3min chapter

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30— Mailbag: UX maturity, conflict fatigue, and getting past imposter syndrome

Finding Our Way

CHAPTER

Imposter Syndrome Among Design Leaders

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky thinks of himself as a design leader, but that's not his job. The question is can you trust yourself enough to improvise and navigate your way through a situation that you've never faced before? It requires letting go of a lot of your sense of identity that is tied to your expertise in your experience,. Well, yes. I suppose imposter syndrome is real, but it also kind of doesn't matter. Or it matters only to the degree to which it is in your mind and it's holding you back.

00:00
Speaker 2
That's such an interesting thing too, because of again, that evangelism role that people often have to take on in order to become design leaders. They have to demonstrate that they're good at beating the drum and arguing for the value and pushing the notion of design forward. That's often how you end up getting that job. And then to have gotten to that point and then have to let go of that evangelist identity that got you there, I think is very challenging. It's actually connected to. It reminds me of...
Speaker 1
Oh, I was just going to say it reminds me of the same challenge that you have when you go from being a designer to a design leader and you have to let go of your identity as a maker. And now you're a leader. Now we're saying as you go from being the design leader to an executive, you have to let go of your identity as a design leader to being a business leader. Do you think Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, thinks of himself as a design leader? Yeah.
Speaker 2
That's the other
Speaker 1
stuff, you just let go of that stuff. He's got a design degree, but that's not his job. Right.
Speaker 2
Right. Well, and this is connected actually to another question that we got. This question from Matt Bouchard by email about imposter syndrome among design leaders, is every time you go through one of these transitions of identity, right, from designer to design leader and then from design leader to design executive, there is a certain amount of letting go of the old identity and welcoming in the new identity and the new identity may not fit at first. So there's inevitably going to be a little bit somewhere in there of imposter syndrome if you're actually taking on something that is genuinely new for you. The challenge is that imposter syndrome frequently, kind of the way that it manifests in people's minds is in these, the sense of the expectations that are being put upon you in the new role and the question of, well, do I, am I going to be able to measure up to these expectations? Am I qualified to do these things that are being asked of me? And in a lot of cases, I feel like design leaders sense of themselves as imposters is entirely legitimate for exactly the reasons that you're describing. They are imposters because they are being asked to do things that they actually are not qualified for, that they have not been trained to do, that they don't know how to do that they've never done. So it's very, very natural to feel like you're an imposter in that situation. The question is, can you trust yourself enough to improvise and navigate your way through a situation that you've never faced before? And that, again, requires letting go of a lot of your sense of identity that is tied to your expertise in your experience, stepping into something
Speaker 1
new. Well, yes. So I suppose imposter syndrome is real, but it also kind of doesn't matter. Or it matters only matters only to the degree to which it is in your mind and it's holding you back. Yeah. And I think trying to think like, you know, just suck it up. Like, unfortunately, any thoughts I have about it are kind of, don't feel all that helpful. Just like stop letting it hold you back.

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