The Army General's Imposter Syndrome

Gen. Stanley McChrystal was nervous.

He had led the Joint Special Operations Command and had pursued high-level targets in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But now, he was stateside for his first ever meeting in the Oval Office.

“You really have to fight imposter syndrome because it’s a crisis of confidence, and sometimes, it can make you less effective than you actually are,” McChrystal recently told Ryan Hawk on The Learning Leader Podcast. “You sit there and you see it and you wonder, ‘Wow, should I even be in this room? Is my opinion worthy?’”

Imposter syndrome can be crippling to leaders of any walk. We question whether we belong, whether we actually possess the skills others think we have, whether it’s just a matter of time before the façade we feel we’ve been putting on for years is exposed.

Despite his decades of military service and intimate knowledge of the challenges abroad, McChrystal lacked confidence that day, too, but asked himself two key questions to calm his nerves.

“You have to step back and say, ‘What do I know?’ And, ‘What is my responsibility?’” he told Hawk.

Combatting feelings of insecurity and even ineptitude, McChrystal said, requires us to develop a healthy ego.

This doesn’t mean we brag about watching TV in the Oval Office or put our feet up on a coffee table, as he said some did in an attempt to appear overly nonchalant. But we have to fall back on some past successes and accomplishments that no one else has.

Being confident doesn’t mean abruptly convincing ourselves that we have the best skills, knowledge, personality or relevant tools.

But it does mean being fair to ourselves and recognizing what distinguishes us from our peers or competitors, while also acknowledging there’s a reason we were chosen to be in the position we’re in.

“You can’t start thinking I know everything, and I’m a cool person, and that’s why I’m here. But you have to do your job,” McChrystal said.

“There are times where you have to play the part that’s been assigned to you.”