There is a moment I still remember clearly almost 30 years ago.
I was on Grouse Mountain in Vancouver, in jeans and track shoes, in the snow, with an umbrella. Everyone else had proper hiking gear. I had confidence and completely the wrong clothing.
Within a couple of hours I was falling behind, soaked, exhausted, and genuinely convinced I was going to die on that mountain. Not metaphorically. Actually die. I felt like a complete fool — underprepared, out of my depth, and utterly exposed.
But I had one friend ahead of me and one friend behind. The one in front kept moving, showing me the path was real, that the summit existed, that someone who believed in where we were going was already further along. The one behind stayed close — not carrying me, not pretending the snow wasn’t there, but asking the right questions, keeping me moving, refusing to let me stop.
I made it to the top.
What I remember most is not the summit. It is the feeling on the way up: I have no business being here. Everyone else knows something I don’t. I am going to be found out.
That feeling has a name. It is called imposter syndrome. And if you have ever stood at the edge of a career opportunity — a job application, a networking event, an interview — and heard that same voice, you already know it does not care how qualified you are, how many years of experience you have, or how many degrees hang on your wall. It shows up anyway.
This article is about what to do when it does.
What Is Imposter Syndrome — and Why Does It Follow Us Into Career Planning?
Imposter syndrome was first named by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978. They described it as the persistent internal experience of believing you are not as competent as others perceive you to be — despite clear evidence to the contrary. You attribute your successes to luck, timing, or other people. You wait for someone to discover that you are not, in fact, as capable as your CV suggests.
It is more common than most people admit. And it is remarkably resistant to credentials — in fact, for many people, more qualifications simply raise the internal standard against which they measure themselves, deepening the gap rather than closing it.
Imposter syndrome tends to intensify at moments of transition and high aspiration. A career change. A move to a new country. A dream role that suddenly feels within reach and therefore more terrifying than when it was purely hypothetical. These are precisely the moments when people are most likely to walk into a career coaching conversation — and most likely to be sitting with a version of the voice that says I am not quite enough for this.
It is also worth naming something clearly: imposter syndrome is not the same as structural discrimination or credential non-recognition, though those are real challenges that many international professionals face. Imposter syndrome is an internal experience — a distortion of self-perception — that can be triggered or amplified by external circumstances, but whose root is not in the system. It lives inside us. Which means the work of addressing it is also, ultimately, an inside job.
Does Imposter Syndrome Look Different for Everyone? Three Faces in Career Planning
Imposter syndrome does not wear one face. In my work as a career coach, I see it arrive differently depending on where a person is standing — what they have built, what they have left behind, and what they are reaching toward. Here are three portraits drawn from recent coaching conversations. The names are pseudonyms, but the experiences are real.
Priya — the high-flying professional who can’t bring herself to network because she feels fake
The imposter who mistakes integrity for inadequacy.
Priya has had a successful, high-achieving career. She is accomplished, credible, and well-regarded in her field. But she has changed countries and changed sectors simultaneously — and in this new context, she is effectively starting again. The reputation, the relationships, the recognition she built over decades: none of it is visible here yet.
She knows, intellectually, what she needs to do. Everyone tells her: network, network, network. So she goes to the events. She arranges the coffee chats. She shows up. But each time, she walks away feeling like nothing landed — the conversation didn’t reach a natural conclusion, she couldn’t tell whether she had made any impression, and the whole exercise felt vaguely hollow.
Her goal, stated plainly: “I just want people to think of me when they see a job opening.”
That goal is completely understandable. It is also, quietly, the problem. When networking is framed as a covert job-seeking operation — a performance with a hidden agenda — it becomes almost unbearable for someone whose top signature strength is Honesty. Priya is not avoidant by nature. She is refusing, at a deep level, to be disingenuous. What she had labelled as networking anxiety was, on closer examination, something more precise: a principled objection to superficiality.
The coaching reframe began with a different question: not how do you get people to remember you, but what do you actually want to contribute? When Priya answered that — and she answered it with real clarity and passion — something shifted. She has a specific direction, a genuine value proposition, and a real reason to connect with people in her field. That is not a hidden agenda. That is the foundation of an honest conversation.
Honesty, reframed, is not the obstacle to networking. It is her most powerful networking tool. Networking is not a one-time transactional event where you hint at wanting a job and hope someone takes the hint. It is a slow, cumulative building of relationships over time — and the foundation of any lasting professional relationship is that the other person feels they have met the real you. Priya, at her most honest, is extraordinarily easy to remember.
Marcus — the ambitious Kiwi who can see everything but can’t start anything
The imposter who has everything to offer and nothing yet to show.
Marcus is a second-generation Asian New Zealander with a deep, genuine loyalty to his country. He is not lost or directionless — he is rooted here, proud of being here, and driven by a real desire to contribute to New Zealand’s future. The problem is not direction. It is volume.
