I know who you are, but who am I?

What if imposter syndrome is one of the biggest roadblocks to empathy?  

I was working with a CEO recently who is a self-made success story.  She’d risen through the ranks over the years, starting in housekeeping and gradually moving up through a small organization to the top level position.  Grit, determination, and long hours were her path, and she did it well.  On the outside.

On the inside, she felt she was missing something.  She didn’t have the education some others had.  Her teacher had been the school of hard knocks.  She’d never seen leadership done in any way than how her mentors had done it, so she was deeply indoctrinated in “this is just how we do it, and it’s good enough for us”.  Because of these insecurities, she always felt a little paranoid and defensive, like there was always someone nipping at her heels, always someone laughing behind their hand.  In truth, no one was – because they were scared of her.  Her paranoia was well known to everyone except maybe her. She had no idea.

She definitely cared about her people, but in truth, she didn’t have much empathy for others – because her insecurity made it so she didn’t have any for herself.  Her self-judgement consumer her. No one could drive themselves farther and harder than she could, but she couldn’t see the people side of the coin, and her employees were leaving in droves.  

She was confused.

She felt isolated.

On the inside, she blamed herself.

But on the outside, you’d better not even give an inkling that you weren’t behind her 1000%, because woe to the person who she perceived as putting a single toe out of line.

The hard thing is that this didn’t just affect her people, but it also drained her.  She could have focused all of the energy spent in self-doubt on her work and her people, but she was so bound by imposter syndrome that she couldn’t give herself that freedom.  And it’s not just this CEO.

We’ve started working on some self-empathy here, and I’ll admit, it’s a tricky one, but it’s the only place to begin.  She’ll never have empathy for others if she can’t have it for herself first.  There are years of ingrained patterns, or self-loathing, and of breached trust between her and her people.  But I’ll give her credit – she can see the writing on the wall, and knows that, somehow, the change needs to start with her.  

She understood that if she didn’t gain self-awareness in how her actions were affecting her people, she wasn’t going to have that position much longer.  A leader without employees is unemployed.  

The most overlooked leadership skill is self-empathy.  Without it, a leader doesn’t stand a chance of ever showing it to anyone else. Something to consider.