Ep 96 Career: Insights from the Design Imposter Syndrome Crazy One Conversations.

In this episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates recaps his new Crazy One Conversation series, where he spoke with 60 creatives from 10 countries and 20 U.S. cities to explore the realities of Design Imposter Syndrome. Stephen breaks down the fundamentals of Design Imposter Syndrome, uncovers the key factors driving its rise, and shares top insights, advice, and resources from these powerful conversations. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of imposter syndrome in the design world and practical strategies to overcome it, so you can thrive with confidence in your creative career.

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Transcript

Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody and welcome into the 96th episode of the crazy one podcast. As always, I'm your host Stephen Gates and this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership design and a whole lot more. Now as always, be sure to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform to get the latest episodes whenever those come out and you know what do me a favor whenever you're there take just a couple seconds and leave a review. As always, you can listen to all the shows get the show notes, get some crazy one propaganda and more content like this just head over to the crazy one calm. That's the word crazy and the number one calm and lastly, look if you got any questions you just want to keep up with my ever evolving and slightly crazy adventures. You can always follow me on Twitter Instagram, or you can follow the show and get more content like this either on LinkedIn or Facebook. Now you may have I saw some of you did I did like that one of those short little mini little advertising episode pain in the ass things. You're like, oh no episode, you're like crap. Not really. But the reason why I did that If you didn't download that episode, or if you skipped it, I get it. But what I did was last month, I decided I wanted to launch something new called crazy one conversations. And what these are, these are these free talks that I'm doing with sort of like a group of about 20 people and each conversation. It's free. They're online, we use zoom. But what I want to do is I just want to bring honestly just a group of strangers together to talk about a topic. And you know, I, for me, it's just part of it, like always talk about with the show, part of it is selfish, doing the show, doing talks on stage and stuff like that are great. But it's a one way conversation. This is me talking to you, and you listening, there's not a return of information. There's not a discussion, there's not anything like that. And I wanted to change that up because I think that, you know, for me, it's feeding a little bit too much into part of the problem where we aren't talking to each other. It's feeding a little bit too much into this problem where everybody's just sort of working and learning and doing things in isolation. The problem is though, You really can't have a conversation with a whole ton of people and have it be productive. And that was why so I did three of these 20 people conversations. And look, I know that 60 people is pretty small. But I think, you know, for me that's about the size to be able to have a good conversation to let everybody contribute, and to be able to do things like that. And the thing that I said was, look, if I put up all three conversations, and they all sell out, what I was gonna do is this, I was gonna take what we talked about, take the best insights, take the best resources and try to capture all that as best I could, and put it into an episode like this. And so I think it for me, as I started to think about, okay, if this is going to be a new series, what what like what is a good first topic and I think given the number of times, every week that people reach out to me to talk about design imposter syndrome. I thought, you know what, that would probably be a really, really good place to start. So this episode is honestly probably going to be a continuation of Episode 69. So 69 really covered the basics of design imposter syndrome. And I'll do a quick recap here in a second. But if you haven't listened to that episode, if imposter syndrome is something you struggle with, I would say, go back and listen to that first, because that's going to cover more of the foundational things, it'll go over the five different types of imposter syndrome in more depth. But that's what it is that I want to do today is to be able to share out what did we talk about to be able to share out and again, I'm gonna do it anonymously. I'm not naming names or saying anything specific or telling specific stories. But I felt like there was just some really good stuff that I hadn't thought about, there are some really good insights and some really good resources that came out of that, that I want to share. And I think that's what my hope is, and I'm going to continue to do so every month. I'm going to post up one of these topics, and then we're going to have three of these sorts of meetings. Now, the funny part, the ironic part is so the first topic is on design imposter syndrome. And the way that I handled, it couldn't have been a better example of how and why we all suffer from it. So just again, a quick recap of imposter syndrome is that, you know, this is a psychological phenomenon where you believe that you're inadequate, or you're a fraud, right? Like, despite probably a whole lot of evidence to the contrary. And it'll manifest itself in ways like if you consciously go