The idea that doesn’t get shared in the meeting. That team member not going for the promotion. The high performer who starts looking elsewhere.
These are just some of the ways imposter syndrome (the popular term used for a persistent feeling of self-doubt and/or fear of being exposed as a fraud despite clear evidence of your competence) shows up in organisations.
And when you consider the impact on employee experience, performance, retention and progression, it’s easy to see why we’re seeing so many more organisations treat this as a priority in their gender equity work.
In my role as a DEI Advisor at WORK180, I work with employers on both sides of this:
1. Supporting impacted employees directly through workshops and coaching.
2. Helping organisations assess and address the conditions that create and can reinforce these feelings in the first place.
It’s this second part that is all too often overlooked, and yet it’s the part that can have the most powerful, long term impact on your organisation, turning it into one in which imposter syndrome can’t thrive.
What does this look like and how can you get started? I’m glad you asked…
Here are six ways to reduce imposter syndrome in your organisation (and none involve telling teams to be more confident)
1. Audit where self-doubt is most likely to show up
Start by examining your employee experience data, promotion data, attrition patterns, performance review outcomes and meeting participation, broken down by gender, ethnicity and other identity markers.
- Where are the drop-off points?
- Who is consistently over-preparing but under-putting-themselves-forward?
- Which groups are least represented in senior roles or high-visibility projects?
The patterns in your data will tell you where your conditions are working against people, often long before anyone names it as imposter syndrome.
💡Try this: Review your last 12 months of promotion decisions against demographic data. If patterns emerge, that’s where to focus first.
2. Train managers to give specific, evidence-based feedback
Vague reassurance such as “you’re doing great” doesn’t shift self-doubt. For someone already questioning whether their contributions are valued, it can feel unconvincing at best, patronising at worst.
What works is feedback tied to specific, observable outcomes. Not ‘great presentation’ but ‘the way you framed the risk in that proposal changed how the leadership team approached the decision. That kind of specificity gives people something concrete to hold onto,evidence they can return to when self-doubt surfaces.
This is a skill that can be developed. And it’s one of the simplest actions any organisation can make in this space.
💡Try this: Audit how feedback is given across your organisation. Is it specific and tied to impact, or general and infrequent? Manager capability here is worth prioritising.
3. Make promotion and progression criteria transparent
When advancement feels opaque, when people don’t know what they’re being assessed against, or suspect the goalposts shift depending on who’s being evaluated, self-doubt can fill the gap.
Transparent, consistently applied progression criteria remove one of the most significant structural contributors to imposter feelings. People can’t back themselves in a process they don’t understand or trust.
59% of women say they feel held back by a lack of pay and promotion
transparency — WORK180 What Women Want Report 2026
💡Try this: Publish your promotion criteria clearly enough that any employee could read them and understand exactly what’s expected. If they’re not documented to that standard yet, that’s the starting point.
4. Sponsor people into stretch opportunities. Don’t wait for them to volunteer
People experiencing self-doubt are significantly less likely to put themselves forward for stretch roles, high-visibility projects or leadership opportunities, even when they’re the strongest candidate in the room.
Sponsorship changes that dynamic. Where mentors advise, sponsors act,advocating for people and opening doors that self-doubt might otherwise keep closed. Build sponsorship into your talent development approach deliberately, and make sure it reaches people who aren’t already the most visible in the room.
💡Try this: Identify three people in your organisation who are ready for more but haven’t stepped forward. Ask: who is actively sponsoring them right now?
5. Design meetings where all voices can contribute
People experiencing self-doubt are significantly less likely to put themselves forward for stretch roles, high-visibility projects or leadership opportunities, even when they’re the strongest candidate in the room.
Sponsorship changes that dynamic. Where mentors advise, sponsors act,advocating for people and opening doors that self-doubt might otherwise keep closed. Build sponsorship into your talent development approach deliberately, and make sure it reaches people who aren’t already the most visible in the room.
💡Try this: Identify three people in your organisation who are ready for more but haven’t stepped forward. Ask: who is actively sponsoring them right now?
6. Shift the question managers are asking
When a manager notices someone consistently undervaluing their contribution, holding back in meetings, or stepping away from opportunities they’re clearly ready for, the instinct is often to focus on that person’s confidence.
A more useful question can be: what is it about this environment that makes self-doubt a rational response for them?
That shift from individual deficit to organisational condition is where real change starts. It moves the focus from “how do we help this person feel differently” to “what are we responsible for fixing.” And it’s the distinction that separates organisations making genuine progress from those running wellbeing programmes and wondering why nothing changes.
💡 Try this: Build this question into your manager training and your people conversations. It changes what gets noticed and what gets done about it.
The bottom line
Imposter syndrome won’t be resolved by asking people to think differently about themselves alone. It will be resolved when the conditions generating it are taken seriously by the organisations responsible for creating them.
The employers we work with who make the fastest progress aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest programmes or budgets. They’re the ones willing to look honestly at what their environment is asking of people, and to continue to adapt and evolve..
That’s where this work starts. And it’s some of the most important work HR teams and the wider organisation can do.
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