In a December 2018 talk at an all-girls school in North London, Michelle Obama was asked how she felt about being viewed as a “symbol of hope.”
That’s when the former First Lady disclosed something countless millions of women and men worldwide experience, but often don’t have a name for. “I still have a little [bit of] impostor syndrome, it never goes away, that you’re actually listening to me.”
Impostor syndrome describes a core belief that we’re not as bright or competent or talented as people think we are. That we’ve somehow managed to fool college admissions officers, hiring managers, clients, patients, the American public… basically, anyone who believes otherwise.
The term impostor phenomenon, as it’s known in psychology, was coined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in a paper titled The Impostor Phenomenon Among High Achieving Women.
Impostor feelings still tend to be more common in women, however, men are hardly immune.
I’ve met countless men who struggle with these same, “I’m in over my head and they’re going to find out” feelings; among them an attorney who argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, a commander with the Canadian mounted police, a winner of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and a NASA astronaut.
Before unpacking Michelle Obama’s impostor syndrome, I must clarify a few things.
First, I’ve never met the former First Lady. Even if I had, I would never pretend to speak for her.
But I do understand impostor syndrome.
My nagging feelings of fraudulence as a 21-year-old doctoral student became the impetus for my academic research.
Back then impostor syndrome was considered a predominantly female issue. I was interested in exploring the broader topic of internal barriers to women’s occupational achievement.
In other words, what leads so many of us to feel undeserving of our success? To feel anything other than the intelligent, competent person we really are?
Much of what I discovered from interviews with a highly racially diverse group of women executives, academic advisers, clinicians, and social service providers applies to male “impostors” too.
Over the years, my understanding of both the sources of and solutions to impostor syndrome has deepened. Something I’ve had the honor to share with a wide cross-section of audiences in North America, Asia, and Europe.
Next, impostor syndrome has nothing to do with pretending to be a surgeon or a pilot.
On the contrary, people who feel like impostors are anything but. Behind every “impostor” is indisputable evidence of accomplishments and abilities.
Over the years, I’ve spoken to over half a million people around the world. That includes students, faculty, and administrators spoken at over 100 universities including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Oxford and managers and professionals at such diverse organizations as Merck, JP Morgan, Google, NASA, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Basketball Association.
Each person accomplished in their own way.
So, why’d I focus on Michelle Obama?
It’s a legitimate question, especially considering all the other well-known people who’ve talked about their own impostor feelings.
Partly it’s because the former First Lady’s statement was considered news by Newsweek, the BBC, CBS News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and scores of other major outlets in the US and abroad.
However, the more critical reason to unpack Michelle Obama’s professed impostor syndrome is that it was even bigger news to her many admirers.
As word of her speech got out, social media erupted with people stunned to learn that Gallup’s most admired woman in the world shares the same self-doubt as many of us.
In reality, no one should be surprised.
The more we unpack her lived experiences, the more the question becomes, not how Michelle Obama could have impostor syndrome, but rather, how she could not?
For starters…
She Knows What It’s Like to Not Belong
There are lots of perfectly good reasons why accomplished people feel like impostors. Some, like being a student, working alone, or being in a creative field are situational.
A less talked about source has to do with the notion that a sense of belonging fosters confidence.
When we walk into a classroom, a workplace, an executive boardroom, or indeed, the White House, the more people there who look, or for anyone with a distinct regional or working-class accent or for whom English is a second language, who sound like us, the more confident and therefore, competent we’re apt to feel.
Conversely, when there are few people there who look or sound like us, it can and for many, does impact how confident and competent we feel.
Belonging is something Michelle Obama has had to deal with all of her life. In her address to the majority black and immigrant students, Mrs. Obama spoke of how those in power can make women, working class people, and people of color feel like they don’t “belong.”
Even in the most welcoming environments, impostor feelings can be triggered. That’s what happened to Charles Taylor.
The Colorado farmhand who had also dealt with drug addiction and homelessness became a rising star at the famed Metropolitan Opera, a place more known for blue bloods than blue collars. Said Taylor, “I still fight the feeling of being a fraud, a ruse.”
When you’re among the very few or, like the only black first-year med student at the University of Toronto featured in this attention-grabbing article, the only person like you, it can rattle the confidence of even the most qualified, knowledgeable, or talented among us.
She Knows What It’s Like to Be Stereotyped
Not having a sense of belonging is further complicated when you’re also a member of any group saddled with negative stereotypes about intelligence or competence.