back to change something in your work, not because you think it can improve but because you feel like you don't know if you've made the best choices, or you really just kind of feel like your work is a mess or you don't trust yourself or all these sorts of things that honestly creates this inner dialogue. And this connection to our work that just starts to we start to become incredibly anxious, and we become even more anxious when we think about sharing it whenever people are going to judge it commented and God forbid they're going to not like it. And it can look it can come in a lot of different forms depending on your background, your personality, the circumstances, it happens to be on all levels of their career. And it comes in a lot of different forms. And for me, it was only after I realized, like, Okay, I'm really excited, I'm going to put these conversations together. I want to get people together. I want to create these tribes like, this is going to be so cool. But so the funny part was, I said, Okay, look, I'm gonna do three of these, and 20 people each and instead of thinking, Okay, well, this is a popular subject, and maybe I actually know what it is that I'm doing whenever it comes to talking about this material. Or, you know, I don't know what emceeing are hosting a conversation like this. Well, no, you know, because the smart thing would have been to say, Okay, great, let's put up all three of these talks at once. But no, so for me, I'm like, I don't know if anybody's gonna show up. I don't know if anybody's gonna care about this. I don't know if anybody's gonna want to do this. So I put them up one at a time and of course each one sold out almost instantly, but I had to laugh at my honestly just how even like the quote unquote you know, which is such a bullshit thing right? Like the expert like like you look at me think, Okay, well, he must know what it is that he's doing. No, I don't, I suffer from it just as badly as anybody else. Because I was so insecure in thinking that if I do this, I don't know that there are 60 people anywhere in the world, they're gonna want to show up for one of these. And so next time, whenever we do this, for the second time, I'm gonna, you know, try and be a little braver and post them all at once. But it was just such such a funny and crystal example of, again, how everybody goes through this and that even to putting together a discussion about it, I suffered from it. But, you know, if you go back and you listen to Episode 69, they're really sort of five types of imposters. There's the perfectionist, the Superwoman, or Superman, the genius, the individualist and the expert. Now at any given time, the thing that I'll tell you is that we all suffer from one and honestly probably more than one of these. And the challenge also is that as you go on through your career, which ones you suffer from are probably going to change because you're going to change but it's So we got everybody together to have these discussions and I did it over like two or three days. And you know, one of the big reasons why I think imposter syndrome is running rampant is because we hardly ever have discussions around these insecurities. And so again, that internal loop that dialog builds up and it creates this imposter syndrome. I think even to me, that was sort of what I wanted to start with that because I realized, doing an episode about imposter syndrome is great, you can understand it intellectually, you can understand what it is. It doesn't give you a support system, it doesn't give you the chance to talk to anybody it doesn't. While it is informative. I'm not actually sure that it fixed anything. So again, I think that's why for me is I'm constantly sort of noodling through these problems and how do we make things better? I thought, you know what, that's why would have changed the format. But the biggest thing in this is that it became incredibly clear, is that everyone and like I said, Even me who was putting together Event suffers from this. It doesn't matter your level of experience or the stage of your career. So as we got these 60 people together, we had everyone from like high school students to a, you know, C level executives to professors and sort of everything in between. We had people from 10 different countries and 20 different cities inside the United States. Again, even recently, as I've been doing more research around this, I started to see how this has started to become something where, you know, I've read interviews with people like Tina Fey, and Meryl Streep and Ryan Reynolds and Lady Gaga and JLo, and Serena Williams and Tom Hanks, who've all started to speak out about how they suffer from this. And I think that is sort of the foundation of I think one of the things that we all discovered in this conversation is that we all have it, but we all assume nobody else does, right? Like somehow they have everything together. They have it figured out they you know, because of success because of status because of a position. Those people don't suffer from it and the reality is, is It's just not true. I came across a fantastic quote from Maya Angelou that I thought really sort of summed it up and she said, I've written 11 books. But each time I think, oh, they're gonna find out now, I've got to run a game on everybody, and they're gonna find me out. Again, this is one of the most respected thought and cultural leaders in the world who is again, after 11 bucks still going through this thing of kind of like, you know, look, I'm not sure if this is really gonna work. But that was, I think the thing that you could see was that, you know, everybody