How to overcome imposter syndrome as a new leader (and get your team’s buy-in fast)

Every new manager struggles with imposter feelings. Every new manager wonders, like, is my team going to see the value in what I’m doing here? And seasoned managers feel the same way, right? We recognize the responsibility that we have on our teams, and we want to make sure that we’re really doing the job the right way. At least I hope that we’re feeling that way. But it is the difference between bad managers and great ones that actually don’t let this crush them.

That don’t make this imposter feelings and lack of confidence right out of the gate affect how they’re leading. Because you know what? Your team is relying on you to show up from day one to help them achieve their goals. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. I’m Leah Garvin, and this is The New Manager Playbook, where I share tools, tips, and strategies to make managing your team the easiest part of your job. Because the old rules, they’re not working anymore.

The things that we tried in the past, it’s just not connected with our teams. So this is all about new strategies to help up your game so that you can lead with ease. Right? That’s what we’re here to do. And one of the big ones is when we feel the crushing weight of this responsibility. And we feel like, gosh, I just don’t want to mess up. And we’ve all been there. We’ve all gotten in our heads and we want to say the right things and do the right things.

So mixed feedback conversations may be awkward or we avoid conflict or all the other topics I talk about on this show. Now when it comes to imposter feelings, I want to share a story of a manager that I was coaching. And she came to me because she was going from a peer to manager situation, which I know I talk about a lot on this show. I’m not going to dive into that dynamic right now because I want to talk about imposter feelings.

But that’s one of those things that can actually exacerbate and turn up the dial on the imposter feelings. We look around, we say, these people knew me as their peer. They already are never going to respect me as their leader. I’m already on the back foot. So maybe that’s how you’re entering a situation where you’re going from peers to being someone a team’s manager. And that might happen even if you’re really seasoned and you’ve gone up the ranks and now you’re in that situation again, and you have all those new imposter feelings again.

Maybe you were promoted from manager to head of or to director or to VP, and you’re now having these imposter feelings again. So imposter feelings are only showing up when we’re new at something for the first time. It shows up when we’re in a new situation, there’s new expectations of us, all sorts of things. And I have heard it from the most seasoned leaders, some of the most respected folks that I worked with at Google and Apple and Microsoft, that the truth is imposter syndrome doesn’t really go away.

We just get better at managing it and not letting it stop us. So if you’re listening to this and thinking, well, what’s it going to take? It isn’t just this moment, but it’s knowing there’s that feeling just like they say with public speaking. It’s like in changing fear and terror into excitement, enthusiasm, the body reacts the same way. You’re labeling the feeling differently, and it has a different impact. That’s what we’re going to do with imposter syndrome, right?

The imposter, the feelings of like, I’m not confident, I’m not ready yet. And so this manager that I was working with, she was promoted from being in a peer group to managing the team. And she came to me and or she went to her boss and said, I need support, I need a coach. And so they brought me on. And in our session, she was saying, I just want people to respect me. I want them to like me.

We were friends before. I don’t want to lose all that. And it was all of these feelings of like what she didn’t want to do and what she was worried about. And I had to stop her and I said, hey, how do you want to come across? I can hear how you don’t want to come across. But when you focus on that, it’s like where the energy goes, whatever flows, like when we focus on something over and over and over, that becomes the reality.

So in her focusing on the negative, she was coming across not confident, kind of all over the place. And it was really unclear what what she wanted to show up as. And so I said, yeah, well, what would a great situation look like to you? How would how would you show up to your team and how would you communicate and how would you have hard conversations? And we started to kind of put together this vision of her as a leader.

And she started to see that, well, yeah, I mean, the reason that she was promoted was because she was fantastic at her job and she was already doing a lot of leadership in the organization. She was already mentoring newer folks and really stepping out into stretch opportunities and kind of volunteering for extra work. And the reason she was chosen to be manager was because she was completely, she was doing a great job. And so that’s what we started to tune into.

Like she deserved to be there. It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t just like, who cares who he was going to volunteer first for this. She was chosen. And I think even for us when, you know, we, it was, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like that. And we feel like really, like, I don’t know why I’m here. We still got to go back and rack our brain and identify the value that we do bring to a situation.

Because I know there is. And if you’re saying, I don’t know why I’m here, that’s the imposter feelings running the show. Ask your own manager, ask other folks, because some people are going to tell you an answer that’s going to really bolster your esteem in that moment and you’re going to need it. So with this client, we figured out, okay, so here’s the reasons that you’ve been chosen manager. Here’s the way that you want to really lead your team.

Well, let’s, let’s bring that forward and talk about the ways that you rebuild these relationships with your team members. And if you’re new to a team, let’s say you are hired on and you are become the manager from day one. This is stuff that you do right away with, with relationship building of your new direct reports. If you were on the team already, this is resetting that relationship. Again, I talk about this with the peer to manager shift.

You’re having to rebuild a new, entirely new relationship with folks because you haven’t been in this power differential. So that’s what this client did. And she, she went and she had, you know, conversations with each person and really, you know, talk through, you know, how she’s, what she’s really excited about as a leader on the team and what she’s looking forward to and how she’s trying to support folks through goals. And the team took her in immediately.

