# What leaders should do if someone on their team has it

- **Episode:** [10](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/10.md) (2022-11-03)
- **Type:** other
- **Tags:** leadership, team support
- **Time:** 33:24–37:39 (start 2004s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/10?t=2004](https://truthliesandwork.com/10?t=2004)

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[33:24] Leanne Elliott: Yes. And I think I, I know that I've kind of made a point, do you know, is it really imposter phenomenon? Is it something else? But I say that to you as a business leader. I don't say this to as an employee. If an employee came to me saying that they felt like they were imposter syndrome, felt I would say, that they were experiencing imposter syndrome or imposter phenomenon, I would take that at face value, and I would accept that that is the vocabulary that they're comfortable to use to describe how they're currently thinking and feeling about work. Um, I think there's a few, um, different interventions you can take, um, as a leader if you're, if you're experiencing this in your team or getting this feedback. And I think the first one is to look at some kind of psychometric, and specifically a 360 psychometric. So we talked a lot about this on a previous episode, um, Myers-Briggs, brilliant or bullshit. Um, it's a good one. Um, we talked a lot about psychometrics and how to scrutinize the, the quality of them, so I won't go into too much detail. But if we just take example, um, Clifford Strengths. So a lot of my clients will talk about doing strengths, some kind of strengths profiling within their team if they're experiencing, um, imposter phenomenon or Or think they are. Because sure, you know, if we do a psychometric that's going to call out our strengths, then that's going to give us confidence in what we're good at. The difficulty is with a lot of strengths profiles is their self-report. So self-report is when I answer questions about myself based on my perceptions of my strengths. And the tricky thing with that is that one, people aren't always necessarily very accurate at identifying their own strengths. Um, and 2, if I am genuinely experiencing imposter phenomenon, I'm probably not going to be in a space where I can really talk about my strengths comfortably and honestly. So to flip that, a 360 is going to assess, um, a person's strengths, um, from multiple viewpoints. So yes, I will answer questions about my perception of my, my strengths. I'll also ask my line manager. To complete the same questions. I'll ask my colleague, my peer, to complete those questions. I might ask a customer or one of my direct reports. And then we bring all of those, all that data together, we'll have a much fuller picture of not only what I believe my strengths are, but what the people around me in my work environment think. And 99% of the time, there is always a gap between what people think they're good at, what they're actually good at, what they think they're rubbish at, what they're actually their peers and colleagues think they're brilliant at. I think this kind of honest data and fuller picture is going to enable much more easily the conversations that's going to steer somebody through feelings of imposter phenomenon. Ultimately, if you do have that data, again, the ethical and right thing to do to have the most impact is to make sure that that person has access to coaching, whether it be just a follow-up feedback session to help digest the results, Or ideally at least kind of 3 to 5 sessions to put in some, put in place some, some great coping mechanisms
[36:29] Al Elliott: I love it. I love it. And I think the coaches, having a coach these days is just seems a lot more, you know, okay than it was maybe 10, 15 years ago. So I think it's brilliant because you talk to a lot of people who've got coaches and then coaches have got coaches. And, you know, when you, when you, when you get into it, they're probably the very successful people have got coaches, several different coaches who do several different things. So I really like now that coaching is a totally acceptable thing to do. So is there anything else that you think that you could, you could do to help someone on your team who's feeling this, this imposter syndrome?
[37:03] Leanne Elliott: I think there are a couple of things. I think the thing with doing a 360 and then follow-up coaching, it is an expensive intervention. I'd imagine you will be looking at least probably kind of £600 to £1,000 per employee to kind of go through that. Um, that kind of tool and then have kind of 3 to 4 coaching sessions as follow-up. So, it is an expensive solution. You can run a similar or a more informal 360 yourself, um, you know, by asking people to write down their strengths. And I think you actually have done this exercise, Al, where you then ask other people to email you what they believe your strengths are