at their core had that same insecurity, but it was finding the support group finding the conversation and and for me, that was sort of what I hoped but what had come back was what you heard was a lot of people said, I've never had the chance to be able to talk about something like this. I've never had a space where I could admit something like this. I've never had a place where I could be vulnerable or do things like that. And so I think, then we started to look at, you know, what are the other themes, or what are the other things that we feel like are contributing To this problem, right? Like, where are we all getting this from? Because I think in some cases, if we're able to recognize the root of where this comes from, because we all have it built in, right, but certain things are gonna feed it, certain things are gonna make it worse and exacerbate it and build it up more. And some interesting themes, I think, emerged here. The first one, which I hadn't really thought about, but whenever somebody brought it up, it made a tremendous amount of sense, is just how broken and out of whack a lot of job descriptions are. Because the thing is, is that in many cases, you know, you get these wild job descriptions that seem to ask for every skill in the world, every application in the world every you know, again, like some of the warning signs, I think that you can look for is if you start to see words like ninja unicorn magic, fast pace, rock star, wear, multiple hats guru must know and then an insane list of like shutter applications or stuff like that, right? These are those sorts of things where I think in many cases, these are HR teams. Are these are creative leaders or just teams in general? Who are just trying to throw this big wide net? I think it's the inverse of a lot of times I look at portfolios, you know, my feedback will be, look, I don't begin to have a sense of who you are, you're become so generic and so diluted, I don't understand what you stand for. I think teams suffer from it in the same way. And this is the way one of the ways that manifests itself is in these just broken ridiculous, insane job descriptions. And I think especially people who were more at the beginning of their career seemed to be much more susceptible to this because they would read these just, you know, lengthy, insane things and go Look, I don't measure up I don't know all of this, I, you know, how on earth could I have this sort of experience, but you want a junior designer who knows 16 your different applications? So I think, you know, out of this, there were a couple things that were, I think, really important themes that we revisited a few times and all the conversations. One is and I think this can be extremely difficult. But it's the recognition that we can't or shouldn't have our value set by other people. Because the reality is, if you're not right for that job, that's fine. Or again, even if you want to apply for it, the best jobs you would hope are people who want your skill set, they want you for you, they want you for what it is, you know, not for you to become some caricature of yourself and become somebody else that you're not. And in many cases, especially as you go through that process, it's so tempting because you're asked to be so vulnerable, you're asked to be so rah and to kind of go through this process that is about judgment and acceptance and a lot of things that will really fire up your imposter syndrome. But the other part of that is, and it's interesting, I think, for the for some of us who were in these conversations, who probably were a little bit further on in our career, we start to also start to recognize that I think in your career, in your life, in a lot of things Seems to be this almost like invisible script that we feel like we should be following, right? Like you should graduate high school, you should graduate from college, you go out and you get a job, you get married, you have 2.5 kids, you get a car and a dog in the suburbs. And if you variate if you deviate from that script at all in your life, then all of a sudden, you're getting judged. And you know, ask all these weird questions like my wife, and I don't have kids. It is amazing to me how people will kind of, you know, like, it starts when we first got married, it was like, oh, what are you gonna have kids? It's like, Oh, we don't think we really want to. It's like, oh, uncomfortable silence. And then it goes a little bit a little further on and I think they get a little bit bolder, they be like, oh, is something wrong? Can you not have kids? It's like, No, we can we just that we just don't feel like that's for us. We feel like we're too selfish. To the point where it you know, as it started, get to an extreme. And just because of my insanely sarcastic humor, sometimes I would look at a few of our friends and just say, hey, like, Hey, you know, we're talking about next big life stages. And you know, and we're gonna grill each other on that, when are you going to die? Because that seems to be the next life stage in the script for you. And then the questions About the kids tend to stop. But that's the thing, right? And it's the same thing in your career is there seems to be this invisible script that to advance you have to go into leadership, you can't become an individual individual contributor to advance you have you have to do these certain things. Yet, I think whenever those of us who are a little bit further on in my career, and I will openly talk about this, my career path makes zero damn sense, right? Because I went from working for my father to going to college to being an