And what she realized was it didn’t need three years or this is not in your head. She said, well, like after three years, I’ll feel good at this. No, it took three conversations because when we show our team members that we, one, have confidence in ourselves, we are here for a reason and we’re here to help them accomplish their goals. They are going to get bought in. You might not get everybody. If someone thinks that you took their job, right, like, or they were next in line, they might be a little bit more hesitant, but that is the same strategy for how you bring some along slowly.

Maybe it takes a little bit more than three conversations, but they’ll get there. So I want to break down the concrete strategies that we did. And these are things I talk about in the new manager playbook, the book, right? It’s in the first, first chapter or two around, you know, setting this intention as a leader. That’s where we started, right? We said, okay, you know, how do I want to show up as a leader? And we talked through that.

And she thought about that. You know, I want to be direct. I want to be compassionate and I still want to have a fun vibe on the team. And when she set that vision for herself, we could talk through, okay, what does that look like when you have to have hard conversations? What does that look like when folks aren’t listening to you, when people are showing up late and you have to give hard feedback? And we talked through that.

So she understood what it meant, not just when things were going well, but when things weren’t going so well, that was step one. Step two, we got really clear on the reason she was in this job, the successes she’d had, the great job she was doing before as an individual contributor. These are things that it wasn’t just to tell the team. It was for her own inner belief, because we’ve got to believe, we’ve got to lean into it, we’ve got to own it.

Because people are not going to trust us if we don’t trust ourselves. They’re not going to feel confidence in us if we don’t feel confidence in ourselves. So we had to start with that. And again, we covered, okay. So she had been, you know, really, this was in a gym. She had been bringing a new client. She had been coaching the new trainer. She had been doing great with customers. She was the favorite trainer in the whole organization.

This was a really, she had a huge, solid track record. It was amazing, right? The last piece was not just going like, hey, new sheriff in town, I’m in charge, of course, right? It’s never going to work. But we said, okay, well, how is she going to re-enlist every team member? And this is a big one. Again, I talk about it in the book. Going to each team member and saying, hey, I’m really excited to be the manager here.

Those are some of the things that I bring to the table and why I’m excited. That’s where she shared some of those wins. But most importantly, I’m here because I really want to help you achieve your goals. So let’s talk about that. What are some of the goals that you have for yourself? And this is the same strategy that I used when I was at Google and I inherited a program management team. So I was not peers before, but it was a team that had like a high revolving door of managers.

This team had, I don’t know, three managers in one year or something like really, really, And they looked at me, we’re like, here we go again. I don’t need to talk to this person. What’s she going to give me? So I came in, I was on the back foot completely. And by doing this exact same strategy, talking to folks and saying, hey, this is what I’m excited to be bringing to the team. These are some of the ways that I lead and then saying, but you know what, I get that you’ve had a revolving door of managers.

I get that. You may not trust me right now, but here’s what I’m excited to do. And you know what? You’re all program managers. Well, I’ve been doing this job for 10 years and here’s the learnings that I’ve had. And I, I’m guessing, you know, at the level you’re at, you’re wanting to get to the next promotion. Here’s how I’m going to help you do that. And right away there was buy-in because people said, whoa, this is a little bit different.

This person is not just saying, you know, like making all these empty promises and this person’s also not just talking about themselves. They understand my situation. They called out the tough parts that are going on and they’re here to help me get there. I also didn’t promise I would stay forever. You know, I said, Hey, there’s nothing certain, but while I’m your manager, here’s the things that I can commit to doing. That’s the way we get buy-in.

Now, behind the scenes, I was really worried. I was thinking, gosh, this poor team, they’ve had so many managers. They’re going to hate me. They’re not going to talk to me. You know, I, I, there was all sorts of stuff that I was dealing with on the inside. The imposter feelings again, they might be present, but we don’t just go like, uh, with our team and think they’re going to be confident in us because when we come there with that solid footing, gosh, they see like, yes, thank you.

I want a leader. When we get a new manager, think about in the situations you’ve been in for yourself, you get a new manager or you join a new company or a new person gets promoted and they’re in charge and they’re like floundering or they don’t seem confident and they’re questioning everything. What do you say to yourself? Like, oh shit, my, my career is tanked. Like this is the worst thing. This person will never get me to where I want to go.

That’s what we think. Right? Of course. Because we’re thinking about our own journey. Now the opposite, when we think, gosh, this person, they’ve got their stuff together. They’re going to really help me. Now we are so much more bought in. And I say that even if there is some feelings of like, who, who are they to get the job or why this person, you will get that buy in, you will get over that hurdle so much faster.

Okay. Those are your steps. You got to really set that intention. Think about the reasons you’re here so that you can, you own those internally and you can show their team and then re-enlist all of your team members around that. And it will be so much easier, I assure you. And when my client did that overnight, it was, she was able to reach that team. When I did that strategy myself, I saw, gosh, these folks that were like, why do we even need one-on-ones with you?

If you’re going to be leaving next month, that’s day one. Overnight we’re meeting regularly. It was game changing. And I’m so excited for you to try this. Thank you.