Women in Leadership
Psychotherapist Dr. Zoe Shaw on the emotion hiding underneath the word we keep using, and what to do the moment you feel it.
Is Imposter Syndrome Actually Shame? with Dr. Zoe Shaw
Yes. Imposter syndrome at work is a form of shame, and reclassifying it changes what you do about it. Shame is not attached to what you did. It attaches to who you believe you are, and it has exactly one function: to make you hide.
That is the case Dr. Zoe Shaw made on this week's episode. Dr. Zoe Shaw is a licensed psychotherapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology and more than twenty years in practice, the author of Stronger in the Difficult Places, and a specialist in complex shame.
So if you have ever had the answer, said nothing, and spent the drive home wondering why, this is the explanation nobody handed you.
Imposter Syndrome at Work Is Shame, Not a Personality Trait
The difference between guilt and shame is the whole thing. Guilt attaches to behavior and hands you something to do about it. Shame attaches to identity and leaves you nowhere to go but into hiding.
Guilt tells you that you did something that broke your own moral code. There is a next move built into it. You can repair it, apologize, or decide not to do it again. Healthy guilt tells the truth, which Dr. Zoe says makes it good for us.
Guilt says I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong.
Shame offers no repair, because there is nothing to fix that is not you. So it does the only thing left.
The purpose of shame is to make us hide.
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Now put that next to the phrase you have been using about yourself for years.
Imposter syndrome is a type of shame that says, I don't belong, right? There's something fundamental about me, my knowledge, my brain, that I don't feel like I'm really worthy of this position that I'm in.
Dr. Zoe Shaw
The second half is where it gets uncomfortable. If imposter syndrome is shame, what is driving you is not the urge to prove yourself. It is the need to not be found out.
Hiding at Work Looks Like Hedging, Not Like Hiding
Hiding at work does not look like hiding. It looks like waiting for a better moment, letting someone else say the thing you already knew, and softening your sentence on its way out of your mouth. You are in the meeting, on time, prepared, with the agenda printed.
We hedge instead of just saying something declaratively, like this is happening, this is what I see, this is what it is. Most women, when they speak up, they will hedge.
Dr. Zoe Shaw
I think, maybe, possibly, I could be wrong but. Those words feel polite. What they do is hand the room permission to discount you before you finish the thought. Dr. Zoe pointed out that when men speak in a boardroom, the hedging is largely absent. They are simply clear.
She made a comparison I have not stopped thinking about. Men pay more for car insurance because, on average, they overestimate their own ability behind the wheel. That same overestimation walks into the office with them, and at work it pays off. Women do the opposite. We underestimate what we know, and it costs us in the same room. Sheila LaMothe described the same pattern from the other side when she talked about why talented women don't pursue leadership.
Then there is what happens when you do speak and nothing moves.
Women are like, well, I spoke up, nothing happened. I spoke up, nothing happened. I spoke up, nothing happened, so I'm just gonna give up.
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Her instruction is to keep speaking anyway, and to expect the silence rather than let it wound you. Because the silence is doing work on you. It is training you to stop.
How to Find Where You Are Hiding
You find your shame by following the concealment, not the feeling. Dr. Zoe gave four moves for doing it, and none of them require you to become a different person.
Shame lies, and shame asks you to hide. So you do not go looking for the feeling, you go looking for the concealment. Anywhere you catch yourself thinking I do not want them to find out, or I had better not show that, you have found it.
For one week, every time a negative feeling shows up, catch what you say to yourself and put it on paper. Not a diary entry. Just the words. You don't belong here. You always do this. Most women have never once seen their own internal script written out.
Leaving a bad situation does not mean leaving its messages behind. We pack them, carry them into the next job, and repeat them to ourselves in a place that never said them. Naming the origin lets you test whether it was ever true.
Talking alone is not enough and sitting still makes it worse. Take a walk and talk it out loud at the same time. If panic is rising before something hard, Dr. Zoe sends women into a bathroom stall to do ten jumping jacks and remind themselves that rejection is not going to kill them.
