# Imposter syndrome and why people become managers

- **Episode:** [177](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/177.md) (2025-03-06)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** imposter-syndrome, management, career
- **Time:** 17:48–22:22 (start 1068s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/177?t=1068](https://truthliesandwork.com/177?t=1068)

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[17:48] Al Elliott: You mentioned you had imposter syndrome. Does that ever go away as a manager?
[17:52] Vince Sanderson: Yes, I think it does, but it's maybe not as quick as people hope it will be. And maybe imposter syndrome is not necessarily a bad thing. There's an element of humility with it. I recognize that maybe I'm not as good as I need to be. And I don't think that's a bad thing because the opposite of imposter syndrome would be overconfident. Yeah. And therefore not willing to acknowledge your weaknesses, not willing to listen to other people, not willing to defer to expertise that people have. And I think that causes much more problems than a new manager feeling like an imposter, because I hope that it gave me a bit of impetus to work at developing credibility, developing my knowledge, developing my external confidence and my internal confidence. And so, yeah, I think it has disappeared, but not in every aspect. So there may be still things that I feel, oh, do you know what? I talked about that yesterday, but I don't think I've got a full grasp of it to the level that I want. I need to do some work on that. And that's what we want for any manager or leader is, as John Maxwell says, leadership isn't built in a day. It's built daily. And that's one of the core skills that we need from managers is the willingness to learn, whether that's going off and reading something or willingness, willingness to learn from other people. It makes the biggest difference
[19:23] Al Elliott: Before we move on to the 60 days, um, why do you think people want to become managers? It sounds to me like it's going to be a really tough job that I don't really want
[19:31] Vince Sanderson: Well, Gen Z are agreeing with you. There was a recent study done that showed that I can't remember the exact stats. Somebody will be able to pull it up. I'm sure there's something like 72% of Gen Z don't want to become managers anymore because they're seeing the stress that middle management is put under, the expectations that are unfair on people, then the perception of what managers do. So, you know, managers are having to do all of this, but then they're viewed as, as kind of like, oh, you're a manager in many people's views. And so I, why would anyone want to be a manager coming back to that question? Because it is an amazing job in the right culture, in the right organization. And it's a very hard job when the culture doesn't support managers and looks down on them and doesn't provide them the right training and the right resources. I mean, that's the biggest issue that people find. They get promoted. They're not entirely sure what to do. But then there's very high expectations without much guidance in order to do it. And they get met with, well, that's what I promised. That's what I hired you to work out. That's what I hired you to do. So why would people want to become a manager? If you care about people, if you like people, you like working with them, I think it really can hit the nail on the head for that. You can provide a lot of support. You can provide coaching. You can see people grow and develop. The counterargument to that is you are often supporting people through really difficult times. This is why I think it's so important that any manager, if you're managing 2, 3, 4, 20 people, you've got to like them. You've got to care about people. Otherwise it's going to feel like, and I hear this a lot on management training over the years, this feels like a babysitting job. And I think that's a really dangerous narrative to start telling yourself, because as soon as you start thinking that way, you will see every difficulty that someone faces as, oh, here we go, another thing that I've got to help resolve, another problem that's coming up. So you've got to care about people. And if you do, you might like management. If you like trying to find, improve efficiencies. Find quicker ways of doing things, find ways of reducing the resources needed to achieve the same goals. Management is really good for that as well. So I guess the simplest way of summing it up is, if you like people, if you like seeing people develop, if you like creating efficiency and finishing pieces of work off, if you're a good completer finisher, you like seeing projects turn into something. Making it happen, then management is a very rewarding job