He has ADHD, and his mind generates plans A, B, and C simultaneously. The richness of what he wants to do — the breadth of his ambition, the number of things he cares about — becomes its own obstacle. Everything is live. Nothing gets traction. He sits with a head full of ideas and a calendar full of intention, and somehow none of it moves.
His imposter syndrome does not sound like I am not good enough. It sounds like I haven’t proven it yet. I have all these things I want to do, and I haven’t done any of them. Who am I to claim any of this?
The coaching conversation shifted when we talked about expanding his network through volunteering and taking on a personal project — something concrete, something self-directed, something that did not require a job title or anyone’s permission to begin. His eyes lit up.
That moment of energy — the sudden specificity, the shift in posture — was the signal. For Marcus, the unlock was not insight. It was action. A first move. Something real and small enough to actually start.
The character strengths of Zest and Creativity generate all those plans and sustain the ambition behind them. But without Self-Regulation and Perseverance as intentional counterweights, Zest and Creativity can keep a person in perpetual motion without forward progress. The personal project gives those strengths a container: a bounded, real thing that can be started, worked on, and completed. Evidence, at last, that the ideas can become something.
Lin — the scholar who measures herself against everyone she admires
The imposter who cannot see that her deepest strength is her greatest qualification.
Lin is a Southeast Asian scholar completing her second Masters in New Zealand, preparing to return home. She came here with a purpose that grew clearer the longer she studied: she wants to take what she has learned back to her country, to contribute to the development of the people and the place she loves. That purpose is specific, genuine, and alive in her.
But she is surrounded by peers who have already moved into the roles she dreams of. People she respects deeply. People she reaches out to for advice and guidance. And every conversation that should build her confidence does the opposite. She hangs up the phone feeling smaller. They are so much further along. So much more assured. So much more ready.
The comparison is not hostile — her peers are not dismissive of her. The diminishment is entirely self-generated. Imposter syndrome flattens others into paragons and flattens you into an outline. It does not show you people as they actually are. It shows you the most polished version of them against the most unfinished version of yourself.
Lin is not unqualified. She is twice-qualified. But qualifications have become the measuring stick she uses against herself rather than the evidence she uses for herself — and by that measure, there will always be someone with more.
The coaching turn came through her VIA profile, where Kindness emerged as a top signature strength. At first, this felt like the wrong answer. Kindness does not sound like ambition. It does not sound like the profile of someone who leads development work or shapes policy.
But the more we explored what Kindness actually meant for Lin, something changed. Her desire to take new knowledge home, to contribute to the development of her country and her people — that is not abstract professional ambition. It is care. It is Kindness at scale. When she named that — my people, the place I love, the futures I want to help build — she came alive. The quiet, self-doubting scholar became someone with a mission.
Kindness, in Lin’s case, is not softness. It is the engine. It drove two postgraduate degrees. It sustains her intellectual curiosity. It is what will make her extraordinary in people-centred work — because she is not motivated by status or performance. She is motivated by genuine care. That is rare. And it is powerful.
Her peers may have the titles and the track record. But Lin has something that cannot be manufactured: she knows why she is doing this, and that why is deeply human.
These three people are different in almost every way — background, career stage, challenge. But they share the same internal voice: I am not quite enough for this. And in each case, that voice is working from incomplete information — discounting the very evidence that would contradict it.
Is Imposter Syndrome Just Self-Doubt — or Something More?
It is worth distinguishing imposter syndrome from ordinary nerves or healthy humility. Most people feel uncertain before a high-stakes conversation. That is normal, and it usually passes once you are in the room.
Imposter syndrome is different. It persists despite evidence of competence. It intensifies at moments of opportunity — the bigger the chance, the louder the voice. It attributes success to external factors while attributing difficulty to something fixed and internal. And it is remarkably skilled at discounting evidence that contradicts it.
Across the three portraits above, three distinct patterns emerge:
Mistaking integrity for inadequacy — when a genuine strength, like Honesty, is experienced as a limitation because it makes the conventional approach feel impossible.
Paralysis by potential — when the gap between what you can imagine contributing and what you have so far done creates a vacuum, where everything is possible and nothing is started.
Social comparison pitfall — when proximity to people you admire produces diminishment rather than inspiration, because imposter syndrome shows you their outside and your inside at the same time.
Naming the pattern matters. It is harder to challenge something you cannot see clearly.
Can Character Strengths Actually Help with Imposter Syndrome?
Imposter syndrome is, at its core, a story about what you lack. Character strengths work is a story about what you already have — and have always had, regardless of which country you are standing in, which sector you are entering, or how your peers appear to be doing.
