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“Repositioning that is: You step into these things for growth and it’s not expected that you should have all the answers. And I do think I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable.”
Start channeling that feeling.
Emma Robbins remembers a Billie Jean King quote: “Pressure is a privilege.” The tennis great, with 39 grand slams, talked about how the crowd expected her to win. Many would have been crippled under such a weight of expectations but King saw it differently.
Robbins, executive creative director at M&C Saatchi Melbourne, sees being in advertising as a privilege.
“In advertising, which is nowhere near as cool as being at Wimbledon, you feel the pressure in a pitch or to deliver a spreadsheet or whatever. Our job is a privilege. We’re doing cool stuff and every day something cool happens. If we start to think about that as a privilege and use that pressure to power us through that moment, we can look at the advantages of all the things that we get to do.”
She says imposter syndrome is a big part of conversation at the moment. “I think this is a great thing because the more we talk about it and the more we define it ... the more we make friends with it.
“It’s not an ailment. It won’t be a disadvantage if you use it properly. The risk is that we become frozen by it, disabled by it.
“I feel like if you can flip it, embrace it, and just let it do the opposite, that’s the power that it also has.”
Robbins, at the start of her career, with a few years experience in creative, moved to the big smoke, Clemenger Melbourne, from Hobart.
“Clemenger Melbourne was insane for me because the names of all the people that worked there were all names in award books to me,” she says. “And they were famous and walking among them was so humbling and
intimidating and that’s truly where imposter syndrome set in.
“On the flip side of that, I told myself that Clemenger Melbourne wouldn’t hire me unless they thought I had the ability. It’s not like they’ve gone, ‘Oh,
we’ll see how she goes’.
“I’d worked on the business for six years, and I was still freaking out.” Aimee Buchanan, CEO, GroupM
“It was pretty hard to get into as it still is now. I remind myself of that. That was my beginning of feeling something like ‘Am I good enough to be here?’ and then, ‘Oh, okay. Maybe I am because I got that idea through or we won that or this got great peer recognition.’
“But then it was like, ‘Oh, now I’ve got to do it again. Got to do it again. Got to do it again’.”
That doubt can be a healthy fear. The opposite is thinking you are always right, and are going to win, because your decisions are bang on.
“I guess that the beauty of this industry is no one’s right and there are millions of different ways to come at a problem and solve it,” says Robbins.
“I’ve used it as a fuel to keep myself honest and working hard. It’s an insecurity that I don’t like about myself, but that I also really do like about myself because it’s never let me settle.
“I’ve never felt comfortable in where I am at that particular moment, because I always think I could do better or we could have done better. It can be exhausting to think that way but it’s also what powers you on. That’s my kind of experience.
“Without it you could possibly become smug. It could play out in complacency, ‘That’ll do. I don’t know if that’s right. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but that’ll kind of do.’ It’s wicked from all angles but I’ve learnt to become friends with it.”
Rachel Lounds, of Poschology Coaching, spent time in agency land before helping people with imposter syndrome:
“When I started a new job, I would have this awful first couple of days, where internally I am say- ing, ‘What have I done? I don’t know what I’m doing. They’re going to find out I’ve lied.’
“It’s really bad, a state of panic almost. People who have imposter syndrome feelings measure com- petence in a different way; they distort what competence means.
“My version of competence meant that I would step into a job and immediately know what to do, being able to hit the ground running, mas- ter everything quickly and easily.
“I’d be very hard on myself if I didn’t master something quickly.
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