That last one sounds too simple to matter. It works because panic is your body being told it is in danger, and movement is how you answer the body in a language it understands.
Courage Comes First, Confidence Comes After
You do not get confident and then act. You act, and confidence is what you are left holding afterward. Dr. Zoe reordered something I have heard stated backwards my entire career.
I can help you with courage, which doesn't necessarily look like confidence. The confidence gets built when you do the courageous thing.
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Sit with the order. It is the byproduct, not the ticket in. Jacqueline Cooley said a version of the same thing when she warned that waiting until you check every box is how you get left behind.
You are not waiting to feel ready. You are waiting for something that only shows up after you go.
She applied it to a moment nearly every woman reading this has lived. You ask for the promotion or the early review, and you are told to wait until next year. Most of us treat that as the end of the conversation. Dr. Zoe treats it as the first draft of one.
Build the argument. Gather the reasons they should consider you now. Then go back and present it again.
The worst they can say is no, and you will still be okay.
Dr. Zoe Shaw
What I Want You to Take From This
Hiding feels like protection and it is not. It is what stands between you and every opportunity that requires another person to know who you are.
We turn the camera off. Skip the panel. Leave the post in drafts. And we tell ourselves it is because we are not polished enough yet.
We do not as humans expect perfection. In fact, what we have found is that people feel less connected to humans who look perfect than they do to humans who don't.
Dr. Zoe Shaw
You are far more critical of yourself than anyone in that room is of you. And the visibility you keep avoiding is the exact mechanism by which people decide they trust you.
One more thing, because it is the part I care about most. Courage gets you to open your mouth. What comes out of it is a separate skill, and it is the one I teach. You can be brave and still go unseen if the words do not land in the language leadership uses to make decisions. That distance between the impact you create and the impact leadership recognizes and rewards is The Articulation Gap.
So here is your move this week. Pick the one thing you have been putting off until you feel ready. Do the smallest version of it. One sentence in the meeting. One ask. Before you feel ready.
Key Takeaways
- Imposter syndrome at work is a type of shame, not a personality trait. Guilt says you did something wrong; shame says you are something wrong, and shame has one job, which is to make you hide.
- Hiding at work looks respectable. It looks like hedging your sentences, waiting for a better moment, and letting someone else say what you already knew.
- You find your shame by following the concealment. Anywhere you think I do not want them to find out, that is the spot.
- Write down the words you say to yourself for one week. Most women have never seen their own internal script on paper.
- Courage comes first. Confidence is what you are left holding afterward, which means waiting to feel ready is waiting on the wrong thing.
- When they say wait until next year, build the argument and go back. The worst answer is no, and you will still be fine.
Measure Your Impact
Courage gets you to speak. Knowing what to say is the next skill. Get your Free Impact Clarity Tool and translate the work you already do into the language leadership recognizes and rewards.
Measure Your Impact
About Dr. Zoe Shaw
Dr. Zoe Shaw is a licensed psychotherapist, author, and speaker with a doctorate in clinical psychology and more than twenty years in practice. She specializes in complex shame, the kind that attaches itself to identity rather than behavior, and works with women on untangling it from who they believe themselves to be.
She is the author of Stronger in the Difficult Places: Heal Your Relationship with Yourself by Untangling Complex Shame, and the host of the podcast by the same name. Her book walks a woman through recognizing how complex shame has shown up across her life and the steps to getting free of it.
Connect with Dr. Zoe on LinkedInAbout Rosie Zilinskas
I am the creator of The Articulation Gap for Workplace Communication and Leadership Visibility: the distance between the impact you create and the impact leadership recognizes and rewards. I am a keynote speaker, a Certified High-Performance Coach, and a former Fortune 500 executive vice president. After more than thirty years in corporate leadership, I built No Woman Left Behind to make sure the women doing the work get recognized and rewarded for it.
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