advertising to be in a hotel company, a bank, and now like a SaaS software company. Nobody looks at that and says, Yes, that's the script to be successful. Right? It's only in hindsight. And I think that's the thing, right? Like success and genius, I think are only concepts that exist in hindsight. In the moment, you're supposed to be following this invisible script, but rarely in doing that, do you find any success? Because again, it's this sort of generic expectation. But nonetheless, that invisible script will yield a huge amount of pressure on people because you feel like that's what everybody else is trying to live. Up to so you should too. But that's the thing is that it just, it's not real. And, you know, again, whatever we're asking others are looking to others to set our value. And whenever we're looking to others to be able to basically try to stand out by being like everyone else, it's, it's becomes fairly easy to see when you look at it in that light, why that sort of path doesn't become successful, but also why it generates the amount of imposter syndrome that it does. Because we're chasing these invisible like caricature esque standards that shouldn't really exist. Now, I think because a part of this is that the problem is also exacerbated because, look, we're in the moment and I've said for the better part of a decade, you know, as creatives we have the ability to affect business in ways we've not seen since the last Industrial Revolution. You know, so we are being asked to be more creative, we're being asked to be more vulnerable. We're being asked to try to be more innovative and to reach out to other teams and to work with other people. Yet the environment in which that work is supposed to exist has not evolved one bit. Because pretty much no company that I work with and again, I travel around and talk and work with a lot have I found I think I have found to where they will deliberately create space to be able to discuss, teach, deal with support, any sort of thought around imposter syndrome, because for everybody else, it's just like, show up, do your work, be awesome, be happy. And again, you know, everything you do should be wonderful. And so, for so many of us, you tend to parade around with this mask that if somehow you are vulnerable, and somehow if you're realistic, you know, again, you'll be deemed as divisive or emotional or like, again, like all these other ridiculous things, because for companies and again, going back to the episode on trust, they like practical trust, they like come in, do your job, be on time, do what we tell you to and that's it, the the emotional side of it. That sort of emotional trust that becomes much much more difficult because it requires It's more of a human centered approach. It requires you to do things differently. But ultimately, I think that's sort of the feedback loop that they're struggling with right now is that that lack of trust in companies and in leadership is where a lot of people are struggling. This is why we're seeing the rise of the gig economy and people who just said, Look, I don't trust that companies have my best interests in mind anymore. And so I want to do my own thing, because the only person I trust is me, you'll see people who move around everyday, again, people are moving every two years because they don't trust their leadership. They don't trust their company. They don't feel like they're getting what they need out of that. And that's the thing is that, you know, there is very little structure or support for these sorts of conversations. And again, you know, we talked to people in these conversations, who dealt with who were from the absolute biggest brands in the world, to again, people who were in individual creative in a very small town, you know, again, sort of well off the beaten path, but the stories seem to be the same. And the other thing is that often, I think the thing that I very much recognize in my career But I think it also came out in these conversations is that in many cases, I don't think that we understand that as you go on in your career as you become more senior as you become more successful, whatever it is, in many cases, I think the imposter syndrome gets worse. Because in many cases, you know, look, if I'm a leader, I can't go talk to my team about what I'm struggling with or to be vulnerable or to tell them I feel like I'm a fraud. Who on you know, who wants to follow that person? Or it's like, yeah, I'm coming in to lead the team and I feel like a fraud. We just don't have constructs that allow that conversation to happen. The same way in many cases, as a leader, you can't go to your boss and say, hey, look, I really feel like I'm not sure what I'm really doing. I'm really insecure about something. Because again, you're going to be viewed as ineffective and weak because you need to again, be in this sort of like alpha movie, you know, bravado, chest beating sort of thing as a concept of leadership. But then also, I think we will tend to isolate ourselves. This is why I did the episode around needing a support system was Because as you grow, you've achieved that position you've worked for. So you tend to hustle and network less, because you're a little bit higher up on the hill, you aren't quite as hungry for them as what it was before. So just even your motivation in the way you attack problems changes so that you tend to put yourself into isolation more. But that and then I think this is again, why it becomes exponentially worse. Because as you are looked at as a leader, as you're looked at, as the person who's supposed to have the answers, as you're looked at