Category Archives: Work

Imposter Syndrome

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Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a concept describing individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. The term was coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes. Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. While early research focused on the prevalence among high-achieving women, impostor syndrome has been found to affect both men and women, in roughly equal numbers

impostor-syndrome-cartoon-823x1024We’ve all been there, done that – convinced we’ve gotten a job or a project because we’ve faked it or perhaps you are getting an award for something and all you can hear in your head is a voice telling you that you will soon be outed for being a fraud! This is nothing but classic imposter syndrome and today’s post is all about that. Why this particular syndrome you may ask? Well, it’s because I am convinced I am 100% guilty of perpetuating this on myself.

Initially, it was thought that more women than men suffered from imposter syndrome, but later it was found to affect both sexes equally. When you are afflicted, you very strongly internally believe that you are not intelligent and you got (insert activity here) by luck or fluke and so you are so incompetent and unworthy of the activity that you will soon be outed as a fraud. I strongly suspect that this is what happened to me in my last position and this is why we parted ways so soon.

screenshot2015-08-13at10_48_51The most common symptoms are negative self-talk; a need to constantly check and re-check work; shying away from attention in the workplace; and forms of overcompensation like staying late at work or not setting appropriate boundaries around workload. Internally, people struggling with the syndrome experience persistent feelings of self-doubt and fear being found out as phoney. They over-internalize and blame themselves for failures, even when other factors played a role.

I particularly feel more women than men, especially Asians, suffer from this syndrome as we are generally conditioned to not take credit for our work and also diminish it when we get complimented for anything we do. As I was researching this post, I realised a lot of famous people, both men and women also had moments when they felt they were a complete fraud and it was just time till people figured them out for what they thought they were!

So when you get these pangs, here are some of the things you can do to overcome it:

how-to-improve-confidenceAccept that you are in this position because you did something that caused people to put you there. Learn to internalise your success and own it. Be proud of your achievements.

Focus on what you bring to the table. When you are a perfectionist, the chances of you believing that you are a fraud is very high because you set such high standards for yourself. Loosen up a bit and learn to accept that sometimes you need not be the best in everything you do. Hyper-competitive people (me included) see every little thing in life as a competition and this is what causes you immense grief where when you can’t attain the lofty self-goal you have set for yourself, you fall down to the depths and think you are a complete failure. So learn to let go, it will make life easier for you in the long run.

Stop comparing yourself to others. This is probably the most important point in overcoming this syndrome. As author Iyanla Vanzant once said, “Comparison is an act of violence against the self”, when you compare and measure yourself against someone, usually more successful than yourself, you start to internalise all your failures (against the said person) and this, in turn, makes you less confident about your own abilities and does not let you celebrate successes.

Celebrate success. When you get complimented for anything, accept it gracefully and with a smile. Most of us, and especially those of us who have internalised this syndrome. The normal reaction to a compliment is to brush it aside as something inconsequential, but the truth is that when someone compliments you for something, it’s because they appreciate what you have done, so accept it and internalise it.

Journal regularly. As an addendum to the previous point, it may help to keep a success journal which highlights all your successes. You could also add in the compliments and kudos you receive, be it work or play and when you need affirmations, all you need to do is go to your journal and read it. Personally, I would prefer to have something online or in the cloud, like perhaps Google Docs so I can access it anywhere and anytime. But if you prefer a physical notebook to record successes, then go ahead and buy the prettiest book you can find!

I am going to practice what I have just preached and start doing all these points so that I sooner than later overcome my sense of being a fraud all the time. What about you? Do you have any more tips that I can use? Please comment below.

I am ending this post with some TED Talks on how we can overcome our sense of being imposters.

2017 Week 34 Update

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This week was a relatively short week with the long weekend as Singapore celebrated the feast of sacrifice or Hari Raya Haji as it is called here. We are now in September and counting down to the last few months of the year!

This weekend, we went out together as a family after a long time. I needed to buy a jacket for work and so decided to make an evening out of it. We went and shopped and then had dinner. It was an enjoyable evening.

I am looking to buy a fitness tracker and am quite confused about what to buy. I looked at the Fitbit Alta and the Flex but also like the Charge. Also, I want something which is discrete, by which I mean I don’t want to advertise the fact that I am using a fitness tracker. I used to have a Fitbit Pebble (is that the right name?) and used to clip it to my clothes or even into my pockets and nobody knew I had one. Is there one like that in the market now? Anyone with more information, please comment below so I can decide soon. My current fitness tracker is my phone and I am using the Argus app to track steps, water, movement etc. The only downside to this is that I have to make sure I am carrying my phone in my hand or in a pocket all the time and sometimes that becomes cumbersome, which is why I am looking for a new tracker.

Work-wise, I am reaching my three-month mark here and this should end the probation period. I still haven’t had any one-on-one with my manager, in spite to asking multiple times, so this is something I probably will have to give up on. Maybe when the time comes to do your annual goals, my manager will finally find time for me.

Something happened this week and I realised that this organisation was willing to spend hundreds of thousands on an event, even provide tickets which are worth thousands free of cost just to fill up seats, but would not spend a few few hundreds to allow staff to take taxis home after a 15-hour work day, because the time would not yet be 9 pm at that point (which is the official policy to  allow taxi claims)! So all the posturing about staff welfare, including having staff fun clubs is just that – posturing. They don’t put their money where their mouth is.

The other thing I am excited about is my parents coming to Singapore. I  just applied for their visa over the weekend and think it should be approved sometime this week. I have also sent my list of items to buy from Mumbai and am waiting for the goodies next month!

Have a wonderful September and an awesome week!

 

Life Lessons: How to deal with bullies at work and outside….

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I’ve mentioned before, in this new place I am now working, I have been having issues at work, but I’ve never really elaborated on it. Today I am going to talk about some of what I am going through and what I have learned from my research on how to deal with such issues. Maybe someone else can benefit from it.

 

 

I have a colleague on the same team, who is junior to me, both in the number of years of experience we have as well as in the hierarchy of the organisation. For some reason, from the day I joined the organisation, this person has been borderline rude with me. They would be careful to be sweet and nice when in the presence of others, it was only when they were with me and maybe an intern who was working with them, would the nastiness surface. I was new to the organisation and I didn’t know how things are run. This person had been here for around a year before I joined. Anytime I asked them anything, it would be met with a curt, “I am busy” but they were not busy to chit chat with others during the time they were supposed to be busy. This went for around a month, but till that time it was done very passively. After a month of this, I sent this person an email about something which was not in both our job scopes, but which we had to do to help out. My email to the person was that when they were away, I will step in and the very rude reply I got was it was not their job too and so I was not doing them any favours. I had copied the email to our manager and the reply was also sent to everyone.

 

At some point, I did bring up this person’s attitude to our manager, but till date, I have not seen a resolution of the issue. I am not sure if the manager has managed to speak to this person, but since I don’t really see any improvement in attitude, I am guessing no.

So what do I do in such a case? I decided to read up and am following these points. It may be useful to others who are recipients of workplace bullying which is why I decided to blog about it.

 

When faced with a bully at work, we can either leave that toxic environment, stay quiet in the hope that it will blow away or confront the bully. Since I was new, leaving was not an option, I did speak to our manager, who didn’t do much to mitigate the issue and I didn’t want to confront the bully, but wanted to make sure I was no longer bullied

 

I first stopped talking to the bully. I didn’t interact much with them unless it was work specific and even then, I made sure I always tried to email them with a copy to our manager. This way, any rude or bullying behaviour would be out in the open and also documented since my problem was that this bully was sweet in front of others and rude when it was just us interacting. You could also keep a record of all interactions with the bully and if possible document every interaction.

After you have gathered the information, try to make time with the bully and speak calmly and emotionlessly. I need to work on this as I tend to get emotional in such times, but take deep breaths if that helps and speak to the bully. This approach may or may not work, depending on how the bully rolls, so prepare to take a step back and come back with reinforcements (aka your manager).

 

Usually, the perpetrator in a bullying incident is mostly intimated by you, either by what you bring to the table in terms of experience or job knowledge or what they stand to lose in terms of how your work will affect their standing in the organisation. I suspect in my case this is what happened. The bully in my instance probably thought I was a threat to them, though how I don’t know and used rude and disrespectful tones and language to compensate for that.

