Leaders can help promote humble confidence, erase impostor syndrome

Editor's note: This is part two of a three-part series on impostor syndrome: what leaders can do. 

In Part 1 of this series, we explored the internal experience of Impostor Syndrome: how a persistent narrative of fraudulence often appears in high performers, and how reframing these thoughts as signals rather than setbacks can strengthen resilience, coachability and learning agility. We introduced a three-step process to help individuals identify their impostor “driver,” understand its impact and set growth-oriented goals.

Now we widen the lens. Because while self-awareness and mindset shifts are critical, the responsibility for overcoming impostor syndrome (and thus fueling performance) cannot fall on individuals alone.

Impostor syndrome is not always about you

• Impostor thoughts don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re often symptoms of external forces including:
• Lack of psychological safety — where speaking up feels risky.
• Perfectionistic or competitive norms — where mistakes are penalized more than they’re leveraged.
• Past trauma or exclusion — which makes uncertainty feel dangerous.
• Unequal performance standards — especially for employees from marginalized or underrepresented groups.

As we shared in a previous column on psychological safety, when expectations, safety or belonging are unclear, self-doubt flourishes and performance stalls. In other words: You might feel like an impostor not because you are one, but because the environment is signaling you might be.

Transform the environment

Reducing impostor syndrome requires leaders to address root causes, not simply coach individuals on coping strategies. Your role is to create a learning culture in which individuals feel secure enough to grow. Below are three-steps to kickstart your efforts.

Step 1: Audit yourself first

Leaders often look outward before looking inward. But reflexivity - the ability to examine one’s own assumptions, behaviors, and impact — is critical. Reflect on:

• Performance standards: Are expectations specific, consistent and observable? Do different employees experience different levels of scrutiny?
• Feedback culture: Is informal feedback shaming or supportive? Are mistakes treated as data or evidence of inadequacy? Are you defensive with feedback?
• Celebration practices: Do you recognize progress or only flawless results? Do you unintentionally reward performative confidence?
• Your own mindset and biases: Do you equate extroversion with leadership potential? Do you favor people who work like you do? Do you have an impostor “driver” as a leader?

Step 2: Be an explorer 

Leaders cannot fix what they cannot see. Lean into curiosity to ask:

• Do team members feel they can be “in progress,” or must they appear fully polished?
• Can people admit confusion or ask for help without fear?
• Do all team members feel integral and valued, or do only a few voices dominate?
• Who gets airtime, visibility or stretch opportunities?

Step 3: Change the system, not just the person

You don’t need a large budget or major restructuring to reduce impostor syndrome. Most solutions are low-cost, high-impact behavioral shifts that clarify expectations and normalize learning.

Clarify what “done” looks like. Ambiguity fuels self-doubt. Over-communicate success criteria for projects, behaviors and communication. When assigning work, ask:

• “What does success look like in this project? What are your milestones and due dates?”
• “If there was one thing that got in your way, what would it be?”
• “What strengths might you leverage to achieve success?”

Normalize learning over perfection. Create norms that reward curiosity, iteration and intellectual humility. Try:

• Starting meetings with 60-second micro-learnings in which leaders model vulnerability and authenticity by saying, “Here’s something I got wrong — and how I learned from it.” 
• Reframing feedback conversations from: “What went wrong?” to: “What did we learn?”

Build strengths-aware teams. Positive psychology emphasizes strengths spotting — helping employees name and apply what they naturally do well. This enhances performance and buffers against self-doubt. Use prompts such as:

• “Here’s a strength I see in you…”
• “Your contribution today mattered because…”

Create equitable input and visibility. Confident voices often get more airtime, but they don’t always hold the best ideas. Try:

• “I’d like to hear from someone who hasn’t spoken yet.”
• “What I’m hearing you say is… What did I get right? And what did I miss?”
• One minute of quiet writing or brain-dump before discussion.
• Rotating who leads meetings or presents updates.

The bigger picture

Impostor thoughts thrive in silence, ambiguity and inconsistent expectations. But leaders can rewrite the story — not by fixing people, but by re-architecting the environments where people work. Environments grounded in clarity, fairness and trust not only lessen impostor syndrome — they improve performance. Teams perform at their best when they experience humble confidence — the belief that they are capable, learning-oriented and worthy of belonging.

In Part 3 of this series, we’ll zoom back in and explore how individuals can build self-trust and resilience, even when the environment is not perfect.