This is a phrase so well-known, it has its own Wikipedia entry. I’m here to affirm that it works. I have been faking it for years. And if you stopped reading right there, I’m afraid you will have come away with entirely the wrong idea - on a number of levels. So please keep reading.
To be clear, I’m not recommending that anyone lie on their résumé or literally fake what they don’t know. What I am recommending is that you take a leap of faith about the value of what you do know. Particularly if you are a woman. You might be surprised how far it takes you. You might also be surprised how much you really do know and how useful that knowledge is to others.
Most people who know me would be shocked to learn that I am absolutely terrified of public speaking and participating in public debate. Every time I raise my hand to speak, I can feel my heart jump into my throat and my pulse race. Every. Single. Time. My entire life, I have been plagued by self-doubt and insecurity. I wonder, am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Do people like me? Cue the Stuart Smalley daily affirmation video. These questions have plagued me since I was very young and still do.
I particularly recall an incident from 6th grade. That year I was moved up into a class for gifted students. On the first day of school I stood in the school lobby at 8 am waiting to be let into the classroom. As I was waiting, nerves got the better of me and I vomited my morning strawberry-frosted Pop Tart all over the floor. I was convinced that the other kids would find out that I was not supposed to be there. A mistake had been made. The test had to have been wrong. I was not as good as the other kids. I wasn’t as smart and soon, they would all know.
The school nurse cleaned me up and asked me if I wanted to go home. No, I didn’t. I went to class that day. No one knew I had blown chunks all over my shoes. No one ever did. What I did that day, I was to do on many days again in my life -- I faked it. I powered through and didn’t look back. And I discovered along the way that my place among my classmates was well deserved.
Fast forward to 1998. I had started at Yahoo! as a data analyst in June of that year to look at all this new data that was being collected online that no one knew what to do with. Part of my job was to deal with privacy. I think it got to be my job because no one else wanted to do it. I was 27 years old (the average age of an employee at Yahoo! then) and had worked there for a total of 6 weeks when I was told to represent the company to a new industry association that was creating an industry-wide self-regulatory code for online privacy. I had never represented a company. I had never been part of an industry association. I had never written a self-regulatory code. I had never worked on privacy before. But, okay, sure. Why not?
I joined into the regularly scheduled conference calls and heard people beeping in, one after another. Big company names flew by -- IBM, AOL, Disney, Experian, Axciom, CNET, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Excite, Lycos, (bear with me, this was 1998), were all on the call. It quickly became apparent to me that I was talking to some of the people who had actually written the Fair Credit Reporting Act. They were mostly twice my age and certainly had more than twice the 6 weeks of experience I had. I participated on these calls weekly, too terrified to speak other than to announce myself during roll call.
The more I listened, the more it dawned on me that the people doing most of the talking about “online privacy” knew very little about the online part of the discussion. They knew privacy, sure. But everything was changing around them very quickly and I was sitting in the middle of the thing that they knew the least about. As far as they were concerned or knew, Yahoo! wasthe Internet. I realized at that moment, I was the expert on the call - at least about the Internet. The more I heard other people share their views, the more confident I grew in my own knowledge and competence. One day, I spoke up. Before long, I was a key participant in the discussion. To me, it seemed just like I was faking it. But no one called me on it, so I just kept on. Again, I realized along the way, that I deserved my place among the others.
In Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In, she talks about how often women in particular suffer from this sense of masquerading as something you are not, always about to be found out. It has a name, the "impostor syndrome." Tina Fey is quoted in the book as saying, “Seriously, I’ve just realized that almost everyone is a fraud, so I try not to feel too bad about it.” And I have to agree.
The farther along I’ve gotten in my career, the more I’ve run across people that are kind of famous in their field just for being famous. At some point, you look at people’s credentials and it seems these folks are increasingly recognized for having been recognized or win awards for having won the most awards. It’s almost a recursive loop of self-praise and self-congratulations that they live in. I call these folks “Kredential Kardashians.” They may look good, they may get paid a lot, but that doesn’t mean they know anything. Many of them, like the real Kardashians, actually are dumb as rocks.
So keep all that in mind the next time you show up at a meeting where you feel like you are the least knowledgable or experienced person in the room. You almost certainly are not. And if you are, that may well be your most valuable attribute that lets you bring a fresh, unheard perspective to the fore for consideration.
Take a leap of faith. Put yourself out there. Fake it until you make it. You may surprise yourself in a good way.
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