Successful Leaders' Guide to Imposter Syndrome
Written by Andrew Buzinsky, Business Coach
Andrew Buzinsky is a business performance coach and former executive who works with founders and senior leaders to grow their business and leadership. He brings practical experience and a straight-talking coaching style to help leaders think clearly and execute with confidence.
For years, my kids would ask if they could help me with a project around the house, and for years, I told them I had it handled, whether or not that was true. I carried the exact same instinct into my corporate career, on a much bigger stage. I did not see it as a problem. I saw it as a strength, right up until a mentor pulled me aside and told me otherwise. That was the moment I recognized the Soloist in myself, one of the ways imposter syndrome shows up in high performers. I've seen more than one version of it in my own life. Here is what it looks like, why intelligence does not protect you from it, and where to start if you recognize yourself in it.
The chores, the corner office, and the pattern I could not see
My kids figured it out before I did. Whenever there was a project around the house, a shelf to build, a fence to fix, something to sort out, they would ask if they could help. Nearly every time, I told them I had it. It did not matter whether the help would have made the job faster or better. Something in me treated the offer as unnecessary at best and an interruption at worst.
I brought that same instinct into my professional life, and it followed me all the way to the top. During the years I spent building an energy services business to more than 120 million dollars in revenue across ten countries, I was working inside a large US organization with real resources. Other business units, specialists, and people whose entire job was to help teams like mine succeed were available for the asking. I rarely asked. To me, asking for help was close to admitting I could not do the job I had been trusted with. I told myself my team and I could handle it alone, and for a while, we did.
What I could not see was how that looked from the outside. A mentor inside the company eventually told me something I still think about. He said I was being seen as someone who did not work well with other departments and could not get along as part of the larger team. I was not trying to be difficult. I genuinely believed I was protecting my team's reputation by handling things ourselves. But protecting a reputation and building one are not the same thing, and I had confused the two.
Imposter syndrome, named
What I was carrying has a name. It's called imposter syndrome, and researcher Valerie Young, in her book "The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women", describes five recognizable patterns among capable, successful people. See if you recognize yourself in one of these.
The perfectionist
Judges their work by the one flaw instead of the ten things done well. Success rarely feels like enough because there is always a version of the work that could have been better.
The superwoman or superman
Believes they should be able to excel at every role at once, parent, leader, spouse, athlete, and treats anything less as falling short. Rest starts to feel like falling behind.
The natural genius
Measures ability by how easily something comes, not by how much effort it takes. If a skill requires real struggle to learn, it feels like proof they were never good enough to begin with.
The soloist
Treats asking for help as an admission of inadequacy rather than a normal part of operating at a high level. Would rather struggle alone than risk looking like they need anyone.
The expert
Believes no amount of experience or credentials is ever quite enough to call themselves qualified. Keeps collecting one more certification instead of trusting what they already know.
The two I know best
Two of these fit me more than I'd like to admit, the Soloist and the Expert. Coach and author Rich Litvin has written about how these five patterns show up specifically in high achievers and says he recognizes elements of all of them in himself. Seeing my own patterns named that clearly in someone else's writing was a strange kind of relief.
None of the five patterns are a personal failing. They are strategies that worked well enough, for long enough, that they hardened into identity. Mine worked until they started costing me something I could not see from the inside.
Why the smartest people in the room are the most exposed
Here is the part that surprised me most when looking at the research behind this. Imposter syndrome does not spare capable people. If anything, it concentrates there.
Psychologist David Dunning's research on what is now called the Dunning-Kruger effect may offer one explanation. People with genuine competence tend to have an accurate, sometimes uncomfortable awareness of everything they still do not know, while people with less competence may overestimate their own ability because they lack the knowledge to see their own gaps. Put plainly, a junior employee might believe they have mastered a skill after doing it once. A veteran who has done the same job a thousand times knows exactly how many ways it can still go wrong. That awareness can look like doubt from the outside. It is usually just experience.
