AND THEN SHE SAID…I’M NOT ENOUGH

This may be a cliché, but clichés come from somewhere…usually reality.

A male individual contributor was promoted to manager, even though he wasn’t entirely ready for the position. Let’s call him Scott.

Scott is being promoted because the hiring manager believes he has potential. Remember, “men are often promoted based on their potential to be successful in a new role and women are often only promoted after having experience that largely mirrors the content of that role.”

Scott thinks he is the cat’s ass and ready to take on his next challenge. His problem is not lack of confidence.

Now, let’s flip this. Instead of Scott, let’s say it’s Alice. The hiring manager really believes in her. Alice doesn’t do what Scott did and say, “Oh sign me up.” No, Alice thinks, “Oh my god, I’ll have to manage all these people and be responsible for them. Can I do this? Am I really ready? Will I ever be ready?”

I see this all the time. I have done it myself. My husband and I have had this conversation with each step I have taken in my career.

Me: You really think I can do this?

Husband: Of course.

Me: Really? Are you sure?

Husband: You can absolutely do this.

Me: I’m just not sure. Maybe I’m not as good as they think; hell, maybe I’m not as good as I think.

Husband: Why do you do this to yourself?

Almost all professional women I know have had this conversation, either inside their heads or with a real person. And the question my husband asks is apt: “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

There are many reasons, mostly all revolving around self-esteem. I meet women with plenty of self-confidence, but self-esteem is sometimes lacking, and that gives rise to paralyzing self-doubt.

Self-esteem refers to how we feel about ourselves overall—how much we love yourself, while self-confidence is how we feel about our abilities based on a situation. A person can have healthy self-esteem but not be confident about juggling data in Excel sheets. A person can be very certain about their abilities and how well they do their job; but go back home every day and think they’re a failure and any day now their house of cards is going to collapse.

It’s just recently that I have stopped saying to myself, “Today is the day they’ll figure out I’m a fraud.” I meet no men who think like this and even if they do, they don’t express it. Most of the men I know think and believe that they deserve where they are in their careers and they have a right to their next promotion. Most women don’t have that sense of entitlement.

So, we’ve established the problem, and sort of established a root cause of the problem. The question is, how do we get past the “I’m not enough” internal monologue we have going?

FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT!

Yep! This one goes against the whole “be yourself” ethos that I will advocate later in the book. For those of us who are struggling with the whole “I’m not ready for this” feeling every morning, “faking it” is the best way to proceed. A long time ago, they used to say, dress for the job you want and not the job you have. This follows the same premise: fake it long enough and you’ll start believing it. If you believe it, then those around you will as well.

A friend of mine had been promoted from being an individual contributor to a manager. Suddenly, she was attending meetings that she never had before. In the meetings she found that she didn’t know enough about the business—and she struggled with who was who when they talked about competitors.

“At one point I wasn’t sure if they were talking about a specific technology or a competitor,” she told me. I asked her what she did.

“I did my homework—I studied market data and strategy documents before every meeting,” she said. “And I spoke only when I had a specific question, or I made a point that no one else had made. I didn’t talk much at meetings. I felt like an idiot because everyone else had so much to say.”

“So, what happened?” I asked.

“The thing is not to fake that you understand things or know things you don’t. I faked that I was sure I would learn everything even though I was scared shitless,” she said. “Since I didn’t talk all the time in meetings, when I did speak, people listened to me. This was a bonus. And in six months, I could start faking with more confidence until I didn’t have to fake it anymore. I had made it.”

Faking it is not about “lying” to others—but to yourself. To say, I can do this even when you’re afraid you can’t. It’s boosting your self-esteem and saying, “I’ve got this.”

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Amulya Malladi is the bestselling author of several novels, including The Copenhagen Affair. Her books have been translated into several languages, including, Danish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Serbian and others. She knows her airports well because when she’s not writing, she works “fulltime” as a marketing executive for a global company. After fourteen years of mostly bad weather in Denmark, she moved to Southern California a few years ago, where she now lives with her husband and two sons. THE NEAREST EXIT MAY BE BEHIND YOU is her eighth novel.

Amulya loves meeting with book clubs, so please contact her at author@amulyamalladi.com if you want her to call into your meeting.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips