Heylo!!! It’s been quite a while since the last episode… and now, 2021 is certainly upon us. There’s much to update on, but first, here’s an episode of Loitering recorded about a month ago… that stems from this article by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey I read a couple of months before that, about a phenomenon that might ring a bell to many listeners — 🔥 imposter syndrome🔥. As you’ll hear, there are burning flames around this term for a reason. Enjoy! Also, please scroll ahead to the links below the transcript for some updates from me. :) Sonia Paul 00:11 Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering with two very special guests. Can you please introduce yourself? Ruchika Tulshyan 00:27 Sure, I'm Ruchika Tulshyan, I'm a former journalist. And currently, I write about gender diversity and racial equity in the workplace for Harvard Business Review. I also run an inclusion strategy practice called Candour. Jodi-Ann Burey 00:43 Hi, and I am Jodi-Ann Burey. I'm a speaker, writer, I call myself a disrupter because we have to do things differently if we want to achieve social change. I speak and write at the intersections of race, culture, and health equity. I also created and host the podcast Black Cancer, which is about the lives of people of color told through their cancer journeys. Also have a TED talk titled “The myth of bringing your full, authentic self to work,” where I really try to disrupt what we think of how racism shows up in the workplace. Sonia Paul 01:16 Cool, thank you both so much for making the time to talk. And the two of you both co-authored an article recently for the Harvard Business Review, titled “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome.” And I was just wondering, you know, first of all, can we just define what do we mean when we say imposter syndrome? Because I also feel like it has become a catch-all term for a lot of different things that maybe have the same source, and how are you defining it? Jodi-Ann Burey 01:47 So imposter syndrome is defined as not having an internal sense of success, despite probably having what other people might call success, right. So whether it's the degrees that you've had, the accolades that you've had, you know, whatever area in your professional life where you are, quote, unquote, high achieving, that sense of achievement isn't felt internally. So the short for that is having this feeling like you're a fraud, or a high level of self-doubt in your, you know, whatever your work environment is, or whatever the context is. Ruchika Tulshyan 02:25 And while feelings of self-doubt, and largely, you know, this, this diagnosis of imposter syndrome can really impact anyone where they may be doubting their self-worth, or their abilities or their successes, it definitely is much more prevalent in women, in terms of the way the research has been done. And it is also sort of a syndrome that's really, you know, placed upon women. And so often women get diagnosed with imposter syndrome, we're invited to a lot of events, women's events, conferences, where women are essentially being taught how to overcome their imposter syndrome. So even though feelings of self-doubt and feeling like, you know, maybe you question whether you belong in a place, or whether you really are a fraud, those feelings might be fairly universal by gender and race, there is a very gendered aspect to how it shows up in our society. Sonia Paul 03:23 Yeah, and, you know, something that I was just like, very curious about is just this notion of being a fraud, and how essential that is to the definition of imposter syndrome, because I think — I personally think, for example, that there is a lot of maybe the influence of humility in fueling imposter syndrome, just, you know, women who wouldn't boast about themselves, who do acknowledge that they are successful, but maybe not to the extent that they should, and others don't validate them. And so I'm just wondering if that is part of our definition of imposter syndrome, or if that's something else, and if the two of you reflected upon that? Jodi-Ann Burey 04:13 Yeah, I think what's interesting here is even as Ruchika was speaking before, with the sense of diagnosing and syndrome and all these medical terms, all of this is done and people can't see this because it's a podcast, but "in quotations," right, diagnosing them with this quote, unquote, syndrome. You know, and so I think what we are trying to speak to in the article is around the structural environment within which women and folks of color and other people who experience marginalization or underrepresentation, what that environment is doing to create these feelings or heightened feelings of self-doubt, because, you know, Ruchika and I talk about this, having a healthy level of self-doubt is normal, but to the degree that gets talked about and is explained within this concept of imposter syndrome, or of what you're saying where women, people of color, folks have other identities are also socialized to try to downplay their work and their worth and their value in some way. And, you know, we can all give examples of men-identifying people in our lives who do not do that, who take up as much physical space as possible, who take as much energy as possible, to boast about the work that we're doing. And we value that. And so I think what you're speaking to of this downplaying, and this concept of imposter syndrome is linked, in that the racism and sexism that exists in our culture is what creates — I think they're both byproducts of what bias looks like, in these, you know, micro-moments of our lives, and also in the decision making in our workplaces. Sonia Paul 05:57 Right. And what led the two of you to do this research together? Was there like a tipping point in our cultural conversation? Or was there some sort of emerging research that came out that really pushed you to go in this direction? Ruchika Tulshyan 06:12 Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I actually wish there was research that we could cite, because for a few people who might have felt, you know, like, this article was, you know, did not speak to them, or it did not speak to their experience. We did hear from, you know, we heard from some white women, we heard from some men who said, you know, I experienced imposter syndrome to when it's really unfair, or like this doesn't apply, you're talking about just women or women of color. But that's not been my experience as a non-woman or a non-person of color. And sometimes I wish there was research to, to say that, you know, there's a direct link between this very specific phenomenon of feeling imposter syndrome, and how that relates to experiencing sexism and racism in the workplace. The reality is, the link exists. And I think for any of us, or anyone we've spoken to about this topic, even some of the experts that we interviewed, there is definitely a link that I think the academic research needs to catch up to, in all honesty. But I think the tipping point, if I really think about it, is indeed, Jodi-Ann and I often would talk about how we're invited to these events, or how we were expected to sort of address — both of us are professional speakers too — and often we would be asked to address this topic of, how do you overcome self-doubt? How do you overcome imposter syndrome? Or on the converse, how do you be more confident as a woman? And it was really grating against us, because I think both of us connected over the fact that we don't really identify with this term. And yet, we're supposed to keep addressing it in the various audiences, among the various especially female-identifying audiences we were supposed to talk to, or that conferences we were supposed to attend. And it was really grating at us, because what was a common experience that we both had, was experiencing sexism and racism in the workplace as women of color. And we really talked about how many of our feelings of not belonging or questioning ourselves were far more linked to those experiences of facing exclusion and bias, rather than this innate feeling that we were lacking, or that we were frauds or there was something in us that prevented us from reaching our full potential in the workplace. Sonia Paul 08:32 Right. I mean, I also very much feel like that, too. I mean, that was one of the things that spoke to me about this article is that I think sometimes I ask people for advice, and I hear "imposter syndrome." And it seems like it's the right thing to describe, but maybe not, actually, like… And so uh. Well first of all, before we get into further questioning, can we like preface the study that first cultivated the use of this term? And actually how it was described as a phenomenon before syndrome? What was that study? When did it come out? And what should we know about the context to help us understand maybe some of the nuances behind what they were describing as this imposter phenomenon among women? Jodi-Ann Burey 09:23 Yeah, I think that distinction between imposter phenomenon and imposter syndrome is really important, because we have the original study, and I want people to know that it is readily available online, you can read it just a couple pages long. And really understand kind of how this concept was birthed — it's one thing to have a study, and then how it's popularized and transformed at some point in our culture into a syndrome. I think that's the thing that we like to do to women, which is create medical diagnoses for the things that are happening in our lives. What I'll say about the original study of what struck me about the study when I first read it, you know, a couple of years ago was it just felt so outside of how I heard people actually talking about it. So the way people understood the term and what was bei
