It’s not a syndrome and that matters more than you think

On imposter feelings, what we actually call them and why the language is doing more work than most people realise.

Hands up if you’ve sat in a room and felt that painful sense of not quite belonging, of it not being your place, your tribe or not being good enough. It might be a new role, a more senior meeting or just a conversation with someone who seems to know exactly what they’re talking about. Whatever the trigger, your inner critic tends to say roughly the same things:

One major review of more than sixty studies found prevalence estimates ranging as high as 82%, depending on the population studied and the way it was measured. However you read the figures, this is plainly not a niche psychological experience; it is something most of us meet at some point, in some situation.

And yet the phrase most commonly used to describe it, imposter syndrome, implies that something has gone wrong with the person having those feelings.

When coaching, we get people to reflect on that and push back on it, not because the feelings aren’t real but because the label shapes what we do next. And what most people do next, when they think they have a syndrome, is try to fix themselves. 

Where the word ‘syndrome’ came from

The concept was originally introduced in 1978 by clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. Their paper called it the ‘imposter phenomenon’ and was explicit that these were temporary internal feelings; not a clinical condition, not a character flaw, not something unusual. The word ‘syndrome’ crept in through the 1980s and 1990s as popular media and self-help books reached for something that sounded more definitive. It wasn’t a deliberate reframing, but it has stuck. And the problem is that in sticking, it changed something important from ‘this is a common human experience’ to ‘this is something you have.’

The American Psychiatric Association doesn’t recognise imposter syndrome as a clinical condition. It isn’t in the DSM, the international diagnostic manual used by clinicians worldwide.  Calling it a syndrome implies several things; that it is ‘a specific collection of signs and symptoms consistently occurring together, but the exact underlying cause or “root” of the condition is not fully understood’ and therefore requires diagnosis and treatment. And that in the case of imposter syndrome, that there are ‘consistent identifiable patterns of actions, emotions or social behaviours.’ Which, we believe, is not the most helpful reframing. What’s important to remember is that it is a phenomenon. Yes, you might experience it but it is not permanent and it is certainly not your identity. It may be unusual but it’s not necessarily fixed or fatal! 

When the feelings are a signal, not a flaw

Imposter feelings are rarely random and they can cluster around specific situations such as being the only person in the room who looks or sounds different from everyone else, joining a team where the unwritten rules are unfamiliar or operating in a culture that consistently rewards a particular style of confidence that doesn’t come naturally to you. In those situations, the feeling of not quite belonging isn’t a psychological malfunction, it’s a reasonable read of what’s actually happening in the environment.

Research into stereotype threat captures this clearly. When people are in spaces where a negative stereotype about their group exists, the pressure of potentially confirming that stereotype can produce exactly the kind of self-doubt we’ve been calling imposter syndrome. The problem, in those cases, isn’t inside the person, it’s in the conditions. Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey made the case compellingly in the Harvard Business Review. If we keep treating imposter feelings as an individual psychological problem to be overcome, we let the organisational conditions that generate those feelings entirely off the hook. 

That doesn’t mean the individual experience isn’t real or that it doesn’t need attending to. It means attending to it well requires being honest about where it’s actually coming from and shifts it from being the responsibility of the person with the feelings to being something an organisation or team needs to address.

What to call it instead and why it matters

A number of researchers now prefer the language of ‘imposter experience’ or ‘imposter feelings’, terms that acknowledge what’s happening without making it sound permanent or pathological. We’ve found this change in language genuinely useful in our work with leaders. 

There’s something practically significant about saying “I’m having an imposter experience” rather than “I have imposter syndrome.” The word syndrome implies something clinical and enduring but what Clance and Imes were actually describing was neither of those things. It was a temporary experience specific to certain situations that most people move through. When something has a clinical-sounding name, the instinct tends to be to manage it or overcome it, rather than ask what it might actually be telling you about the situation you’re in. 

We work a lot with Shirzad Chamine’s Positive Intelligence model, and he is very specific about how to name it. It’s your Judge or a pesky Saboteur. He counsels shifting from first person identification to third person observation. So instead of “I’m not good enough,” you say something like “There’s my Judge again, telling me I’m not good enough.”

The most effective strategy for weakening Saboteurs is to simply observe and label your Saboteur thoughts or feelings every time you notice them. The specific language is designed to create that crucial bit of distance, as if you’re the observer, not the voice.

So the formula is essentially: “My Judge is telling me [X]” rather than “I am [X].”

That shift from “I’m not good enough” to “My Judge is telling me I’m not good enough” is the whole point. Giving your Judge a name as a way of identifying your imposter thought, so that when it appears to hijack and “sabotage” you, you can strip it of its credibility. 

Imposter feelings are situational and most people don’t feel this way in every context. There are always settings where we feel more confident, more at home, more sure of our footing. Noticing which situations reliably trigger these feelings, and being genuinely curious about what that reveals, tends to be far more useful than deciding the feelings themselves are the problem. 

Reframing what the doubt is actually for

Another reframe we return to often involves the little three letter word ‘YET’.   Rather than “I don’t know what I’m doing and it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out”, trying “I don’t know what I’m doing YET and it’s only a matter of time before I figure it out." It changes the relationship to the uncertainty from something threatening to something temporary. Which is, usually, a more accurate description of what’s actually true. 

Self-doubt can also be a useful signal. It can nudge people to ask better questions, stay curious, remain genuinely open to learning rather than defending what they already know. Adam Grant’s concept of confident humility captures this well. Having real faith in your capacity to learn and adapt, while staying honest about the limits of what you currently know. It isn’t about performing confidently or suppressing doubt. It’s about holding both at once and finding that combination more useful than either extreme. 

The organisational question

For organisations, there is a more uncomfortable question underneath all of this. If imposter feelings are frequently a signal about environment rather than individual psychology, what does it say about a culture where those feelings appear to be widespread?

Organisations that address imposter feelings purely at the individual level, with confidence workshops, coaching to ‘overcome’ self-doubt, communications about resilience, often find that the same feelings resurface with the same people because the conditions haven’t changed. The work of creating cultures where people genuinely feel they belong, where difference is not just tolerated but valued, where the informal rules of credibility don’t systematically disadvantage certain groups: that work is harder, slower and less visible than a workshop but it’s the work that actually changes something. 

The language we use shapes what we see and what we decide to do about it. An imposter syndrome is something individuals need to recover from. An imposter experience is something we can explore, understand and respond to, individually and together. That feels like a more honest, and much more useful, place to start.

When you or someone around you notices imposter feelings, where does the first instinct tend to point? Toward fixing the person or examining what the situation might be telling you?

If this has prompted some thinking about your own experience, or about the culture your team is operating in, our Sticky Change Sense Check is a good place to begin. It is a short, free diagnostic for leaders navigating change, and you can find it at stickychange.com/sense-check

References

Various (2011–2023). Multiple studies on the prevalence of imposter experiences in working professionals. Cited in Tulshyan & Burey (2021); figure widely associated with research using the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale

Clance, P.R. & Imes, S.A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247

American Psychiatric Association (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.). APA Publishing

Steele, C.M. & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811

Tulshyan, R. & Burey, J-A. (2021). Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. Harvard Business Review, February 2021. Available at hbr.org

Grant, A. (2021). Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Viking

Chamine, S. (2012). Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours. Greenleaf Book Group Press