When I was a young thing I met a not-so-young man who seemed to think I was incredible at my then job.
This was news to me. In that particular role I felt like I was only moments away from drowning. Thrown in the deep end I was desperately clinging to the side of the pool — just hoping I wouldn’t actually need anyone to jump in and rescue me.
I felt I’d been given far too much responsibility at far too young an age. I hadn’t done three quarters of the things that were required of me in the role before. Every day I was learning something new, trying to figure out the ‘right’ call from the ‘wrong’ call and wondering how anyone could believe I’d be able to make decisions regarding actual clients and actual sums of money without consulting anyone else first. Sure, I had a somewhat relevant university degree. But being able to examine the strategic direction of a major company’s senior management team in an essay didn’t seem all that relevant to the day-to-day tasks of my first management role.
The man, who seemed to think I was the best thing since sliced bread, continually reiterated what a great job I was doing. I thought he was just doing it to be nice, merely to let me down gently once he finally figured me out. Turns out that while he did want to help build my confidence, he genuinely believed I was more than capable of making the decisions I was being asked to make, without sign-off or assurances from others.
One day, about eight months into the role, I opened up to this particular manager about why he had so much faith in my abilities. “I’ve never done this before,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to sign-off on this.”
And he replied: “Well, I can’t help you there. I’ve never done that particular task myself either.”
Following that, he gave me a long list of individuals in our business, and in the world, who do tasks every day that they’ve never done before. He ended it by moving on to the president of the United States. “When he was elected, he started in a new position, just like you,” he said. “He arrived at his first day at work thinking the same things as you – looking around, wondering if anyone would notice that he didn’t actually have any experience in the decisions he was being asked to make. Now do you think that stopped him? Do you think he went and deferred to the previous president?”
Sure, this being President George Bush at the time, we did laugh that he may have simply called his father.
But the point was that even the most high profile of people in the most significant or roles are doing things for the first time. They don’t bring experience or even qualifications to such positions, they simply bring themselves.
As I walked out, this manager offered me one final tip: “Everyone’s faking it Meredith,” he said. “Just some are better at faking it than others.”
And it’s a line I’ve lived with ever since. Whenever I suffer from ‘imposter syndrome’ or the idea that someone’s going to figure me out for being the inexperienced and underqualified person a part of me believes that I am, I simply take a look at everyone else. There are no perfect fits. No perfect qualifications. And there is no perfect amount of experience before you can take on particular leadership, management and decision-making roles.
The best thing you can bring to a role is your judgement — and it’d be a pretty boring and ineffective place if that was something you merely learnt at university instead of figuring out for yourself.