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Alisa Cohn is an executive coach who works with leaders, entrepreneurs and startup founders on their journey to becoming world-class CXO’s. She’s also the author of ‘From Start-Up to Grown Up’ (Kogan Page Ltd, 2022), and an expert voice on leadership and strategy in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc. and guest lecturer at Harvard University, MIT, Cornell University and Henley Business School.

We caught up with Alisa after her keynote session on imposter syndrome ‘Embracing Your Inner Gremlin’ at this year’s TNW Conference. According to Cohn, ‘“Imposter syndrome is one of the most normal and difficult things to deal with as a leader. It’s the feeling that you’re going to be found out as a fraud. That you’ve achieved everything in your life because of luck, but your luck is about to run out.”

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Alisa points out that founders, especially, are in a unique management situation. “When you’re an entrepreneur, your entry level role is leader, even if you’ve got no management experience at all, you’re still the big boss from the first day,” she says. 

She follows by bringing attention to the fact that “in a fast growing start-up in particular, things are moving faster than the typical person would normally know how to grow. So the issue is, how fast can you (the leader) grow.” 

Alisa states that a founder facing obstacles may assume they’ll somehow grow into the role and its demands but in fact what happens is that they continue to encounter challenges they’re not sure how to manage and have to work with a great deal of self doubt. Eventually, the founder “feels like they’re going to get found out, that so far everything’s been luck.” 

Another particularity of being a founder brought up by Cohn that can contribute to self doubt is that “as a startup, you’re inherently in a risky situation. You’ll often feel like you’re one step away from the brink of disaster.”  Central to her coaching is the need to learn to manage your own psychology and have tools to support the process to be able to grow your leadership and in effect your business. 

Alisa points out that imposter syndrome can even follow you for life if you don’t actively work on yourself to transform your thinking about this. “Even people who are late in their careers or retired from a legendary one can still have imposter syndrome!” she exclaims.

Below, we’re highlighting the tools Cohn shares which can help you get out of the way of your imposter syndrome and on the way towards a healthy leadership journey. 

3 Tips to Conquer Imposter Syndrome you can start using now:

1. Tune into your self-talk – you have imposter syndrome because you’re telling yourself you’re an imposter! When you identify specifically what you’re telling yourself you can unhook yourself from it, put your voices in perspective and get it out of your way
2. Create a highlight reel – think about times from your past you were at your most successful, times when you overcame challenges. Write them down. Then, when you have a bout of imposter syndrome, read your highlight reel to give you evidence of your ability to deal with challenges
3. Find an avatar – think about somebody (public figures and super heroes count) who would act the way you want to act when your imposter syndrome voices come up. Find a picture or an object to remind you to channel that person, to give you extra confidence when you need to counteract your imposter voices. 

Embedded in the work Alisa does is normalising the self-doubt, question marks and need to grow and learn that founders always encounter which can be a hard topic to openly talk about. Making the conversation around what it really takes to build a startup transparent is one of the ways Alisa creates impact everyday.

You can learn more tools and techniques to manage yourself, your stakeholders, and your business in Cohn’s book or podcast by the same name ‘From Start-Up to Grown Up.’ Or download 5 scripts (PDF Download) available on her website that cover delicate conversations.