Someone told me about something called "Imposter Syndrome"

[anna_wing]

I looked it up (on Wikipaedia, so possibly my understanding is incomplete). It does not seem to me something that I have come across in any of my friends, colleagues or minions, though since it should rightly be something that any sensible person would keep to themselves (advertising personal vulnerability is never a good idea) I might be wrong

Comments

[bunn]

Advertising personal vulnerability : I am not sure about that. For those strong enough to do it, I think it can be positive. I know I've seen people I think highly of admit to worries, and I'm grateful for that, it makes me think 'if this amazing person has this problem, then maybe it is possible to have problems and still be amazing' which is a very useful thing for me

[anna_wing]

I had heard of the phrase, but had vaguely thought of it as one of those pop-psychology things, like that "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" nonsense. but apparently it is a real thing, at least in some cultures and contexts (women in sexist cultures are particularly prone to it, apparently, which makes sense).

I totally agree with you about the comforting nature of independent metrics; an exam-based promotion system makes life much easier in that sense.

On personal vulnerability I draw the distinction between admitting reasonable uncertainty about a situation, while still being able to make a decision,which is just being realistic, and admitting to lack of, as it were, self-certainty. Sharing past experiences and one's own past mistakes can be helpful ("this too shall pass", basically), but one's subordinates do need to be reasonably confident that one knows what one is doing. Over-sharing about one's inner insecurities doesn't help much with this.

[clodia_metelli]

I sort of think it's a sign of the unhealthiness of modern academia. I hadn't really thought about it in these terms before, because I have seen it talked about in my circles, or at least the outer layers of those circles, and at the time I nodded and went, "Yes, that all makes sense," and took it onboard for future reference. In other words I've mostly seen it talked about in academic circles, from whence it seems to be seeping into the more rarefied areas of non-academic life, and academia is so insecure and pressurised and scared that some kind of imposter syndrome is actually not an unnatural reaction/symptom. Among staff, of course, not students: for it to work you have to have the contextual awareness of how lucky you are and how little you know, relatively speaking, and anyway who cares how students feel? It stems from the horrors of academic employment really, I think. But it's being adopted by the outside world, as happens sometimes.

[anna_wing]

That makes sense. I thought of it as simply a somewhat exaggerated form of the uncertainty that anyone feels when coming into a new job, especially when the job scope involves both a large increase of responsibility for other people and a qualitative change in the kind of responsibility, like the jump from operations to management.