This matters because strengths do not require translation. They do not need a local referee or a recognised qualification framework. Your Honesty, your Kindness, your Curiosity — these crossed every border with you. They were present in every role you have held, every challenge you have navigated, every moment where you showed up and did something hard. Imposter syndrome systematically obscures this. Strengths work systematically recovers it.
The VIA character strengths framework, developed through positive psychology research by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, identifies 24 strengths that represent the best of who we are. Everyone has all 24 in varying degrees. Your signature strengths — those that sit at the top of your profile — are the ones that feel most natural, most energising, and most essentially you. You can discover yours by taking the free VIA Survey at viacharacter.org — it takes around fifteen minutes and gives you a full ranked profile. I also wrote a foundational introduction to using character strengths in career development here.
What makes this framework particularly useful for imposter syndrome work is that it reorients the conversation from deficit to evidence. Not what do you lack but what have you always brought? Not why aren’t you ready but how have your strengths already been at work, even in the moments you felt most out of your depth?
Which Character Strengths Help Most with Imposter Syndrome?
Every person’s profile is unique. But four strengths come up repeatedly in imposter syndrome coaching conversations — either because they are already present and being underused, or because consciously calling on them creates a meaningful shift.
Bravery — How do you show up when every instinct says stop?
Imposter syndrome’s primary strategy is avoidance. Not applying until you feel more ready. Not speaking up until you are more certain. Not going to the networking event until you have figured out exactly what to say. Waiting, in other words, for a readiness that will not arrive on its own.
Bravery is the counter. Not the absence of fear — nobody is asking you to stop feeling afraid — but the willingness to act in spite of it.
A Māori whakataukī captures this with more precision than most English formulations manage: Tūwhitia te hopo, mairangatia te angitū. It is often translated as “feel the fear and do it anyway,” but the literal reading offers something more useful: tūwhitia te hopo means eliminate the negative; mairangatia te angitū means accentuate the positive. It is not just encouragement. It is a deliberate reorientation of attention — from what might go wrong to what is already right.
For Priya, walking into a networking event in a new country where nobody knows her name yet requires more Bravery than almost anything she did at the height of her previous career. Showing up anyway is an act of courage that deserves to be named as such.
Honesty — What does it mean to own your story accurately?
Imposter syndrome involves a fundamentally dishonest internal audit: it counts the gaps and discounts the evidence. It tells a story that is partial, skewed, and systematically unfair to you.
Honesty as a strength means accurate self-assessment — neither inflated nor diminished. It means being willing to look at the evidence of your own competence with the same rigour you would apply to evidence about anything else.
For Lin, this means being willing to own what two postgraduate degrees, a clear purpose, and genuine care for her people actually represent — not as performance, but as fact. For Priya, it means recognising that her discomfort with superficial networking is not a weakness to overcome but a strength to reframe: she does not need a different personality. She needs a different understanding of what networking, done honestly, actually looks like.
Curiosity and Love of Learning — What happens when you get curious instead of self-critical?
Imposter syndrome turns attention inward and keeps it there, generating an endless loop of self-monitoring. Curiosity pulls attention outward — toward the other person, the question, what there is to discover.
In a networking conversation, this shift is quietly transformative. Instead of monitoring every word for signs of inadequacy, you are genuinely interested in the person in front of you. The focus moves from performance to engagement — and engagement is precisely what makes people feel they have had a worthwhile conversation.
For Marcus, Curiosity reframes his wide-ranging interests not as scattered attention but as a genuinely rich mind. The personal project is not just an action item. It is a vehicle for directed curiosity: something specific to learn, build, and contribute to the world he cares about.
Love of Learning adds something essential: not yet knowing something is not a disqualification. It is the beginning of every meaningful professional journey.
Perspective — Can you see your whole story, not just the chapter you’re in?
Imposter syndrome collapses time. It makes the present feeling of inadequacy feel like permanent truth — as though the discomfort of this moment is evidence of a fixed limitation rather than a temporary condition.
Perspective is the capacity to step back and see the larger pattern — to hold your whole story, not just the part that currently feels hard.
Priya’s decades of leadership are not erased by the difficulty of starting over in a new country. Marcus’s passion and generative mind are not cancelled by the fact that he has not yet started the project. Lin’s qualifications, her purpose, and her Kindness are not made irrelevant by her peers’ current positions.
Perspective allows you to say, in accurate self-knowledge rather than self-congratulation: I have already done hard things. This is another hard thing. That is not evidence that I cannot do it.
What Can Career Practitioners Do When Clients Show Up Stuck?
If you work with clients navigating imposter syndrome — and most career practitioners do, even when it is not named as such — the character strengths framework offers a practical, evidence-based coaching lens that goes well beyond reassurance.