the person who again, is needs to be out in front, yet at that same point, you have probably more anxiety because you know, if you came into the industry as a designer, and you're now leading completely different skill set, you probably did not have anybody who mentored you on what that is you're just sort of figuring out as you go along. The people in your support system is smaller than maybe it's ever been in your career. So again, there were forces that aligned to these sort of things and I think you know, this is a topic I really wanted to, to get into because again for the design leaders I talked to about ballpark 70% are in therapy. And I think this is why, because I think, you know, we continue the expectations grow the support centers, the system diminishes. But that nagging voice actually only gets louder because the thing that got me into the industry, my talent, right, like my design talent is now not what I am using every day to be successful. I need to do something different to be a leader. So that those things really sort of coalesce into this perfect storm, around imposter syndrome that I again, I think makes it disproportionately worse in many cases for leaders. And I've never heard anybody talk about this. This was sort of the first time I heard a really open and raw conversation. Any more open forum. I have this conversation a lot, one on one, but never in a forum like this. But I think these are the sort of things out of the discussion that we feel like are kind of like the factors that are affecting this that are sort of causing this explosion that this rampant. I don't know why this rampant moment where we all have such amazing opportunity but such a minute In security. And so, again, like most times, whenever I do this, understanding the factors that lead to it are good. But I think also really wanting to capture what are the things that people were doing? What are the things that they're doing to fight it? What were the things they would tell themselves, or those sort of different techniques, advice, insights, whatever those were, that were working for them. And there were some really great ones that I'd never thought of, there's actually a number of things that I've started doing personally, because I thought, you know what, that's a really good idea. And I haven't thought about that. And that's why I said, I think that's the point of all this is just how do we create spaces to be vulnerable and to learn and to not put on again, that mask and that charade, some of the best advice, I think, came from a lot of different places. You know, it was the first off just to sort of what we've already talked about, which was to know and acknowledge that this sort of feeling and that sort of insecurity is normal that we all have it that you know, it doesn't make you different or less or you're not alone in That, that everybody, everybody who we talked to everybody who ever been around, you know, goes through this. There is small solace that is taken in that I know, right? Because you can it's the same thing where it's like, you know, you're having a bad day and somebody is like, Well, you know, somebody in some other part of the world has so much worse than you. It's like, yeah, that look, there's always somebody who has it worse, and but that I take very little comfort or solace in the fact that it could be worse. But I think it's just it is that reminder that again, it's not that it could be worse, but it is something that everyone is going through. I think a lot of it and this is something that I've changed about myself over the last couple of years, is to look at the lens in which you also look at yourself and to remind yourself of all the things you've actually accomplished. I suffered from this thing where what I would do is I would always focus on what I hadn't done. I would focus on where I came up short. And I started to realize it was a very destructive mindset for me to be in because all I would see is what I hadn't Done. And so even just that simple shift of just saying, look, this is who I am, this is what it is that I've done. This is what it is I'm good at. It really led me to honestly just sort of being able to show up as myself much more to be much more accepting of myself to be much more forgiving of myself as opposed to so that it wasn't that constant mindset of it wasn't good enough. Like I didn't lose the hustle. I haven't lost the hunger. I haven't lost the talent to be able to do what it is that I do. It's just how do I show up and support myself? How do I understand and take confidence in what I do that I just needed to make that mindset because I really realized that I was just becoming self destructive, that constantly focusing on the negative, but it's also to the fact that, you know, look, this is a two part problem. There's an inner monologue that goes on here. But I think the other thing is that in the moments whenever you have done something, well, whenever somebody does want to give you praise, it's to hear and accept the good things because I think too often we blow off compliments because we think it's like that. polite small talk or that it isn't sincere or that, you know, somebody is just saying it right? Because it's very easy to rationalize and sort of let that internal dialogue that internal little demon when and just sort of brush it off. But I think that there are those moments and it is one of the most. I don't know what it's the piece of advice that I think has affected me the most over the course of my career. And it was such a little thing. One of the best people I ever worked with was the head of digital