 

Another thing that usually works is not to stoop down to the bully’s level. It’s very tempting (believe me, I know), to respond with rude behaviour when faced with such behaviour, but I now believe in this, as Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high”! Respond to rude behaviour with extreme politeness. If the rude behaviour is via email, I go very formal and polite and when a senior person sees the email exchange, the contrast between the two tones cannot be more obvious!

Lastly, I’d say don’t take this rudeness and bullying personally and over analyse everything (I am guilty of this). It is possible that the bully might have felt slighted over something you said or did, which is why they are behaving the way they do. I suspect this could have happened in my case also. In the last month, maybe I said or did (or didn’t say or do) something which may have been important to this person. Maybe once you figure out the reason why the bully behaved that way, behaviours on both sides can change. I do plan to do exactly that and see if I can figure out why my bully is behaving in such a way and see if I can turn the situation around.

 

Do you have any other way to work around a bully? I’d love to hear your ideas!

 

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It’s been slightly more than three weeks since I started working and I got reacquainted with the beauty that is Office Politics!

 

For those who don’t know, Office politics “are the strategies that people play to gain an dvantage, personally or for a cause they support”. The term often has a negative connotation, in that it refers to strategies people use to seek advantage at the expense of others or the greater good.

Love it, revel in it, hate it or just play along with it, office politics are a staple in every organisation, be it a small organisation or a large multinational company. Someone who wants to be successful in his/her career needs to know how to play the game and eventually become a master at it!

 

I’ve seen different forms of the games people play at work and sometimes am amazed by the audacity of some of the tactics some people employ to get ahead. I always wonder if these people are wasted in the role they are in, they may have been better off as politicians instead of being a corporate slave.

 

 

To win at this game and come out smelling of roses, here are some strategies you should use, preferably as soon as you join a new organisation:

 

Map your organisation

In most organisations, the real power is not where the formal power lies. For example, maybe someone who has been there for a long time and knows the organisation inside-out, but who is fairly junior in position, may weld more soft power than the head of the organisation. This person may be able to influence people across the organisation and so has more power as he/she can people towards or away from someone.

So when you join a new organisation, watch for a couple of weeks and find out who the real influencers are and make them like you too.

 

Build social relations across the hierarchy

Make sure that the social relations you build in the organisation across formal hierarchies, you should be friends from people across the strata, most junior to most senior. This helps you to win people across the organisation and also know what is happening elsewhere in the organisation. When you are friends with people, they tend to help you, not only with information, but also with things that may be new to you or things you may be unfamiliar with.

I had a colleague like that, this person was super friendly and made friends easily and across the organisation. This person was also very helpful and would go out of their way to help people and so used this currency to build relations and also get the gossip from across departments and sections.

 

Be Neutral

At work, it is very easy to get caught up in gossip and eventually end up taking sides. This could misfire horribly. So the best thing to do is to be completely neutral. Even when people rant about other people in front of you, just nod neutrally and move away from there as soon as possible. When you take sides in any issue, it will inevitably come to bite you in the back.

 

Be Objective and professional

When office politics comes to play, personalities are involved and we may be mad at someone or the other. At times like this, maybe you want to vent out to someone and this most likely takes the shape of a gossip and veers to the person’s personal characteristics. Don’t give in to this! Even if you win this war, you will ultimately lose the larger battle.

Be professional in your attitude and your exchanges with your superiors, peers and subordinates at all times. This attitude will pay off in more ways than one.

 

So here you have four ways in which you can play the office politics game and come out a winner. Do you have any more strategies which help in navigating the minefield which is office politics? I’d to hear from you in the comments below.

Job Search Woes: An Interview Episode

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While I am actively looking for a new position, I thought I’d do a series on job search woes. This will document the random and sometimes funny and weird people I meet while looking for a new position. Here’s the latest one….

Earlier this week I went for an interview, which should rate as one of the weirdest ones I’ve ever gone for!

