How to Stop Feeling Like a Fraud at Work: 5 Steps Out

Why competent people are the ones who feel like frauds

Impostor syndrome doesn’t go after the bluffers. It goes after the capable people. The more real skill you have, the more likely you are to believe you haven’t earned your success.

Sounds backwards. There’s a logic to it, though. You got the promotion. You delivered the project and got the praise. And still that voice is there: “If they knew how little I actually know.” It’s a very stubborn kind of self-doubt, and three mechanisms keep it going.

What does imposter syndrome feel like? Success was luck, mistakes were you

People with impostor feelings put their successes down to circumstances and their failures down to themselves. The presentation went well? “The questions were easy.” The deal fell through? “I failed.”

Psychologists call this lopsided bookkeeping an attribution pattern. Every success goes into the account marked “luck, chance, good timing”. Every mistake goes into the account marked “me”. No wonder nothing builds up inside, even with a strong track record. The sense of not being good enough stays, whatever you achieve.

The better you get, the bigger the gap looks

The second trap: the more you know, the more you see what you don’t know. Beginners tend to overrate themselves. Experts underrate themselves, because their standards grow with them.

Then there’s an unfair comparison. You set your inner life against other people’s outer image. Your doubts, your detours and your 2 a.m. thoughts against your colleagues’ polished results. That’s a comparison you can only lose. Why constant comparison shrinks you in general is a topic of its own. With impostor syndrome it pours fuel on the fire.

The fear of being found out, and the silence around it

At the core of impostor syndrome is the fear of being exposed. Not “I made a mistake”, but “I am a mistake, and soon everyone will notice”.

Because admitting it feels like a confession, hardly anyone talks about it. Everyone treats their own impostor feeling as a private secret and assumes everyone else is genuinely competent. The silence feeds the pattern. Your inner critic never hears anyone disagree.

What the research shows

Researchers have been documenting the impostor phenomenon for almost 50 years, and it’s far more common than the people who have it tend to think. Three findings are worth knowing.

It started with Clance and Imes (1978). The two psychologists described the pattern in women with outstanding careers: “Despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the impostor phenomenon persist in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.” Today we know it affects all genders.

How many people? The systematic review by Bravata and colleagues (2020) looked at 62 studies with more than 14,000 participants. Depending on the group and how it was measured, 9 to 82 percent reported impostor feelings, across professions and career levels. That included people with a proven record of success, and the feelings often came with anxiety and depression. So is imposter syndrome normal? It’s certainly common. You’re far from alone. It just feels that way.

And it has a cost. Neureiter and Traut-Mattausch (2016) showed that impostor feelings act like a brake on your career. People affected plan their careers less actively and are less motivated to take on leadership. The feeling gets a vote in your choices. You can read about the research behind our hypnosis work on our science page.

How to stop feeling like a fraud at work: step by step

You weaken impostor syndrome step by step. Name the pattern, re-book your successes and act while you still have doubts. Five steps, in this order.

1. Name the pattern. When the feeling shows up, label it: “This is the impostor pattern, not reality.” Sounds too simple. It still creates distance. “I’m a fake” becomes “There goes that program again.” A thought being loud doesn’t mean you have to believe it.

2. Re-book your successes. After every win, ask yourself three questions. What did I actually contribute? What skill did I show? What would a supportive colleague who watched it say? For example, instead of “The meeting went well because everyone was nice”, write “I had prepared for the objections and stayed calm when the tough question came.”

3. Say it out loud. Tell someone you trust about the feeling. Very often you’ll hear: “Oh, I know that one.” Silence is what impostor syndrome grows in. Every honest conversation takes some of that away.

4. Accept praise instead of brushing it off. No waving it away, no “Oh, it was nothing.” Just: “Thank you.” Every compliment you dismiss tells your brain it doesn’t count. Accepting compliments is a skill you can practise, and it works directly against the impostor feeling.

5. Act before you feel ready. Don’t wait to feel confident. Confidence comes from doing. Build an if-then plan: “If someone asks a question in the meeting that I can’t answer, then I’ll say: Good question, I’ll get back to you by tomorrow.” That way the worst case loses its sting before it happens.

The 5 impostor types: which one are you?

What sets off the impostor feeling is different for different people. Impostor expert Valerie Young (2011) describes five types. Each one defines competence differently, so each one falls short of a different standard.

