Imposter syndrome: what are you measuring?

I remember feeling rubbish at my job. I also knew that I was my own worst critic and set very high standards for myself. After struggling for a while, I decided it was logical to measure my peers using the same scale I applied to myself. When I did this, nobody did very well. 

That’s when I thought, we are all rubbish at our job. This didn’t make sense, it seemed very unlikely - why would the organisation employ all these people that were rubbish at what they were doing?  

That’s when I realised the scale I was using must be wrong - it was unrealistic. When I adjusted it and measured everyone again, including myself, then some people were doing well, some were doing were OK. I was definitely doing OK. I felt better. For a while I continued to have the thought that me and my peers weren’t doing a good job, but I kept reminding myself to use a more realistic scale.  

This experience reminded me of an accountancy test at college. Every Monday morning, we had two hours of accounts and one day the lecturer surprised us by asking us to do a test. Afterwards I knew I hadn’t done very well. When we got the results back the following week my mark was 45%. I thought, well that’s a fail. 

When the lecturer gave out the class scores it turned out I had come top, with 45%. I was surprised and although it felt strange coming top with 45%, I couldn’t help feeling pleased with myself. I was forced to try and resolve the apparent contradiction of top place with a low mark. After a while I concluded that given it was a surprise test, a score of 45% wasn’t bad. 

If you sometimes feel you’re not doing a good job, ask yourself these two questions: -  

How am I measuring my performance?  

If I applied the same measure to my peers, where do I stand?