Early in the week, I chanced upon a position in one of the job boards I frequent which really appealed to me. This was very similar to a previous position I was doing and I could do the job easily. Plus the position would also stretch me professionally (or so it seemed) and so very excitedly I applied for the position. This was around 10 am in the morning. Sometime around 1:30 pm in the afternoon, I get a call from someone asking me if I was interested in coming down for an interview. I don’t think they mentioned the name of the company (or perhaps I didn’t hear it?), but I agreed and we discussed dates and times and agreed to meet the next morning. Soon an email arrived from the person I spoke to earlier confirming the interview, but again no company name, just the time and address.

I reversed searched the number from where the phone call came and got the name of the company. When I logged into the job board, I was very excited to see it was for the job I had applied that morning. I did notice that the same company had multiple positions open at that point, but didn’t really check them out. I was very excited thinking that they had seen my resume and since I checked all the items they needed for the position, decided to call me for an interview so soon. Boy, was I to be proven wrong! I spent the rest of the day preparing for the interview.

During my research of the company, I came across some points which made me a bit nervous. Like this place, I had worked briefly at another place which had a similar structure and was essentially a one-man show. The owner/founder called all the shots and if they were unhappy with someone, out they went, justified or not. I hated working there from my second week and could not wait to get out. I am sure I do not want to be in a similar environment.

The next day I reached on time for the interview. When I arrive at the venue, while searching for the stairs to get up to the office, I saw two women seated at some chairs downstairs in the open. From the body language, it seemed that one lady was interviewing the other. My feeling was that this was my interviewer and the person they were interviewing was the person before me. I did wonder why they could not do the interview in the office but walked to the office to find out.

At the office, which was a small open-plan office, I was met with 4 youngsters (early to mid-twenties, all of whom from the accents and the way they spoke English seemed to come from the same Asian country). I was asked to fill up an employment form, which had no space to write anything (even the space for telephone numbers was woefully inadequate). So I wait there for the lady to come up to interview me. She comes up after a bit and then starts my interview. She asked me to go downstairs with her which I did. Now comes the fun part.

While walking down to the chairs arrangement, she starts by asking me if I have sales before. I found the question a bit funny because the position I had applied for was not a sales position. I thought she was pulling it from my resume and started talking about all the times I did sales and what I did in the different roles.

She keeps talking more about sales, asking me about big achievements and targets when she realises that I’ve applied for another position. She turns to me saying, “Oh, I see you’ve come for this position and not the other one”. I say yes and start talking about why I am a good fit for that position. So then she starts reading my resume and can’t find the information I am talking about. That’s when I ask her if she has a copy of my resume and she says, “Yes, I have this”, showing me a print-out. The print out was a screen shot from someone’s phone with just the top quarter of the first page of my resume (I have a three -page resume). The paper she had just had the accomplishments and core competencies, with nothing of what I had done previously. So I laughed and told her this is just a fraction of my resume and asked her if I could send her a copy. I didn’t have a soft copy with me but emailed her a forward from another application. All this while talking to her about myself.

Later, on reading my resume, she asked if I was interested in this other sales position. When she explained the position, I did say it was interesting, but I am clearly not very interested in it. She also spoke about working late on a regular basis, but I was quite pissed off by then, so I told her that while working late was not an issue with me, I am a big proponent of work-life balance. I also brought up my India trip in November (even though I wan’t going to at this stage), but I wanted to put all my cards on the table so if they do want to proceed further, they have all the information. As with all companies, salary also seems to be an issue here, with her asking if I will reduce my asking salary.

We quickly wrapped up the interview in less than 30 minutes (including the time I took to send her my resume) and she said she will speak to the CEO and see if she can try to arrange for a second interview with the CEO based on my resume for the position I applied for.

What was so strange to me was that it looked like they’ve just called all candidates who applied for an interview, without even going through their resumes. Second, they can’t even print out a legit, full copy of the resume which the job board would have sent to them. Third, they don’t even know the position the candidate has applied for!

I’ve pretty much written off this company and am not expecting anyone to call back. But the position (as it sounds on paper) was fascinating and if it is as it looks like, it’ll be something I’d love to do. So let’s see what happens. So far, they’ve not gotten back to me, though I suspect they won’t.

Ah well, c’est la vie….