A few principles that have shaped my practice:
Name it first. Before problem-solving, name what you are observing. “What you’re describing sounds like imposter syndrome — have you come across that term?” Many clients have never had language for the pattern, and naming it creates immediate relief. It makes a private struggle into a recognised experience. It also separates the feeling from the person — imposter syndrome is something you are experiencing, not something you are.
Distinguish the internal from the systemic. Is this self-doubt, or is there a real external barrier? Both can be true simultaneously, and conflating them helps neither. The coaching conversation shifts depending on the answer.
Use strengths as evidence, not affirmation. The most useful strengths conversations in imposter syndrome work are not about telling clients they are wonderful. They are about helping clients build a concrete, specific evidence base. Not “you are so kind” but “tell me about a time when your care for people produced a real outcome”. Evidence, not encouragement, is what shifts the internal narrative over time.
Follow the energy. Watch for the moment of aliveness in the session — the lit-up eyes, the shift in posture, the sudden specificity when a client talks about something they genuinely care about. That is almost always where the signature strength lives, and it is where the coaching work becomes generative.
What Questions Can Career Coaches Ask Clients Experiencing Imposter Syndrome?
- For the imposter who mistakes integrity for inadequacy (Priya): “What do you actually want to contribute — not what do you want to get, but what do you want to give? Start there.”
- For paralysis by potential (Marcus): “If you couldn’t fail and didn’t need anyone’s permission, what would you start tomorrow? And what’s the smallest version of that you could begin this week?”
- For social comparison pitfall (Lin): “When you think about the people your work is actually for — not the peers you’re measuring yourself against, but the people you most want to help — what does that feel like? Who comes to mind?”
If you work with clients navigating these dynamics and would like a reflective practitioner community to explore strengths-based approaches in depth, I facilitate the CDANZ Special Interest Group on Character Strengths — open to members and non-members, held bimonthly online. The next meeting is on Tue 16 June 2026, 7:00-8:00 pm (NZ time) – register for the meeting.
How Do You Start Overcoming Imposter Syndrome?
Whether you are a professional in career transition, a student preparing to enter the workforce, or someone who has been sitting on a job application for longer than you would like to admit — here is where to begin.
Take the free VIA Survey at viacharacter.org. It takes around fifteen minutes and gives you a full ranked list of all 24 character strengths. Read your top five slowly — not as flattery, but as a mirror.
For each of your top five strengths, write down one moment in your career or study where you used that strength under pressure. Not your finest hour necessarily — just a real moment. This is the beginning of an evidence base that imposter syndrome cannot easily argue with.
Use your strengths language in your career materials — in your CV, cover letter, and interview answers — not as buzzwords but as grounded claims backed by specific examples. That is more memorable and more credible than almost anything a generic template will suggest.
Download the character strengths reflection worksheet from my store to support this process and connect your strengths to your career planning.
If the imposter voice is particularly loud, consider a coaching conversation. Sometimes the most useful thing is not a framework but a person — someone who can hear your story, help you see what you cannot see from inside it, and ask the question that shifts something. Book a free 20-minute discovery call to explore whether coaching might help.
Finding Your Way to the Summit
I made it to the top of that mountain in Vancouver. Soaked, exhausted, in entirely the wrong clothes — but there.
I had one friend ahead of me the whole way. He had already been up this path. He didn’t make the climb easier, but he made it real — the summit existed, someone I trusted was already moving toward it, and I could follow. In your career, that friend is your future self: the version of you who has already done this hard thing, who is already in the role, already past this moment of doubt. They are further along the path, showing you it can be done.
And I had one friend behind me. She didn’t carry me or pretend the snow wasn’t there. She asked questions. She kept me moving. She believed in where I was going even when I had stopped believing in it myself. In your career, that person is your coach — or your mentor, your trusted colleague, the voice that prompts you forward and refuses to let you stop.
Neither of them climbed the mountain for me. But without them, I would not have reached the top.
That is what character strengths work offers, and what good career coaching makes possible. Not a shortcut. Not a guarantee. But a clearer sense of who you already are, and two steadying presences — one showing you where you are going, one walking with you as you get there.
Mā te huruhuru ka rere te manu
Adorn the bird with feathers so it may fly.
Your strengths are already there. The work — and the joy — is in learning to wear them.
About Dr Sherrie Lee
Dr Sherrie Lee is a career coach and educator for international professionals — born in Singapore, based in Wellington, and working with clients worldwide. She specialises in cross-cultural and mid-career transitions, and brings a strengths-based, research-informed approach grounded in her own lived experience of navigating careers across countries and cultures.
She is a Professional Member of CDANZ, an Associate Fellow of Advance HE, and leads the CDANZ Special Interest Group on Character Strengths — a bimonthly community of practice open to career practitioners at all stages.
Learn more at thediasporicacademic.com, book a free 20-minute discovery call, connect on LinkedIn, or subscribe to the monthly newsletter International Career Journey on Substack.