whenever I was at Starwood. And it was it one of the first times that we did any work with Apple, right, and it was so cool. It was so different, but I remember, you know, for myself, and, and for the gentleman who sort of ran the engineering with me, he just sort of stopped us at one of these moments and put his arm around me before we were going to set off on one of our adventures with them. And he said, Look, I just want you to make sure that you take time. And remember this, you know, remember what this felt like remember how good this was? Remember, you know all the things that got us here. And to hold on to that, because whenever it gets hard where we have to struggle, these are the moments and these are the memories we're going to want because it's just so easy to miss them. Because in those moments, you concentrate on how it could have been better or whatever it was. And just that little thing of as I've gone through my life, whenever I'm in one of those moments that it is doing something cooler, it is something special, to just stop and recognize it to give yourself the moment to be proud of yourself. And to be able to do that because without it, I realized how many of those moments I had missed out on in my career, because I was so focused on again, how it could have been better, but to accept those good things. Another thing that somebody brought up that was a really good idea was that again, it really helps your imposter syndrome to teach because it helps you see and appreciate just how much you've learned and accomplished. And teaching could be helping somebody out on LinkedIn. It could be teaching a class it could be going to a meet up it could be it can come in a lot of different forms. It doesn't mean that it needs to be a big, you know, formal you go to a university, you can teach and help and do things in a lot of different ways if you're able to sort of willing to put yourself out there. And that, again, I think that probably is one of the reasons why even for me without understanding it, you know, how the public speaking and doing this podcast has helped me fight my imposter syndrome? Because, you know, I think it's made it better and worse, because in some ways, I feel like, you know, you are able to understand that you do understand certain things and you're able to share it, but then it makes it a little bit worse, because then you also feel like you should be the expert from this stuff, and you should not be suffering from it the way that you do. But I still think at the end of the day, it really does help a lot. Another big part of it that I think was a recurring theme, have to get people who will keep you honest, who will be honest with you, and who you can check in with, right, this goes back to again, the episode did around a support system, but how isolation is really the enemy for all of us, that getting on our own head, not having somebody to talk to Not having a place to have these conversations can become really self destructive, because we just wind ourselves up because that was one of the things that I heard time and time again, as people went through this was how often they had created a narrative for what they thought might happen. Not that it actually did happen, but how they thought somebody would judge them how they thought somebody would think about them, how they thought, all these things were going to happen whenever they actually had no real idea if that was going to be the case or not. And in some cases, it wasn't but the vast majority of the times it was not, and that we were stopping ourselves because of this narrative that we had created. And that by again, doing this and having people who can support us to push us to be honest with us, that it allows us to overcome a lot of those narratives and to be based a bit more in reality. And what I said before about, you know, just stopping to appreciate it I think, you know, there definitely is a theme about sort of being generous to your creative self of, you know, doing side projects are having hobbies or if you're really stressed out like take a mental health day, go out and have a good meal and go to museum. Do something thing to be able to understand your creativity and your mentality is fragile that again, a lot of these insecurities are going to creep in. And it's sometimes at least for me, I know that's the case, I can be my most creative and I can be my most confident, whatever actually step away from something, to get some perspective on it to get a little space from it to see the forest for the trees and not be so immersed in what's going on. But a lot of this is and I think this is where I'll give credit to every single person that attended i think it's it's for everybody that's listening to this show, who's trying to push themselves to do something different is that for a lot of this stuff, it is about your willingness to be vulnerable. In this case, like I said, I applaud this group of 60 people who came together as strangers and quickly, you know, came through to be astonishingly honest, astonishingly vulnerable to tell stories about what they had been through what they had learned to a group of complete strangers. And again, I think whenever I put this together, that was what I had hoped this would be. It's what I'd seen it happen in other places, but often there was some kind connection there, right? Like I would do a dinner in a city. So maybe there's a locality, maybe it was the physicality of actually being there, I wasn't sure if this was going to work. But that, that willingness to put yourself out there and to be honest and vulnerable about what that is. And