Have you ever looked at your own achievements and thought, "I don't deserve to be here"? You're considered successful, respected, and doing genuinely good work, yet something in you keeps insisting you're not enough. If that sounds familiar, you know imposter syndrome from the inside.

the success paradox

Here's the thing about growth: the better you get, the more you might doubt yourself. As your knowledge expands, so does your awareness of how much there still is to learn.

It's a bit like learning to ride a bike. When you first start, the goal is simple: stay upright, keep pedaling. You learn, you struggle, you fall, and one day it becomes second nature.

Once you've mastered the basics, maybe you join a cycling club, or take up racing. Suddenly you're not comparing yourself to casual riders anymore, you're studying pros, their technique, their training. That's usually where imposter syndrome kicks in. You've become aware of what excellence actually looks like, and the gap between where you are and where you could be suddenly feels enormous.

In leadership, this gets even more complicated. Cycling has a clear finish line and a measurable technique. Leadership rarely does. Each situation is different, each decision carries weight, and the learning never stops.

the benefits of imposter syndrome

Imposter syndrome isn't fun. It keeps you up at night, makes you work harder than necessary, has you constantly scanning the room for approval. But it also keeps you sharp, hungry to learn, and tuned in to what others need.

The doubt itself isn't really the problem. What you do with it is. A cyclist who spots a stronger rider ahead can treat that as inspiration or as a reason to be hard on themself. 

Additionally, someone who's getting crazy results but doesn't really know 'why' because it all went so easy, isn't doing a bad job. They are actually exactly at the right spot. However, some people get really uncomfortable when success goes easy since it's not in line with the 'work hard' mentality they're taught. So they internally conclude something must be wrong with them.

chasing validation

Work harder, achieve more, wait for recognition, repeat. It won't work. External validation behaves like a hungry ghost. The more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.

Think about your last real achievement. Did the praise actually make you feel secure? Or did it just raise the bar for next time?

At some point, external validation stops being enough. That's an invitation for you to start looking inward, to understand what it takes to start validating yourself. 

notice the pattern

So how do you make this shift? Start by asking yourself:

• When do I seek validation?
• What stories do I tell yourself about my worth?
• Am I working for growth or for approval?

The goal isn't to stop doubting yourself completely. It's to trust yourself enough to keep going anyway, the way a Sunday cyclist can look at a pro rider and feel motivated instead of small.

You'll know you're getting there when work starts giving you energy instead of draining it. You'll still push yourself hard, but differently. You're in beast mode because you want to grow, not because you need to prove something. You look at the experts in your field as inspiration, not as evidence you don't belong.

what now?

You can't skip the awkward learning phase. You can only choose whether to judge yourself through it, or move through it anyway.

As Isabeau Van den Bogaert, People Business Partner at Loop Earplugs, puts it in our conversation on How to Boost Top Talent in a Scale-up Environment: "The only way to excellence is through mediocrity."

Next time that familiar doubt shows up, ask yourself one question: am I stretching for someone else's approval, or my own growth? The answer usually tells you which path you're on.

how I work with this in coaching

Imposter syndrome is one of the patterns I see most often in high-achieving clients. This is the 5-step activation journey I go through with them, resulting in a better sense of knowing your worth and acting from it.

You're not an imposter. You're a human being on a growth journey, and the very things that make you doubt yourself, your self-awareness, your drive, your ability to spot what could be better, are often exactly what makes you good at what you do.