At work, you may spend a lot of time checking your work, doubting your decisions, and downplaying your successes. Meanwhile, some colleagues are very self-confident, even when their work doesn’t always follow suit. How do you know if it’s just imposter syndrome or if your coworker is actually taking advantage of the situation? Psychologist Claire Petin explains how to tell the difference.
How to recognize an imposter colleague?
First signal: he gives the impression of being constantly overwhelmed. Repeated meetings, emergencies highlighted, sighs in front of the screen… but few concrete results upon arrival.
He can also rely on his ease. Orally, in meetings or in informal discussions, he knows how to put himself forward. This confidence can give the impression of competence, even when one’s work remains vague or superficial.
Another possible behavior: taking part of the credit when a project works, then remaining discreet when a problem appears.
Psychologist Claire Petin also describes a more insidious strategy when one’s status is threatened: “It sows doubt, disorganizes, slows down, criticizes half-heartedly, makes it invisible. Nothing overtly frontal, but enough to weaken competition and maintain its influence. Everything is done to maintain the illusion of its importance by weakening those who could reveal its emptiness.”
Imposter syndrome or real imposter?
You may be familiar with imposter syndrome if you’ve ever felt like you don’t deserve your job despite your skills. It causes you to attribute your successes to luck and your failures to your own inadequacies, even when the facts prove otherwise.
You may then work harder, constantly seek to do better or fear not being good enough. However, your results and the responsibilities you are given often show that these doubts do not correspond to reality.
A benchmark can help you: if you have good evaluations, you are entrusted with important files and you still minimize your successes, imposter syndrome may be to blame.
Conversely, if a colleague regularly takes credit, puts himself forward but provides little concrete work, he may more correspond to what Claire Petin describes as a “true imposter”.
How to react to this type of colleague?
There’s no point trying to unmask him in front of the whole team. The most important thing is to protect your work and rely on facts.
Clarify roles and responsibilities. Set specific deadlines. Have important decisions confirmed in writing and keep records of your work. These reflexes make it possible to limit ambiguities and prevent everyone’s contributions from being rewritten a posteriori.
If the situation ends up taking a toll on the team or your work, speak with your manager or human resources. An exchange based on precise facts will be more effective than a personal confrontation.
And above all, don’t let a colleague’s behavior make you doubt your own worth. Your results, your responsibilities and the feedback you receive are much more reliable indicators than the confidence displayed by someone else.