HumanWORKS

Look, we need to have a deeply uncomfortable conversation about that persistent feeling that you’re somehow faking it whilst everyone else in the room has their proverbial shit neatly packed into labelled containers with colour-coded lids.

You know the one. That low-grade psychic hum that whispers “they’re going to find you out any minute now” whilst you’re nodding sagely in a meeting about something called “strategic alignment” or “paradigm integration” or whatever linguistic mulch is being served in today’s corporate salad.

Here’s the thing: we’ve collectively decided that this feeling – this imposter syndrome – is a bug in your psychological operating system rather than a feature. With that the internet, that magnificent producer of oversimplified solutions to complex human problems, has a ready prescription: “Just believe in yourself!” Which, as actionable advice, ranks somewhere between “just be happy” and “have you tried not being poor?”

The Dubious Virtue of Unwavering Certainty

Let’s consider for a moment the alternative to imposter syndrome. Not confidence – which is entirely compatible with nuanced self-assessment for the seventeen seconds I feel it in a calendar (or financial) year – but the complete absence of doubt. The absolute certainty that one’s knowledge is comprehensive and one’s skills are beyond reproach.

Now, ask yourself: who are the people you’ve encountered in your professional life who possessed this quality? Who are the colleagues, managers, or public figures who’ve demonstrated unwavering certainty in their own competence?

I’ll wait.

If your experience resembles mine in even the slightest degree, you’ve just mentally assembled a rogues’ gallery of the most catastrophically incompetent individuals you’ve ever had the misfortune to share oxygen with. These are the people who’ve piloted projects into mountainsides whilst assuring everyone that turbulence is normal, and that the explosions are in your head.

Who’ve set institutional money on fire whilst explaining that smoke is just another word for profit.

Who’ve failed upward with the buoyancy of a helium-filled ego untethered from the gravitational pull of reality.

The correlation is so consistent it might as well be a physical law: the more certain someone is of their competence, the more aggressively they’ll defend demonstrably terrible ideas when the consequences start arriving with the subtlety of a brick through a tastefully created stained-glass window of your preferred corporate deity.

The Hidden Operating System of Doubt

What if – and I’m just spitballing here – your imposter syndrome isn’t a malfunction? What if that nagging sense that you might not know everything necessary for the task at hand is actually your cognitive immune system functioning exactly as intended?

Consider the alternative. Consider what happens when that system gets compromised.

We all know That Guy™. The one who read half a Wikipedia article on a complex topic and is now explaining it with the conviction of someone who’s devoted three decades of focused study to the subject.

The one who confuses having an opinion with having expertise.

The one who mistakes volume and certainty for insight and accuracy.

That Guy™ doesn’t have imposter syndrome, and nobody is better off for its absence.

Your doubt – that uncomfortable, persistent questioning of whether you know enough or can do enough – creates the cognitive space necessary for continued growth. It maintains the gap between what you know and what remains to be learned. It prevents the terminal crystallisation of knowledge that ends in spectacular, confident failure.

The “Just Believe!” Industrial Complex

The internet drowns in advice about overcoming imposter syndrome, most of it amounting to some variation of “just believe in yourself harder.” This advice approaches psychological complexity with all the nuance of telling someone with clinical depression to “try smiling more” or instructing a person like me with chronic pain “have you considered not hurting?”. Yeah pal – I tried and, guess what, it’s still the same.

This framing misunderstands both the phenomenon and its function. It assumes that doubt represents a defect rather than a calibration mechanism – one that prevents you from waltzing confidently into situations beyond your current capabilities with the carefree abandon of a toddler approaching an electrical socket with a fork.

The problem isn’t the existence of doubt but its calibration. Too much, and you’re paralysed into inaction. Too little, and you’re a walking Dunning-Kruger graph with exceptionally poor risk assessment capabilities.

The goal isn’t to eliminate doubt but to integrate it – to develop a working relationship with uncertainty that allows forward motion without delusion. This represents a far more sophisticated psychological task than “just believing in yourself,” which sounds suspiciously like advice from someone selling motivational posters featuring eagles and sunsets, whilst kneeling cross legged in tie-dyed attire.

The Unexpected Virtue of Knowing What You Don’t Know

Here’s the deeply unfashionable truth: knowing the limits of your knowledge and capability isn’t a weakness. It’s a metacognitive superpower in a world increasingly dominated by people who mistake confidence for competence.

This awareness – this persistent questioning of what you know and can do – creates the necessary conditions for actual growth rather than the performance of expertise. It allows you to identify gaps in knowledge or skill before they become catastrophic failures. It enables you to ask questions when others are nodding along to avoid appearing uninformed.

In a professional landscape increasingly resembling a confidence game in the most literal sense, this capacity becomes not a liability but an asset of considerable value. It allows you to:

– Learn when others assume they already know

– Question when others accept uncritically

– Adapt when others remain rigid in their certainty

– Grow when others have convinced themselves they’ve arrived

None of which involves “just believing in yourself” more vigorously, and many of which add value that show your ability to “tell it like it is” is of a lot more value than the 17th nod in that room full of groupthink.

The Arrogance Tax: What Certainty Costs Us

The social premium placed on unwavering confidence has created environments where the appearance of certainty is rewarded above actual knowledge. This dynamic produces leaders who cannot acknowledge error, systems resistant to correction, and discourse increasingly unmoored from reality.

We’ve all seen the consequences.

Financial systems collapse because warning signs were dismissed by those too certain of their models.

