>second-guessing whether you're good enough to deserve your position.
Often with an element of "what will they do when they realise".
I've come to understand, though, that I'd been worrying about the answer to the wrong problem. I know I'm not as good as I could (maybe should) be, and I know that for any given metric I have peers who can and do outperform me. But the word "expectations" is a loaded one: when suffering from imposter syndrome it's important to stop worrying about what expectations I have for myself and instead look at the expectations set in the specification for my role.
I also remember that the company spends quite a lot of money on me every single month. So when they tell me that they're really happy with that arrangement and that they believe that I'm meeting their expectations, that helps me to set aside my expectations.
Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.
> Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.
But there may also be nothing you can do about it either. I think a huge part of the problem is that I suspect the typical experience of hearing "there's a problem" is that by the time anyone is saying that, things are already in motion you may not be able to fix anyway.
This. This actually hits the nail of my imposter syndrome precisely on the head. I've advanced to a pretty good position, and I'm definitely good at a fair number of things; but there are also things I am very much not good at, and I often worry that I got promoted to this point by "lucky" breaks that leveraged my strengths, but keeping the position will require me to do things that I don't even know how to develop.
Often with an element of "what will they do when they realise".
I've come to understand, though, that I'd been worrying about the answer to the wrong problem. I know I'm not as good as I could (maybe should) be, and I know that for any given metric I have peers who can and do outperform me. But the word "expectations" is a loaded one: when suffering from imposter syndrome it's important to stop worrying about what expectations I have for myself and instead look at the expectations set in the specification for my role.
I also remember that the company spends quite a lot of money on me every single month. So when they tell me that they're really happy with that arrangement and that they believe that I'm meeting their expectations, that helps me to set aside my expectations.
Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.