Under pressure, that awareness gets louder, not quieter. The more responsibility you carry, the more you can see of what could go wrong, and it is easy to mistake that for weakness when it is really just experience doing its job.
It never stays personal
It is easy to treat imposter syndrome as a private discomfort, something you manage on your own time without it touching anyone else. It is impossible to isolate that way. It affects your team, and it affects your business.
Take the Expert. Solopreneurs are especially prone to this type. Convinced they are not yet ready, they keep stacking certifications, courses, and credentials instead of hiring the specialist or finding the outside resource who could solve the problem in front of them. The business stays small because the owner stays perpetually in training. Real-world experience and real revenue keep getting postponed for one more qualification, and the qualification never turns out to be the last one.
The Soloist shows up just as often, and just as expensively, in technical experts who get promoted into leadership. The certified public accountant (CPA) or the engineer who built a reputation as the person who solves the hard problem gets the promotion and keeps solving the hard problem personally instead of building a team that can solve it without them. Every problem the leader takes on alone is one the team never gets the chance to learn from. Worse, the team reads it as a lack of trust. The leader clearly doesn't believe anyone else is capable of handling something that matters.
Either version, the Expert who won't stop training or the Soloist who won't stop doing it all personally, produces the same result. The business's real capacity gets capped by the leader's discomfort, not by what the team is capable of.
The reframe that works
The instinct, once you spot one of these patterns in yourself, is to try to get rid of it. Work harder to stop feeling that way. That is not what worked for me, and it is not what the research supports either. The more useful move is to get good at the feeling instead of waiting for it to disappear.
For me, that meant treating “asking for help” as a skill to practice deliberately, not as a sign I had failed at something. I started small. I brought in another business unit on a problem I could have solved alone, just to see what happened. Usually, what happened was a better outcome, faster, and a colleague who felt trusted instead of shut out. The instinct to go it alone never fully disappeared. I just stopped letting it make the decision for me.
It shows up at home too, still. Ask my kids about fresh pasta day. For years, their entire contribution was turning the handle on the pasta roller while I managed everything else, the dough, the flour, the timing, because handing over more felt like handing over control. I am slowly letting them do more than crank the handle. It is a small thing, and it is still hard for me, and that is exactly the point.
What to do with this, starting now
Start by identifying which of the five patterns sound like you. I have at least two that are obvious to me, the Soloist and the Expert. You may see two or three right away. Ask someone close to you, a partner or spouse, which ones they see in you. They will often notice a pattern you have missed entirely because they are watching from outside the story you tell yourself.
Once you know which patterns to watch for, track one thing this week. Every time you catch yourself defaulting to solo, chasing one more credential, or avoiding a decision because of how it might look, write it down. Do not judge it yet. Just count it.
Most capable people who do this honestly are surprised by the number. That surprise is useful. You cannot change a pattern you have never measured, and this exercise makes the pattern visible in a matter of days.
Ready to take the next step?
I work with many high-performing executives and founders who find themselves more alone and more like an imposter the more successful they become. Left unmanaged, imposter syndrome filters your thinking. It gets in the way of becoming the leader you are capable of being, and it gets in the way of the growth your business is capable of.
If any of this sounded familiar, book a conversation with me, and let's talk about what this is costing you and your business and what to do about it.
Read more from Andrew Buzinsky
Andrew Buzinsky, Business Coach
Andrew Buzinsky is a business performance coach and former executive who works with founders and senior leaders to grow their business and leadership. He has been in the seat, building and scaling companies, and dealing with real moments of pressure, including figuring out how to make payroll in his first week as a company president. Andrew is a CPA and engineer with an MBA, but he is known more for his practical, straight-talking approach than for his credentials. Through Rodina Ventures, he helps leaders cut through noise, make better decisions, and build businesses that actually work. His focus is simple, to help leaders think better so they can lead better.
References:
Valerie Young, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer From the Imposter Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It.
Rich Litvin, “The 5 Types of Top Performers and Their Hidden Challenge,” richlitvin.com.
David Dunning, research on the Dunning-Kruger effect.
