Imposter Syndrome: The Unspoken Presence in Leadership with Mary Herbert and Dr. Giselle Flores Martin
One of the women Dr. Giselle Flores Martin interviewed for her doctoral research had founded a company that grew to more than $22 million a year. She'd been featured in Forbes and had won several awards. She still didn't consider herself successful. It's the kind of thing people keep to themselves. "We're really good at hiding it," Giselle says.
If someone with that record can't see it, some of the people on your team probably can't see theirs either, and you likely don't know which ones. They might be the ones who turn down the stretch assignment, or the ones still working late on something that was good enough a week ago. Mary Herbert has seen both patterns many times, and she thinks they split along lines most leaders never notice.
Giselle and Mary brought this conversation to a packed room at WACUBO this spring, and people wanted more. Here they pick it up again, with Giselle drawing on her research into women in senior leadership and Mary on her work coaching leaders at every level through uncertainty and growth. They keep coming back to a question worth bringing into your next one-on-one: what would it take for the people on your team to see what you already see in them?
Links & Notes
Mary Herbert — Principal Leadership Consultant and Coach, Teibel Education Consulting
Dr. Giselle Flores Martin on LinkedIn
Women in Senior Leadership Roles: Career Mobility, Challenges, Success Stories and Need for Future Research— Giselle Flores Martin, Ed.D., University of San Francisco, 2022
The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention — Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, 1978