This alone can trigger impostor feelings because now you need to prove yourself in ways others may not.
As Mrs. Obama told her young audience, “I still feel that at some level I have something to prove because of the color of my skin, because of the shape of my body… who knows how people are judging me.”
Another reason stereotypes fuel impostor syndrome is because they can easily be internalized as the truth.
Something that, as many as 300 studies have shown, can, in turn, affect behavior. The phenomenon, known as “stereotype threat,” was first documented by Stanford researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson.
Precisely because we all “know” females are lousy at math, merely informing female students prior to a math exam that the test is gender neutral causes them to perform better. But telling female students the opposite, that the test had demonstrated gender differences in the past, they performed substantially worse.
Stereotype threat comes into play in subtler situations as well.
Just by including a checkbox for gender on a math test which has the effect of reminding women of their gender, can cause them to perform worse than men.
Similar findings have been found based on race and class.
When African American students were told they were being tested on verbal ability it triggered racial stereotypes about intelligence causing them to do worse than students who did not receive this information.
Likewise, when students in France were reminded of their socio-economic status, those from low-income groups performed more poorly than those from high-income groups.
Stereotypes impair men’s performance as well.
Men who were told a test measured “social sensitivity” on which “men do worse than women,” performed more poorly than those who were told the test measured “complex information processing.” Women’s performance did not differ. As importantly, men taking the first test who reported using less intuitive, more deliberate strategies showed greater declines in performance.
Even so-called “positive” stereotypes also limit us because they can falsely alter behavior.
When a golf putting test was framed as measuring “natural athletic ability,” African American students did better than White students. But when the test was positioned as testing “sports intelligence” the opposite was true for both groups.
Similarly, when reminded of their ethnic identity Asian American women performed better on a math test than a control group. But when primed to think about their female identity, they did worse.
She Has to Represent Her Entire Group
Precisely because stereotypes do exist, people in marginalized groups wind up serving as the representative of their entire social group.
This pressure is especially intense when, like the former First Lady, you’re the first in a role.
Upon her retirement, Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor reflected upon her pioneer status as the first woman to serve on the highest court in the land.
“My concern was whether I could do the job of a justice well enough to convince the nation that my appointment was the right move. If I stumbled badly in doing the job, I think it would have made life more difficult for women.”
It’s a similar sentiment to that of a recent college graduate who spoke of the tremendous anxiety she had about being the first blind employee person at her new company. “If I’m not ‘Super Disabled Person, I worry the next time someone with a disability applies for a job, they’ll think, ‘Uh- oh, we tried one of those people, and it didn’t work out.”
You don’t have to be blind to see the pressure that comes from feeling like you have to represent not just yourself, but your entire social group. Pressure that can make women like Michelle Obama, and others from marginalized groups, more vulnerable to the impostor syndrome.
If Mitt Romney had won the presidency over Barack Obama, every Mormon on the planet would have been praying, “Please don’t screw up, please don’t screw up.”
Instead, it was black Americans who held their collective breath.
She Grew Up Working Class
Another group vulnerable to impostor syndrome are first-generation college students and first-generation white collar professionals.
Mrs. Obama is no exception.
“It doesn’t go away,” she told the students, “that feeling of ‘I don’t know if the world should take me seriously; I’m just Michelle Robinson, that girl on the south side who went to public school’.”
Likewise, when Sonia Sotomayor stepped onto the campus of Princeton from her poor neighborhood in the Bronx, she said she felt like “a visitor landing in an alien country.” For the entire first year, she said, “I was too embarrassed and too intimidated to ask questions.”
It’s not hard to imagine how being raised by parents more apt to be cleaning the boardroom than presiding over it, might cause one to feel like a poser. I know I can. While I was studying for my doctorate, my mother Barbara was working as a second shift custodian at the same university.
As a first-generation professional who has “made it,” you may find yourself in the precarious position of feeling like you don’t fully fit in. There may be an underlying sense that, “I don’t really belong here. I don’t really deserve this.”
While hobnobbing in your new world, you may half expect to be tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave.
Looking back, Sotomayor said, “I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.”
She Was Constantly Underestimated
Messages and expectations from family, teachers, and even peers can play a significant role in fostering future impostor syndrome. By Mrs. Obama’s own account, it was her parents’ unwavering belief in their daughter that laid the foundation for her future success.
