The Rooms We Walk Into

Imposter syndrome, privilege, and why I never want to feel entirely comfortable again

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours listening to some brilliant women in tech talk honestly about life as a woman in technology, including discussing imposter syndrome. I’m grateful to Becky Lodge, Natalie Haigh, Charlie Ruttle and everyone else who shared so openly. It made me think about my own experience of it — where it held me back, where it pushed me on, and what I’d say to someone standing outside a door they’re not sure they’re allowed through.

This is that reflection with a bit of research thrown in for structure (and to make me seem smart). It’s built around rooms, because that’s how imposter syndrome has always felt to me: a question about whether I belong in the room I’m in.

Standing outside the room

In my early career, imposter syndrome kept me out of rooms I should have walked into. Meetings I didn’t put myself forward for. Conversations with customers I let someone more senior have. Ideas I sat on because surely someone cleverer had already thought of them.

What eventually got me through the door wasn’t confidence. It was curiosity, and a stubborn desire to be in the room where the interesting things were happening. Curiosity turned out to be a better key than confidence. You don’t need to believe you’re the expert to want to know what’s going on behind the door.

But I need to be honest about something before I go any further.

Not every door is the same door

The idea of the “imposter phenomenon” first came from a 1978 paper by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who studied high-achieving women who still believed they’d somehow fooled everyone. For nearly fifty years since, it’s been treated mostly as something going on inside the individual — a faulty internal wiring that needs fixing with courses, coaching and self-belief.

Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey pushed back hard on that in a 2021 Harvard Business Review article, Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. Their argument, which I think is right, is that the label takes a near-universal feeling of workplace self-doubt, turns it into a diagnosis, and then hands the job of fixing it to women — instead of fixing the workplaces that keep signalling that they don’t belong.

That landed with me, because my imposter syndrome came with a lot of white, male, professional, middle-class privilege. When I doubted whether I belonged in a room, the room mostly disagreed. People who looked and sounded like me were already in there, and the door was usually propped open.

For many people, that isn’t the case. When the room is full of people who don’t look like you, who interrupt you, who credit your idea to the next person who says it, the feeling that you don’t belong isn’t a syndrome. It’s an accurate reading of the room. My doubt was a draught under the door. For many others, it’s a locked door with a sign on it.

So everything that follows comes with that caveat. Individual tactics help. But if you run a room — a team, a company, a board, an event — the bigger job is yours: change the room.

Getting yourself into the room

With that said, here’s what has actually helped me keep imposter thoughts at a level I can work with, rather than one that keeps me in the corridor.

Treat it as a thought, not a fact. MIT researcher Basima Tewfik deliberately calls them workplace impostor thoughts rather than a syndrome. I find that framing useful. A thought is something you have, not something you are. “I don’t belong here” is a thought. It deserves the same scrutiny as any other untested claim.

Separate “I don’t know this yet” from “I don’t belong here.” These feel identical in the moment, and they’re completely different. The first is just the normal state of anyone learning anything. The second is a judgement you’ve jumped to on far too little data — and I say that as someone who knows a thing or two about jumping to conclusions.

Keep the receipts. Write down what you’ve actually delivered, the feedback you’ve had, the problems you’ve solved. When the doubt shows up, check it against the evidence rather than against the feeling. Feelings are terrible auditors.

Use being new as a licence to ask. The person who’s new in the room is the one person allowed to ask the obvious question. Often it’s the question everyone else has been too embarrassed to ask for months. Curiosity isn’t a sign you don’t belong; it’s often the most valuable thing you bring.

Prepare — but set a limit. A bit of doubt makes you prepare properly, which is good. Endless preparation, because you’ll never feel ready, is the trap. Decide what “ready enough” looks like before you start, then go.

Say it out loud to someone you trust. The quickest way to shrink it is to discover that the person you most admire in the room feels it too. In my experience, they almost always do.

Find someone to hold the door. Sponsors matter more than mentors here. A mentor tells you that you belong in the room. A sponsor says your name when you’re not in it.

Why I want to keep a little of it

Here’s where I might lose some people. Now that I’ve learned to control it, I don’t want to get rid of it completely. I’ve come to see a small amount of imposter syndrome as a good sign that I’m in the right room.

My personal motto is stay unfinished. If I walk into a room and feel completely at ease — I know everything that’s going to be said, I’ve done this a hundred times, nobody’s going to surprise me — then I’ve probably stopped learning in that room. And if I’ve stopped learning, I’m probably done with it.

There’s some research behind this too.

It makes you better with people. Tewfik’s research found that people with more frequent impostor thoughts were rated by their supervisors as more interpersonally effective — and no less competent. In a second study, doctors in training who had more of these thoughts were rated by patients as more empathetic and better listeners. She explains that the doubt makes you more focused on other people: you ask more questions, listen harder, and take others’ views seriously. She adds that this isn’t a reason to encourage impostor thoughts — they also lower self-esteem — and that there are better ways to build those skills. But it’s a reminder that the feeling isn’t all downside.

It keeps you honest about what you don’t know. The well-known Dunning–Kruger research suggests that people with the least skill in an area tend to overrate themselves most, partly because the skills you need to do something well are the same ones you need to judge whether you’ve done it well. A little doubt is a sign that your internal quality control is switched on.

The opposite isn’t confidence; it’s comfort. People who never doubt themselves aren’t necessarily the most capable people in the room. Research on narcissism suggests that the grandiose, never-wrong type rarely feels like an imposter at all. I’d rather work with someone who occasionally wonders whether they’ve got it right than someone who’s certain they always have. And, trust me on this, I’ve worked with a few of those.

Comfortable rooms go stale. I spent forty years at one company. I’m proud of that, but the thing that kept it interesting was that I kept changing rooms within the same building: engineer, team leader, product manager, technical director, general manager. Each move felt like walking into a room slightly too big for me. And I built some of those rooms myself. Each one was where I grew the most. The periods when I was most comfortable were, looking back, the periods when I learned least.

The point I’d make is that it’s about dose. A small amount is a smoke alarm that tells you something’s worth checking. A constant alarm going off every time you make toast just wears you out. The goal isn’t to remove the alarm. It’s to get it calibrated.

Building new rooms

The last thing I want to say is about the rooms themselves.

If the people who most need to be in a room keep finding the door locked, the answer isn’t only to coach them on how to knock louder. Sometimes it’s to hold the door open from the inside. And sometimes it’s to build an entirely new room.

That’s a big part of why I do what I do now. At Desk2Educate, we’re trying to build rooms for people who don’t usually get invited into the existing ones — people whose backgrounds, gender, neurotypes and circumstances mean the traditional routes were never really designed with them in mind. I’ve written before about making room at the table and then building more tables. Rooms are the same idea.

So, three things to take away:

If you’re outside a room — let curiosity be the key. Check the doubt against the evidence, and go in anyway.
If you’re inside a room — notice who isn’t there, hold the door, and say their name when they’re not around.
If the room isn’t working — build a better one.

As for me, I’ll keep a little imposter syndrome in my pocket. When it disappears completely, that’ll be my sign that it’s time to find the next room.

Stay unfinished.

Standing outside the room

Not every door is the same door

Getting yourself into the room

Why I want to keep a little of it

Building new rooms

Further reading