Beyond Impostor Syndrome: Crafting Your Unique PM Identity

As a PM, you must have felt imposter syndrome some or the other time.

The negative self-talk has become prevalent.

· “I’m not sure if I’m good enough for this job.”
· “I don’t know how I got by in the interviews.”
· “I’m bad at this.”

It can eat at you and cause you to fail. I promise — you can deal with it.

1. Realize most PMs have it:

Engineers code. Designers build visuals. But what do PMs do? They don’t have clear outputs. This makes PMs highly susceptible to impostor syndrome. Take solace in the nature of the job contributing. It’s not just you feeling this way.

2. View it as a positive:

Reframe your self-talk. You are smart enough to understand what capabilities you need, but don’t have. You aren’t the flip side — overconfident with Dunning-Kreuger. That’s even worse.

3. Harness your humility:

Studies find that you can use your humility to have better interpersonal interactions. Have an “other facing” orientation when you work with others. People with impostor syndrome are great at it. And your coworkers love it.

4. Be objective about your weaknesses:

It’s not that you are in deficit of everything. Introspect and find out more specifically about what you aren’t doing well.

Is it:
· Influencing
· PRD writing
· Creating strategy
· Working with others
· Dealing with the workload?

Focus on the specific deficit.

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5. Strive for a growth mindset:

Frame your specific weaknesses as “not yet.” It’s not that you’re bad at influence. It’s that you haven’t reached the level you want yet. Instead of finding evidence you are an impostor, find ways to help grow.

6. Focus on using your strengths:

There’s usually a way around your specific weaknesses. Bad at writing? Leverage meetings and chat more. Use a way around it. The beauty of PM is outcomes matter more than outputs. Build your own style of PMing, specific to your strengths.

7. Let the phrase lose meaning:

If you label and focus on impostor syndrome, it will surely pull you down. Let the phrase lose meaning. Reframe “I have impostor syndrome.” Make it, “I have some areas to improve.”

When the phrase loses its grip on your mind, you can move forward.