#8 Imposter Syndrome and burden of luck
How over attributing your accomplishments to luck diminishes your abilities and likelihood to find the right environment to succeed.
It’s almost New Year’s and I need a drink. Skip the story and take me to the takeaways.
Part 3 of 4 in the Imposter Syndrome Series
Part 2 - Being able to identify what you like to do and how you succeed is a strength, not a weakness.
Part 3 - You feed your imposter syndrome monster when you over-attribute your success to luck.
Takeaways
Over-attributing luck diminishes our self-confidence and ability to find our ideal state.
Luck is important but the work we put in is what prepares us to maximize its impact.
Learn to recognize and celebrate the unique skills you bring to others and let go of what you don’t have or want to offer.
Introduction
From the moment we are conceived in the womb, luck plays an important part in our future. Luck plays a role in determining if you have genetic or developmental anomalies. It plays a role in whether you inherit ADHD from a parent or are born with it through other means. There are so many ways that things can go wrong when trying to have a child that it is overwhelming. I’ve personally met children with disorders that I hope you never hear about. I didn’t appreciate the phrase “I just want the kid to be born healthy” until I had my own child. Luck can be the bringer of greatness or the lynchpin to your failure. When you have imposter syndrome or ADHD however, luck can be the scapegoat of your success. You can overattribute successful achievements such as a promotion or product release to luck or happenstance over your own contributions. Dismissing your own work and abilities. Doing so feeds your imposter syndrome monster’s self-doubt that when you do succeed, it wasn’t because of you and you didn’t deserve to succeed. It was because of luck or some external factor beyond your control. Having this mindset holds you back from quieting your imposter syndrome and finding the ideal environment to be you.
Silly insecurities and finding my place on stage
When you’re one of the few PMs in your domain or in your company, it’s easy to dismiss your accomplishments. I was fortunate to become a PM at Amazon. For the first 3.5 years of my career, I was the only PM on my team. There were lots of other PMs within my organization of Transportation but I was the only PM of business intelligence. One of the few in Amazon, in fact. I learned this after I was wondering why I had been able to speak 3 times at Analyticon, Amazon’s internal data conference. It is the largest internal tech conference in Amazon and it is an honor for someone to be selected to speak. Turns out I was of the few PMs in BI based on my conversations with other attendees. Old me would say, I only got picked because no one else submitted talks, not that I had a good story to tell. My selection was due to default since no other PMs applied, and because I had a worthy story to tell. My imposter syndrome monster stood on stage with me, hoping that no one would ask a question that might unravel the fraud I was. What should be proud accomplishments were tinged with shame and embarrassment that someone underqualified like myself delivered talks on a global stage.
Imposter syndrome and ADHD aware me acknowledges I was on stage due to my work and a dash of luck. Luck that there weren’t many PMs of BI at Amazon at the time and my experience differentiated me from the tens of thousands of PMs at Amazon. Luck that in my first year, I was initially rejected for a 50-minute talk but was offered a 25-minute talk after another speaker dropped out last minute. Luck that I happened to meet my future friend and Analyticon committee member June during the conference. Thanks for coming up to meet me that day June.
I now can acknowledge that I put in the courage to apply and the work to deliver those talks. I now recognize I was chosen to speak because I chose topics that no one else was addressing and which had widespread need. That my ideas and experiences brought value to others. I wasn’t there a throwaway slot. I was there because earned the right to do so with the hours I put into building my products. Luck had a part to play but the rest was my work. So shut up imposter syndrome monster, this was my spotlight.
How nobody cared about the thing I was most insecure about
Changing my mindset about the skills and experiences I brought to the conference helped me be ready to eventually lead the conference. Through some luck and my work organizing Amazon’s VizContest, a global data visualization contest, I met the organizers and joined the planning committee. I was very intimidated and insecure when I joined. They represented some of the best in BI, data science, and data engineering at Amazon. And then were was me, a lowly non-technical PM. What the hell was I doing here? Lucky for me, the people on the committee were some of the smartest, most hard-working, and kindest people I’ve met.
I started off on the committee with a strong insecurity with something that I now look back and laugh about. I’ve always been insecure with some of my technical skills, especially SQL (a language used to manipulate data). I understand how it operates but I don’t write it well. Everyone I worked with at Tableau and Amazon knew how to write SQL proficiently. Not this guy though. I rarely used it, even when working at Tableau or at Amazon as a BI engineer. It became a cornerstone of my imposter syndrome. How could a PM of BI and data visualization expert not be able to write SQL? (My secret is I’m good at Tableau) Now take the insecurity and throw it into a room of 10-15 analytics and data engineers who were some of Amazon’s best and knew how to write SQL very well. I felt like I didn’t deserve to be part of the group and my secret SQL shame anchored me down.
Guess how much SQL writing is required to organize this technical conference? None. Lots of simple excel formulas though.
Guess how many times the committee asked me about my SQL skills? Zero.
The level of shit given about my SQL skills? Zero.
I had made my own prison out of an insecurity that didn’t matter in this situation. In the beginning, my imposter syndrome prevented me from fully connecting with my peers and the work we were doing. It made me less hesitant to provide suggestions or direction because of the fear it would be laughed at. It’s hard to have fun when you think that someone is gonna out you as a fraud any minute.
What people cared about was the thing I knew well and enjoyed
What I did bring to the planning committee was 9 years of event planning and execution. I brought my experience from owning a beer festival, the Art of Beer Invitational, and running two of my own Amazon internal data conferences, TabCon and DataViz Expo. These were the skills and experiences my colleagues needed to run the event, not SQL. I learned to recognize and celebrate the unique skills I brought to the group and let go of what I didn’t have to offer. By letting go of what I couldn’t or didn’t want to do, I was able to reduce my ADHD anxiety and self-doubt. That allowed me to use my ADHD hyper-focus power to work on the parts of the conference that engaged me. I learned to trust in myself, trust in my peers, delegate tasks, and have fun. Was what we were doing perfect? No, but we did it together and we had fun.
Analyticon taught me I love community building. It could be in running a conference or building new products. My ADHD brain loves talking to different people and connecting them to others. Rallying a group of people together and helping people tell their stories on a stage brings me great satisfaction. It’s one of the reasons why I identify with being a growth or design PM. It’s a role where I help people succeed in their goals be it individually or on a mass scale. Knowing that’s what I enjoy, helps evaluate my future roles. It gives me a grounding and confidence to find what makes me happy. It also proved to me it is possible to find the right fit for me. It might not last forever, but it is possible.
Conclusion
Analyticon was a situation in which I had found my “right fit” and quieted my imposter syndrome. An environment in which I loved what I was doing and I could be myself. I wouldn’t have been able to have this experience had I not let go of my ADHD insecurity or imposter syndrome. I probably would have stayed with a limited role and underperformed at it. Always worrying if I did more I’d fuck up and be. I wouldn’t have formed meaningful connections with people like Kyle, June, and Fabian. Speaking at, building, and eventually leading Analyticon is one of my proudest achievements at Amazon. Ask me about it sometime, I’ll tell you some fun stories.
Next week
A story about how to harness the power of the undefined meaning of what it is to be a product manager.