• The Perfectionist: competence means flawless. 99 out of 100 feels like failure.
• The Expert: competence means knowing everything. One unanswered question feels like being exposed.
• The Natural Genius: competence means effortless. As soon as something takes effort, you assume something must be wrong with you.
• The Soloist: competence means doing it alone. Asking for help feels like cheating.
• The Superhero: competence means excelling in every role at once: job, family, fitness.

Recognise yourself? Usually one or two types dominate. It’s worth knowing which, because it shows your sore spot. The Expert needs different remedies from the Soloist. One practises saying “I don’t know.” The other practises asking for help and finds out that nobody frowns.

The evidence file: how to finally take in your successes

An evidence file is a concrete, growing list of your successes and your part in each one. It’s your antidote to the lopsided bookkeeping. Your memory is biased: it stores one piece of criticism word for word and lets twenty good ones fade.

Here’s how to build it. Create a note on your phone or a folder in your inbox. Every Friday, add three entries of three lines each: what went well, what you contributed, and the evidence. The evidence matters most: a quote from an email, a number, a result. No interpretation, only facts.

Then read the file exactly when the impostor gets loud. Before a salary negotiation. After a meeting that felt off. The feeling says “luck”. The file shows 40 entries, all with the same handwriting. Yours.

One honest note: knowing isn’t enough. Many people with impostor feelings know their successes and still don’t feel them. For the evidence to reach your self-image and not just your head, it takes repetition on a deeper level, for example through self-hypnosis. Daily exercises for your self-esteem can also help you separate your worth from how today went.

How to deal with impostor syndrome at work: promotions, meetings, a new job

At work, impostor syndrome strikes in the same places again and again: promotions, meetings with senior people, and the first months of a new role. If-then plans prepared ahead of time help most in these moments.

Picture a newly promoted team lead. First week, first team meeting, and only one sentence in her head: “Any minute now they’ll realise this job is too big for me.” A way out could be a plan, not a motivational quote: “If I think I don’t belong here, then I remind myself: several people reviewed this decision, and they can’t all be wrong.” The feeling won’t vanish on the spot. But it no longer has to run the show.

Three situations, three plans:

1. Promotion: “If I think it was only luck, then I read three entries from my evidence file.”
2. Meeting with senior people: “If I want to hold back my input, then I say one sentence in the first ten minutes.” Being visible matters more than being perfect.
3. Feeling like a fraud at a new job: “If I don’t know something, then I ask within 24 hours instead of secretly researching it.” Asking is part of doing the role well, not proof of weakness.

By the way: if your job feels empty for a long time despite your successes, there may be more going on than the impostor pattern. Then it’s worth looking at how to find fulfillment at work.

The 3 most common mistakes

Most people fight impostor syndrome in ways that make it stronger. The same three mistakes come up again and again.

Mistake 1: Achieving more to disprove the feeling. One more certificate, one more extra lap, one more late night. The problem: the new success gets booked the wrong way again. You run faster on the hamster wheel, but it’s still a hamster wheel, and you get exhaustion on top.

Mistake 2: Waiting until the feeling is gone. “I’ll apply once I feel more confident.” It doesn’t work that way round. Your self-image grows through experience, not before it. While you wait, you collect no counter-evidence, and the feeling stays in charge.

Mistake 3: Treating the feeling as proof. “If I feel like a fraud, there must be something to it.” No. Feelings are signals, not facts. Since Clance and Imes, research has described this pattern in people with proven achievements. So the feeling doesn’t show that you lack competence.

One honest caveat: these steps can change a lot, but not everything. If impostor feelings come with depression, anxiety symptoms or lasting exhaustion, which Bravata et al. (2020) found to be common, the topic belongs with a psychotherapist. Self-help is then an addition, not a replacement.

From feeling like a fraud to a self-image that keeps up

In the end, impostor syndrome is about identity. Your performance has grown, but your self-image hasn’t. The five steps and the evidence file give you the facts. Yet many people know their successes and still don’t feel them. The pattern runs deeper than knowing about it.

This is where hypnosis can help. It doesn’t work with arguments. It works with repetition and inner images, at the level where your self-image forms. With the free hypnosis for self-worth and self-doubt, you pick a ready-made hypnosis on your topic and experience for yourself how this deeper work feels. If you want to go further after that, a free 45-minute 1:1 analysis session with one of our top coaches looks at all 11 areas of your life, and from that a programme built only for you can follow: Hypnotic Rise.

You’re not a fraud. Your inner picture just hasn’t caught up with your outer success yet. If you want to help it catch up, start here: try a free hypnosis tonight.