A Story About Impostor Feelings

Twelve minutes before the meeting I am standing in the toilets on the fourteenth floor, practising my expression in the mirror.

Not my words. My expression. The expression that says: I belong here. Outside, behind the glass wall, the city lies in haze; below, people are driving to work who do not ask themselves this question. My question has been standing beside me since half past five, since I lay awake staring at the ceiling. In a moment I will be sitting in the strategy committee presenting the new sales structure, my project, my figures, a year of work. And a quiet voice inside me has been saying the same thing for days: today you will be found out. Today they will notice that you only got this far because nobody has looked closely yet.

And yet everything checks out. The pilot region is eleven per cent above plan. The team is behind the model. Two board members personally asked me to present it. On paper I am exactly where a division head should be after fifteen years. In my head I am the girl who is about to be caught cheating.

I know this mechanism. The bigger the stage, the louder the voice. It was there at the promotion. It was there at the first board meeting. And every time I have fought it with the same method: one more night of preparation, one more slide, one more argument held in reserve in case someone asks the single question that brings it all down. Perfection as a hiding place. It has brought me this far. And every time it costs me more sleep.

Yesterday evening I had a short conversation with the coach who has been working with our area since the spring. I told her about the meeting, about the eleven per cent, about the voice. She listened for a long time. Then she simply asked: “What would the others in the room notice that would tell them you are an impostor?” I opened my mouth to answer and found nothing. “That is the point,” she said calmly. “The feeling claims something the facts do not support. You do not have to argue it away. You only have to stop letting it take the lead.”

Stop letting it take the lead. I stand in front of the mirror and hear the sentence again. Perhaps I do not need to seem certain at all. Perhaps it is enough to act with certainty while the voice carries on muttering.

The meeting room smells of coffee and polish. I put my papers down without leafing through them one more time. When it is my turn, I do not stand up to impress. I stand up to explain something I have understood. I show the structure, the regions, the figures. I speak more slowly than usual, because I am not having to run against the voice.

Then comes the question I have been dreading for days. The chief financial officer, over the rim of his glasses: “And what if the eleven per cent are only a regional effect? What if it doesn’t transfer?” In the past my heart would have started hammering straight away. The proof, I think for a second, here comes the proof that I can’t do this.

I breathe out once. “That is the right question,” I say. “Honestly: I don’t know for certain yet. I have three assumptions that speak for it and one that speaks against it. That is precisely why I am proposing a second pilot in a structurally different region before we roll out.” For a moment it is quiet. Then he nods. “Sensible.” No applause. No collapse. Just a matter-of-fact nod, and the conversation moves on.

There is something in that nod that I have been looking for a long time. I did not pretend to know everything. I showed what I know and named what I do not know yet. And the room did not make me smaller for it. It took me more seriously.

When I walk back to my office later, the voice is not gone. It is still murmuring, quieter now, somewhere in the background. But it is no longer at the wheel. I let it talk and keep walking anyway.

Impostor feelings do not disappear when the results get better. They disappear when I stop believing them. Competence does not mean knowing everything. Competence means handling what I do know responsibly and staying honest about the rest.