so I said, for everybody who participated in this for everybody who writes me that said that they've tried to push themselves to do something different. It's just you guys are my fucking heroes, like, because it's just that ability to do that, that I think makes all the difference in the world. Another big theme that came out of this, which again, is something that I've now started doing has been meditation. This was a big theme across all the conversations with a number of people who brought up saying that they had started meditation, some of them used apps, some of them just would sit quietly and kind of be bored or think. But it was again, giving yourself that time to be quiet, to be thoughtful to be to be somebody who can be reflective of these things, that a lot of people who felt like they were making progress against this seemed to be a big theme that they came back to again and again, was that ability to find some stillness. A little bit of quiet. And as a leader, I think the other thing that definitely came out of a lot of this is that if you lead a team, that it is important for you to think about how do you create a space for imposter syndrome to be discussed, not to be judged not to be solved, again, not to sort of create these unrealistic expectations. Because again, the thing that I've learned in teaching a lot of teams and working with a lot of different people, it isn't about telling people what to do, or giving them the answers. It's about creating a space to have these discussions to take the power and the fear out of a topic like this, to let people have the revelations of what they're going through and define their tribe of people who can support them. But as a leader, it's about how do you create the space for that to happen? How do you create the entrance into the conversation? How do you put the information out there so that people can start to crystallize and understand what it is they're going through many of the talks that I do at a lot of different companies, and I'll tell them right it's not about giving them answers. It's about hopefully crystallizing some of the things that have been in front of them that maybe they haven't recognized. And it's about creating a space for them to be able to go back and have the discussion now with the recognition of what is actually driving the behavior and some of the issues they're dealing with, to be able to start to have conversations about that and to bring transparency to it. Now, one of the exercises that I've done, and again, I will post this in the show notes, is to create what really looks like a spider chart. So it's just it's like a circle that has all five of the little imposters kind of dotted around the outside of it. Now, what I'll often do for this to be really effective is that I'll ask somebody to fill it out for themselves. What do you think you suffer from and it will sort of be like a blob chart, right, like some a little bit bigger, something a little bit smaller, but you just sort of make like this organic shape. And then the other thing that I'll do is that then I'll ask their boss or their team or their peers to fill one out as well on their behalf. Because what I want to do is I want to be able to sit down and understand that whenever it comes to any of these challenges, we are almost always our own biggest blind spots. Because what you'll see is that look, maybe you beat yourself up too much about something, maybe you don't give yourself enough credit for something. Maybe you have it in places that you didn't even know about. But what I'm really wanting to do is to be able to try to raise people's self awareness because if the chart that you make and the chart that your peers or boss makes are extremely close, your self awareness is probably actually pretty good. But if they're extremely far apart, then there's probably a conversation needs to happen and a little bit of introspection about what is the difference between the way you view yourself and the way everybody else views you. Because again, there is something in that there and we can never truly see ourselves. Because again of cognitive bias because of imposter syndrome because of so many different things. The way that we are to the world and the way that we think we are, can be different it can be distorted, and again, trying to get the understanding of that and get the dual perspective of it. So many times when I work with leaders and teams Looking at these two points, and being able to compare them creates such amazing breakthroughs and insights. And so again, I'll post that. It's just a simple eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, you can print it out. And again, have people do it. It's an exercise you can do that I found to be incredibly fruitful. Because again, it allows you to sort of give shape to it and to discuss it. It's not about judgment. It's not about, again, doing anything else. But just simply having a conversation saying, look, I think I really struggle with this and maybe hearing your peers say, you know, what, look, I think you're actually really fantastic that or, you know what, I didn't know you were struggling with that. And you know, what, I've been able to sort of make a breakthrough there. So let me help you. Let me give you some advice. Let me be the person you can then be part of your support system. But again, it creates that so critical space for that conversation to happen. Now, there are two other things that I'm gonna put in the show notes as well. One was a book that actually came up twice that I have not had the chance to read yet, so I will recommend it with the