A Product Leader's Roadmap to Conquering Imposter Syndrome
From self doubt to confidence
Hello to lots of new readers today 👋 I’m Jori, a seasoned Product leader & coach based in NYC. Thanks for subscribing.
Many of my clients are seriously accomplished.
I’m talking big titles at impressive companies many would die to work at, in executive roles I’ve never held myself, and a storied track record of success that speaks for itself.
They are doing the product thing.
Yet, the refrain is always the same: they’re terrified someone’s going to find out that they really don’t know how to do product, despite being in the product role and doing the product thing really well.
This isn’t a new observation.
In fact, it’s the #1 thing clients cite when I meet them.
Sure they name concrete hard skills they want to improve, but they always end up sharing that deep down, they have a twinge of imposter syndrome they feel in their role, despite their success.
I wrote a piece about overcoming imposter syndrome in product at the top of the year. It quickly became one of my most-read posts, which only confirmed what I was feeling: this issue is pervasive and product people need support.
The Confidence Conundrum
Confidence is squishy, internal and subjective.
If you’re lacking confidence in your role, the road to gaining confidence can feel elusive.
It’s not tied to any specific business metric, so it often gets undervalued by the company and, then of course, by the product people themselves.
For some, it’s only when shit hits the fan—a missed promotion, a bombed presentation, that gnawing feeling of inadequacy bubbling over—that you’re forced to confront the confidence issue you’ve been shoving in the corner.
I used to be someone who shoved things I didn’t want to look at into the corner, too.1
Today, I’d like to shine a light into that corner.
And, it’s in that corner where my clients find their confidence as product leaders.2
So how do you do it?
Building Tangible Product Confidence
Try using your product brain to break “confidence” down into something more tangible.
Something incremental and measurable.3
Because we know, NPS scores don’t really cut it when we’re measuring success.4
Step 1: Build Awareness
Confidence is a slippery concept. Plus it looks different for everyone.
So when you’re setting out to improve your confidence, it’s crucial to define it.
And where do you start?
With data, of course.
Think back to when you felt most confident. What was true about that time? What were the repeatable circumstances to recreate?
What does it feel like? What does it look like? What does it enable?
This exercise is powerful because it gives you something tangible to aim for. Start with how you felt (internal) and then notice what you got from others (external).
I’ll draw from one of my clients to bring us down to earth:
Take T, an accomplished Product Director at a Series D startup. Fresh into his new role at a health tech company, he had major imposter syndrome around data analytics. As he spun up a new product area, creating KPIs for his org was now his mandate.
Historically, any time the conversation shifted to analytics, he felt flustered.
Coming from a FAANG company, he always had a really strong data team to help him out. Here, he felt like he barely scraped by on his interview.
So I asked him, when you’re feeling confident: What does it feel like? What does it look like? What does it enable?
Turns out, T is incredibly confident in UX design—he was on a design path before realizing product was his jam. So, we looked at what confidence felt like:
[INTERNAL] It feels easy, intuitive. He can speak to low fidelity wireframes in front of him and he can quickly frame them in the larger product vision. When he got curveball answers, it felt easy to give a thoughtful reply.
[EXTERNAL] It looks like speaking effortlessly and telling a really compelling story. It quickly motivates and focuses his teams. He know that he’s doing it well because he knows his team can share the vision back to him and others at the company, sometimes even better than he can.
Aha! 2 tangible success metrics. T knows that he’s feeling confident when:
He’s able to quickly contextualize and tie work back to a product vision.
His team can clearly articulate the vision to anyone at the company.
These became our key indicators for success. Now, we had a baseline, and it was time to make a plan.
Step 2: Own what you don’t know and communicate it
The thing we don’t know often feels shameful, and we instinctively want to hide it. But as I said at the start, shining a light on the shame de-energizes it.
It helps you move closer to filling the gaps that exist.
Stay with me.
Years ago, I gave a talk on non-technical product management. At the time, I was only three jobs into my career and felt like a complete imposter with my engineering team.
So what did I do?
I shined a light on my fear. I buckled in, found my engineering partner and dove head first into technical architecture.
When I owned the fact that I really struggled with the tech stack, it de-energized the shame and allowed me to get to work on it.
It was uncomfortable sharing my weaknesses.
But, once I got over that discomfort, my engineering parters were eager to help me feel more confident in learning their language. It was truly a win-win-win5. Full story here.
Another tool I offer to overcome imposter syndrome is the Operating Manual. It’s a way to own what you don’t know and invite others to support you.
It’s scary to own up to what you don’t know, but it’s an incredibly powerful tool that drives confidence up.
Step 3: Take Action
After you build awareness, create ownership & communicate it, it comes down to taking action.
Let’s come back to my client
We identified what success looked like for T:
He’s able to quickly contextualize and tie work back to a product vision
His team can clearly articulate the vision to anyone at the company.
So we got to work.
To start, T needed to become more comfortable with the team’s dashboards. We paired him with the business dev partner who built the company’s instrumentation. Over the next two weeks, T dedicated time each day to diving into the dashboards, conducting daily "stand-ups" to share his insights with his business dev partner.
Once T felt fluent with the metrics, he introduced a set of working KPIs to his new team for feedback. He encouraged his PMs to test these KPIs by bringing the KPIs to their own teams for further refinement. This top-down and bottoms-up approach resulted in a refined set of KPIs, which T presented to his leadership team. The KPIs were connected to a compelling vision for the new product area.
T knew the KPI vision was resonating when stakeholders in customer support and operations could clearly articulate the KPIs back to him. This indicated that he and his PMs were successfully telling a cohesive, data-driven story centered on real customer insights.
T didn’t become a master in data analytics. But he tied created a tangible set of goals to help him grow his confidence in data analytics, and thus, made a measurable shift towards confidence in data analytics.
Confidence doesn’t have to be fluffy or elusive.
It’s a real tangible thing you build, piece by piece, with awareness, ownership, and action. As a coach, I give my clients clear and actionable tools to help them gain the clarity and confidence they need - not just to succeed at work but to find more peace.
Curious how you could benefit from coaching? I’m hosting a FREE Product Power Hour November 21st. Join me to get your product questions answered in real-time. 💪
Hi - I’m Jori and I’m a Product Coach.
Here’s how to work with me ↩️
I work with Product Leaders and their teams to unlock their biggest career moments. If you’re looking for support - drop me a note, I’d love to connect. 🤝
I co-host Product Leadership Breakfast NYC, a monthly product breakfast series to bring together curated groups of PM leaders to connect and share learnings and insights over casual breakfast. If you live in NYC or find yourself passing through, join us! ☕
Spoiler, it didn’t go over well for me.
One of my favorite Rumi quotes: “Don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you.”
You can take the girl out of PM but you can’t take the PM out of the girl.
Sorry PMMs.
The third win of course was the 80k people who viewed that video and dozens who contacted me to tell them it was helpful :)