Companies implode because executives couldn’t admit they misunderstood market conditions.

Political systems falter because leaders cannot acknowledge the complexity of problems facing their constituents.

In each case, the absence of doubt – that quality we’re all supposed to be striving to eliminate – plays a central role in the eventual catastrophe.

Meanwhile, those plagued by imposter syndrome are busy double-checking their work, seeking additional information, and considering alternative perspectives – activities that don’t exactly make for compelling LinkedIn humblebrags but tend to prevent spectacularly public failures. As many of my colleagues have commiserated from time to time – there’s some sort of privilege reserved for the rescue of a red project, and less clamour to thank the ones that never went even a yellowing shade of green.

The Calibration Game: Making Friends with Your Doubt

The challenge, then, isn’t to eliminate imposter syndrome but to calibrate it – to develop a working relationship with doubt that enables action without delusion.

What might this actually look like in practice?

First, it means recognising that confidence and certainty aren’t synonyms. Confidence allows you to act despite incomplete information; certainty precludes the possibility that such information could exist. The former enables progress; the latter ensures eventual collision with reality.

Second, it involves distinguishing between doubt that prompts continued learning and doubt that prevents necessary action. The former expands capability; the latter constrains it unnecessarily. This distinction isn’t always immediately obvious and requires ongoing attention rather than one-time resolution.

Third, it demands awareness of context – recognising when the social pressure for unwavering confidence might be pushing you toward certainty that exceeds your actual knowledge or capability. These moments require particular vigilance against the contagious certainty that often pervades professional environments.

My hope is that I know when to say “I know what I’m talking about” versus “I like the idea of being seen as someone who knows what they are talking about regarding this popular topic”. The value lies is understanding which is which.

None of this involves affirmations in the mirror or whatever self-help gurus are currently selling as the solution to the “problem” of not being sufficiently certain of your own brilliance. It mostly just requires being honest with ourselves as well as others. Imagine that?

The Social Dimension: When “Just Believe” Becomes Gaslighting

It’s worth noting that the experience of imposter syndrome doesn’t fall evenly across social categories. Research consistently demonstrates that women and members of marginalised groups experience imposter syndrome at higher rates – not because of inherent psychological differences but because they face greater scrutiny and more persistent questioning of their capabilities.

In these contexts, the experience of imposter syndrome cannot be reduced to individual psychology but must be understood as responding to actual social dynamics that impose different standards for different groups. The prescription to “just believe in yourself” becomes particularly hollow when directed at those facing genuine structural barriers to recognition and advancement.

It’s rather like telling someone they’re imagining the rain whilst refusing to acknowledge they’re the only person at the table who wasn’t given an umbrella. That sort of declaration serves to help nothing other than making the privileged look like they exploit the circumstances of those with less than them.

What we need to do is shift the focus from trying to simply make individual psychological adjustments to creating institutional environments that recognise the value of intellectual humility and that distribute the burden of proof more equitably across social categories.

The Integration Project: Making Doubt Your Ally

The path forward doesn’t involve eliminating doubt but developing a more sophisticated relationship with uncertainty – one that recognises its value while preventing its transformation into paralysis.

This integration requires moving beyond the binary thinking that frames imposter syndrome as either a weakness to be conquered or a badge of authentic humility to be celebrated. Instead, it suggests that our relationship with certainty about our capabilities requires ongoing calibration – adjusting to new information, different contexts, and evolving demands.

It positions doubt not as an obstacle to success but as a necessary component of sustainable development – a form of cognitive friction that prevents both stagnation and delusion.

This nuanced approach stands in stark contrast to the motivational poster simplicity of “just believe in yourself” – a prescription that, again, approaches the complexity of human cognition with all the sophistication of telling someone in a wheelchair to “just stand up and walk” because ambulatory people manage it without difficulty.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

Perhaps, then, we might begin to recognise the uncomfortable utility of imposter syndrome – not as something to be overcome but as something to be integrated into a more balanced and sustainable relationship with our own capabilities and limitations.

In a world where the most confidently wrong people seem to fail upward with remarkable consistency, perhaps your persistent doubt represents not a defect but a different kind of intelligence – one that acknowledges complexity, remains open to correction, and resists the seductive certainty that precedes catastrophic error.

The question becomes not how to eliminate doubt but how to engage with it productively – how to maintain the humility necessary for continued growth while developing the confidence required for meaningful action. This balance represents a far more sophisticated psychological achievement than the elimination of doubt, and its development requires nuanced engagement rather than motivational platitudes.

So the next time someone tells you to “just believe in yourself” as the antidote to imposter syndrome, perhaps consider that they’re prescribing the psychological equivalent of bloodletting – a treatment that misunderstands both the condition and its function, and that might leave you worse off than the original “ailment” ever did. If they do, maybe suggest trepanning to alleviate the spirits in their head that dreamed up their purported solution, and then debate how it might be as effective, or not as the case may be.

In reality, your doubt might just be the most valuable thing about you in a world increasingly dominated by those who’ve eliminated it entirely from their psychological repertoire – usually with catastrophic consequences for everyone in their vicinity.

Sometimes thinking you don’t know everything is far more valuable than trying to convince yourself – and others – that you do.

This article was originally published on my personal LinkedIn profile on April 3, 2025. A direct link back to the original post can be found here – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uncomfortable-utility-feeling-like-fraud-why-your-you-turvey-frsa-fjewe/?trackingId=BmKLTjPfT8megNPPovceNA%3D%3D