Snapchat wanted to hire a content strategist, and in their kind of world, content strategist is sort of like a creative director, copywriter person who comes up with campaigns and concepts and manages teams of writers and designers and producers to create the assets, and so whatever they might be, digital ads, email campaigns.

So I was recruited at one point, and the rate was too low for me, so I turned it down. And then they came back to me maybe six months or nine months later, and they said, you know, the hiring manager loves your experience, you had all this experience at Google, they want you.

So I asked for like twice as much money, and they agreed. And so I was given a contract, I wasn't hired full time, I came in through an agency, but essentially it was like a six-month contract. And I started contributing, and feedback was great, you know, check-ins with my manager, and they were always positive, they were happy with my performance.

They brought in a new manager at like a level below the VP or the director, I forget what the title was. And this person was great, I think they had great instincts and experience, and all the people at the management level had come in from Facebook, Facebook had like laid off many, many people in the content group, and they all kind of, and this team had been staffed, many of them at the managerial level by ex-Facebook folks, so they all had a certain, like, approach to management, which was consistent positivity, but I always felt like I wasn't really getting the full story.

It was sort of always framed, but never really honest in a way, I don't want to necessarily put that out there, but my sense was there were things that were framed in a way that were not necessarily the full picture, and that proved to be true in that over the course of a few months, you know, my contribution, I felt, was still at the same level, I was running campaigns and, you know, sort of a lead with a number of contributors that were working with me on specific projects, and I remember I had a meeting with my manager, this new person, on maybe a Thursday, and checked in on my performance toward specific goals and things like that, and she's like, you're doing great, you're doing a great job, keep doing what you're doing, and the very next day I got fired.

And I was devastated, and it wasn't as if I had never been fired before because of the creative things happen, business climate changes, it's the subjective, your work and the reception of your work is often based on subjectivity and bias and all sorts of things, so I really never know, and I don't to this day know why in fact I was fired, and I had talked to other people in the group that had stayed on and they didn't know either, the fact is I won't ever know unless this person reaches out to me, which I doubt they will, because I tried to connect with them on LinkedIn and they never accepted it.

So whatever the case may be in terms of the managerial approach, right or wrong, they did what they had to do, but I was left with this feeling like despite all my, at that point I had been in the business for more than two decades, I had lots of wins, lots of achievements, lots of successes, won awards, things like that, started a business, an agency, and yet for some reason it didn't work out, and it made me feel like a fraud, it made me feel like I didn't know what I was doing, even though I had all this success that maybe it was all a lie, maybe it was all just somehow manufactured but it wasn't real, and you know I've come to realize that that's part of my perfectionism and my need for everyone to like me, and in business that is a really hard, you're going to be disappointed if you go into a job with the expectation that you're always going to do everything right and everyone's going to like you, let alone love you, it's just never going to happen, some people will love you, a few, a few maybe if you're lucky will really love you and love what you do and you'll stay in relationship with them over many jobs, or you know you two are great examples in terms of my career when we started working together, I know I was at Logitech from 2006 to 2012, and you know I met both of you there in that time period and we're still talking, so it does happen, I just think the imposter syndrome, if it is a syndrome I guess that's more of a clinical term, but I don't always have these persistent feelings of self-doubt like I'm going to be exposed as a fraud, they come and go, I have experiences where they're more poignant than others, there's probably you know good reasons why I wasn't meeting whatever objectives they had, maybe I was too expensive, who knows, but you know the thing is, is they become part of your story, and I think they become part of your story of resilience, and whether it's imposter syndrome or feeling like you're in over your head or fear of failure, these things help demonstrate how you can walk through the fire and come out you know a little bit burned, but a little bit more experienced in the process.

Yeah you know I really appreciate you guys as examples, because actually this topic of how you deal with either failure or feeling of inadequacy or with this imposter syndromes, I always use these stories actually to break the ice with people, to build relationships, and I always bring it up during job interviews, why?

Because it makes you human, makes you relatable, and there's acknowledgement of growth in going through this process of building your own story, right? And so for anyone who's dealing with this, just remember like you were hired because you are capable, now circumstances may make you feel like you're struggling, or your emotions might be tied to the circumstance, but always come back to your core self knowing that you've got what it takes.

In all the feedback you received, search out for the truth nuggets, and then ignore the packaging of everything else, right? And then figure out what those core truths are, and use that as a starting point, right? Because there's always going to be some truth to harsh feedback, and some of it not.

But know that you have value, and don't ever let a circumstance dictate your sense of value or self-worth. Don't be so tied into this immediate outcome such that your perception of yourself is impacted. Hey guys, thanks again for watching and listening. Next week, we'll be talking about how to deal with failure.

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