Copyright forbes
Imposter syndrome reflects broken workplace cultures, not broken people, and leaders must fix the environment. Imposter syndrome is everywhere. Three-quarters of business leaders admit to feeling like frauds despite their accomplishments. Students, mid-level managers, and CEOs all report the same nagging fear: that they'll be exposed as not good enough. The conventional wisdom? It's a personal problem—a confidence gap, a mindset issue, something to fix within yourself. But what if we've been looking at this all wrong? When imposter syndrome affects people at all levels, it becomes a pattern—one that points to broken systems, not broken people. Indeed, recent research confirms that imposter syndrome isn’t necessarily an individual-level challenge. It’s often a response to toxic workplace environments — and the costs can be substantial. Imposter syndrome drives burnout as employees overwork to meet unrealistic goals, creating a cycle that makes high performers leave. The hidden costs pile up: less innovation, slower decisions, higher turnover, and wasted spending on individual coaching that misses the real problem. Three Ways Your Culture Creates Imposter Syndrome Researchers have identified three levels at which organizational culture creates imposter syndrome: MORE FOR YOU Interpersonal: Your Day-to-Day Experience Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson’s decades of research on psychological safety shows that when teams lack the shared belief that it’s safe to take risks, imposter syndrome flourishes. In psychologically unsafe environments, people can't admit mistakes, ask for help, share ideas, or voice concerns. Research shows that how people are treated by colleagues conveys whether others see them as persons of value and worth. These everyday interactions guide your appraisals of your own self-worth. When you're consistently treated as though your contributions matter less, you begin to feel like an imposter. You internalize others' treatment of you as evidence of your actual worth. Representational: Who You See in Leadership When certain groups are consistently underrepresented in senior roles or overlooked for advancement, it sends a clear message about who truly matters in the organization. This isn't coincidental: research shows imposter syndrome disproportionately affects women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups. When you rarely see people like you in positions of authority, when your ideas are attributed to others, or when you work twice as hard for half the recognition, doubting yourself isn't a personal failing; it's a rational response to systemic patterns. Ideological: Your Unspoken Rules This deepest level of imposter syndrome culture involves the invisible beliefs governing your workplace. Some examples might include: 24/7 availability as a badge of honor, hustle culture that glorifies burnout, and the belief that only individual achievement matters. When organizations set perpetually unreachable standards, everyone becomes an imposter. What Leaders Can Do Now If imposter syndrome is widespread in your organization, stop sending people to confidence workshops and start examining your culture. Instead, focus on building genuine psychological safety, and this isn't about trust falls and feel-good exercises. It means leaders publicly admitting mistakes, rewarding people who speak up with uncomfortable truths, and ensuring that taking calculated risks doesn't come with career penalties. When your team sees that vulnerability and honesty are valued rather than punished, the foundation shifts. Next, audit your recognition and promotion patterns with brutal honesty. Who gets visibility? Whose ideas get credited? Who gets the plum assignments? If you're seeing patterns based on demographics rather than merit, you've found your problem. Address it with transparent criteria, diverse interview panels, and sponsorship programs that give underrepresented talent the same access to opportunity that others have always had. Finally, interrogate your ideologies—that gap between what you say you value and what you actually reward. If you promote people who send emails at midnight but claim to value work-life balance, everyone knows which message is the real one. Make sustainable performance, collaboration, and continuous learning your true measures of success, not performative overwork. Measure what matters: track psychological safety scores, promotion rates across demographics, and exit interview data about why people really leave. A Path Forward The solution isn’t more individual resilience training. Rather, it's building workplaces where competence is recognized, mistakes are learning opportunities, diverse talent is genuinely valued, and success doesn't require sacrificing your wellbeing. When executives fear being exposed as frauds, and when your highest performers are burning out to prove themselves, the problem isn't in their heads. It's in your culture. And culture is something leaders can change. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