asterisk. It's called the proximity principle the proven strategy that will Lead, that will lead to a career you love. And the other one was one of the attendees created what I thought was an absolutely fantastic Google Doc that I'll put up there to share, which was an incredibly, really rich and thorough collection of great resources around imposter syndrome, around articles around books around a number of different things. And like I said, I, you know, I have been able to try to make it through most of them. This is not something that I put together, but I felt like it was a really good resource. But, but that's the thing, right? Is that, for me, it was these conversations were so fantastic. I think if they if they showed nothing else, it's that we all struggle with this. So we aren't alone in having this sort of problem. Right. And, and this, it's only really a problem. If you don't work at it. Confidence is going to come and go, right. But I think if you believe you can be a great creative if you're willing to do the work to not give up to be You know, self analytical, not self critical, self analytical, and understand that that imposter syndrome is always going to be there. But to recognize it, to see it for what it is to not give it the power that you had in the past, it's gonna be less and less a part of your life, and you're going to have more and more of the tools that you need to be able to fight it. But so, I'd also be curious that, you know, are there things in listening to this that you have tried that you have done that there are things you know, that that you struggled with and overcome as it comes to this could be books could be resources could be anything like that, like, if you've got that stuff, reach out to me, because I'd love to be able to compile that put that into an article for medium or LinkedIn are something to be able to kind of start to compile on the back of these conversations, these sort of resource kits that we can use to be able to put together you know, this really good information of recommended books and reading, so that we all can come together, make it a two way dialogue, make it a way we can support each other and support people who may never even meet where people you may never even know, but know that you're going to have an impact on them. Because I think that that's As I'm sort of trying to broaden the focus of the show, I'm trying to do these new things is to mix up the format is to make sure that that again, we can share. And this is a two way conversation, because I think whenever we do that, that's when we make such incredible growth. That's when we make such incredible strides whenever we're there for each other. Because I think that, to me, has been the thing that has been so motivating, empowering, humbling has been to be able to travel around and talk to all these different people to do this show and to hear about, again, how it's impacted people who I've never met. But again, to be able to try to broaden that power. So it's not just something that I'm able to experience we all can. So if you've got those things, you've got those insights, those stories, whatever that is, look, reach out to me, send it to me on you know, LinkedIn, send it on Twitter, send it on, you know, don't do Instagram, you can go to my site, right, like, email me through there. Just find a way right, like reach out with whatever that is because I'd love to be able to talk to you and be able to kind of understand what you're going through through that. So, next month, we are we're going to be kicking off three new conversations. Next month, it looks like from the the poll that I did online, they're going to be focused on the ROI of design. Again, one of the other big topics that comes up a lot is how do we actually measure the impact of design and creativity on business. So that's what we're gonna focus on next month, and probably within about another week or so if you're listening to the show in real time, those dates are going to go up again, I try to spread them out well enough, again, knowing that we have people who tuned in from all over the world to try to find spots that work for the West Coast, East Coast, the United States, Europe, read people into Africa, Asia and other places like that. So again, you're not hopefully having to get up at like, somebody in Greece, I think got up at like one in the morning to be a part of the call. Try not to have that happen again, but like I said, it it was incredibly cool thing and I'm definitely gonna keep rolling on with this. And like I said, it's totally free. Just go in, grab a ticket show up for it. They've really been great. But hey, hopefully this is useful if it is, as always subscribe to the podcast, leave a review. You can find out more about this show. Like I said, get the show notes for all this stuff that I've talked about all these different resources. Just hit up the crazy one calm, it's the crazy and the number one calm following me on social media, you get updates new content asked questions, you can follow the show on LinkedIn or Facebook, it's on both of those. Now, as always, everybody down and legal wants me to remind you that the views here are just my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. And that finally I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time. I know that time is truly the only real luxury any of us have, was incredibly humbled. You want to spend any of it listening to me. So hey, go out take on that imposter syndrome share what it is you're doing with me so we can we can start to put together these great resources and as always, stay crazy