Not everyone is so fortunate. And for some, the impact of being underestimated by parents can linger for years.
Crooner Andy Williams spoke of never being able to get out of his head what his father told him when he was a child. “You’re not as good as them, so you have to work harder.” Words that prompted a “crisis of confidence” Williams said haunted him throughout his career.
Still, not everyone in Mrs. Obama’s young life was supportive.
“I found myself having to walk a bunch of different lines. There were some kids who didn’t like kids who were smart and got good grades. There were kids who criticized the way I talked and said that I talked like I was white, which is another way of saying that you think you’re better than other people.”
Peer pressure is powerful. But arguably, teachers and guidance counselors have an even more powerful impact on shaping aspirations. Sometimes for the better or, as is more often the case for poor white, black, Latino, and Native American students, for the worse.
Of her own school years, Mrs. Obama told her young audience, there were, “Teachers who underestimated me every step of the way.” One even told her point blank that she wasn’t “Princeton material.”
Fortunately, she didn’t listen.
She’s Highly Educated
Not only did Michelle Robinson graduate from Princeton cum laude, but she went on to earn her law degree from Harvard.
Logically you’d expect being highly educated to either prevent impostor syndrome or cure it.
As a professor at one of my talks put it, “This is crazy, I have a Ph.D., I shouldn’t feel like an impostor.” I had to break it to her, “Actually, you feel like an impostor because you have a Ph.D.”
It’s counter-intuitive but, the more educated you are, the greater the chance of succumbing to impostor syndrome.
When you have an advanced degree, you feel a certain amount of pressure to measure up. That feeling can be even more intense if, like Mrs. Obama, you have degrees from not one, but two Ivy League schools.
There are plenty of people who can relate to one or more of these same experiences.
However, there are two ways in which Mrs. Obama’s impostor syndrome experience differs from that of the vast majority.
She Had a (Big) Connection
From the Kennedy’s to the Clinton’s to the Bush’s to the daughter and son-in-law of the current president, family connections have catapulted numerous people onto the world stage. The same, of course, is true for Michelle Obama.
It’s likely not lost on her that being seen as an international symbol of hope is inextricably linked to having the good fortune to fall in love with and marry a man who would go on to become president of the United States.
Mrs. Obama’s biography will always begin with, First Lady of the United States. The same is true for the other 44 women to hold that title. But that takes nothing away from what each brought to the role.
Besides, Michelle Robinson was accomplished long before she became Michelle Obama.
She was an associate attorney in a prestigious law firm where she was assigned to mentor Barack Obama while he was a summer associate, held several administration positions in Chicago city government, served as Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, was founder and executive director of a non-profit, and sat on several boards.
She’s a Genuine Star
First Ladies have always been relatively popular with the American public. Some, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, and Barbara Bush were widely admired.
Yet it’s hard to imagine another contemporary who could sell out 20,000 seat arenas both at home and abroad as Mrs. Obama has.
Michelle Obama may have married into her fame, but if her 25 second standing ovation at the 2019 Grammy Awards is any indication, the former First Lady has become a bona fide star in her own right.
You might expect a certain degree of stardom would make a person feel more confident.
Instead, it can cause you to question yourself even more because the reactions of those around you can be so skewed. “[W]hen you’re a celebrity,” wrote A.J. Jacobs in The Guinee Pig Diaries, “anything that emerges from your mouth that vaguely resembles a joke is cause for gut-busting laughter from everyone within earshot.”
With all that adoration, it’s easy to see how anyone with an ounce of humility would question whether they really deserve all the attention.
(One person who doesn’t take Michelle Obama’s fame too seriously is her mother Marian Robinson who, in a humorous text exchange, asked her daughter if she’d “met any real stars” at the Grammys.)
The Bottom Line
This is not just about Michelle Obama.
It’s about the need to normalize our own impostor syndrome by understanding these and other potential sources.
Doing so helps to flip the individual and collective narrative from “Why do I feel like an impostor?” to “How could I not?”
It’s about doing less personalizing and more contextualizing.
For individuals in marginalized groups especially, contextualizing impostor syndrome also helps interrupt the false belief that if they were truly competent, they would not be unnerved being the only Indigenous medical student, one of a few female analysts, the first blind division head, the only associate not to attend an Ivy League law school — or the first Black First Lady of the United States.
And that we can be perfectly competent and still experience understandable stress in these and, indeed, any achievement situation.
