 On behalf of womenintechnology.co.uk and BCSWomen, we'd like to say thank you to everyone who came along to 'Conquering the Imposter Syndrome' on Thursday 29th April. The event had an excellent turnout which was 100% female apart from the photographer and the audio recordist and the evening had a buzzy and lively feel.
Our keynote speaker was Deena Gornick, an executive coach with 20+ years experience of working with people help them get what they want out of both their working and personal lives. She has an extensive background in psychotherapy and NLP, is a member of the International Coaching Federation and has worked with companies such as Red Bull, Carphone Warehouse, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, Glaxo Smith Kline and HP.
The 'Imposter Syndrome' can be described as the nagging doubt that even though to everyone else in the office you seem supremely successful and capable, you are convinced that you’re just bluffing your way through and that any moment now you’ll be found out. Deena's belief is that confidence is a behaviour, rather than a feeling and that both women and men have a common bottom line fear that they will 'get found out'.
The first group exercise started with Deena asking the audience to consider the following questions: Do you sometimes stay silent lest others, more smart than you, find you out? Do you deflect praise? Do you procrastinate for fear of making terrible mistakes? Do you have trouble taking credit for your accomplishments? Do you feel your success is down to luck, fate, or fluke? The majority of the room answered yes to at least three of these questions.
We then looked at the 'locus of control' and Deena highlighted that women often have an internal inability to accept and celebrate their achievements whereas men generally have lots of internal control over their lives (exceptions to the rule obviously exist).
The next section of the event involved drawing a diagram of how the audience views their team. Most attendees drew a 'web of inclusion' with them (or their manager) in the middle which is different to the traditional (male) leadership models which is more of a triangular shape with the leader or manager at the top.The 'web of inclusion' leadership model is new and as such women should view themselves as pioneers.
We then considered how powerful beliefs are and moved onto an exercise to help the group learn to accept praise - to learn not to deflect it (e.g. look down) but to look the person in the eye and say "thank you". There was a short piece at the end on the elevator pitch helping the attendees to fine tune what they would say and to become better at highlighting their achievements.
Deena closed with a few final thoughts - without fear there is no such thing as courage, be compassionate with yourself, let go of beliefs that no longer serve you and don't hang around with people who don't praise you.
The slides from the event can be found here.
Deena's handouts (including recommended reading list) from the event can be found here.
You can listen to the audio from the event using the player below:
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or click here to download the audio file.
**Special Coaching Offer from Deena Gornick** - 50% discount on 1:1 sessions
Deena's usual non-corporate fee is £150 plus VAT per session (each session is an hour and a half) but as a special offer connected to the "Conquering the Imposter Syndrome" event, Deena is offering sessions for £75 + VAT. This would be for a recommended minimum of six sessions (in order to really make an impact in moving your career forward) but the absolute minimum would be four sessions and the first session must be booked by Monday 7th June 2010.
Please contact Deena for more information and to book: deena@deenagornick.com and 07958 770 031 / www.deenagornick.com
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