July 2021 - Great People Inside

‘Imposter Syndrome’ in the Workplace

15/07/2021/in Learning and Development /by Laura Dragne

Many business professionals suffer from what is widely known as “imposter syndrome” at least once during their careers. Comparing yourself with peers and feeling like you don’t stack up can give birth to crippling self-doubt, which can then result in negative consequences for your business operations. Imposter syndrome is a phenomenon that was discovered in the 1970s, but is only more recently being publicly acknowledged in workplace culture. Employees can express imposter syndrome in various ways, such as acting insecure about their abilities, second-guessing decisions, and being afraid of taking on new challenges.

In today’s fast-paced workplace, it’s hard not to feel inadequate at times when there’s always something new to learn or a new skill set to master. Digital technology and social media also make it easier than ever before to compare our success to others’, perpetuating a cycle of self-doubt. It’s understandable then why imposter syndrome has been dubbed the “workplace anxiety du jour.”

While imposter syndrome does come with its fair share of difficulties, it’s a sign that you have a team of highly intelligent, driven individuals. In order to overcome imposter syndrome in the workplace, it’s important to build your confidence in yourself and your abilities. The sooner you are able to accept yourself for who you are, the easier it will be to lead you and your team toward your goals and celebrate the milestones you’ve reached along the way.

1.Keep Yourself In Check

The first step to overcoming imposter syndrome is to pay attention to your negative thoughts. You know, the ones where you assume that your co-workers think you’re clueless and interpret their every frown or lack of lunch invitations as confirmation of said reality. When this type of thought surfaces, it is important to recognise it as a thought, instead of a fact. Instead of getting sucked into negative thought quicksand, make a self-affirming statement.

It is recommended telling yourself something like: “I am having this thought because I am not feeling so confident in myself. The reality is that I have tons of education and experience. I also put a lot of effort into my work.”

Remember that our emotional state affects our perception. If you’re anxious about a tight deadline or a challenging project, your go-to emotion might be anxiety and self-doubt. It is essential you accurately observe your emotions and triggers so you know the appropriate coping mechanisms to use. If you are anxious about the project, remind yourself that your anxiety may trick you to believe that you are a fraud—but you are not.

2.Be Your Biggest Fan

They say “nothing succeeds like success.” You can find your confidence again by remembering all of the ways you’ve made a positive impact. List your biggest accomplishments. Where have you made a difference? When did you contribute something meaningful? What was your latest big win? Doing so will help you see yourself as others see you—as a powerful contributor who deserves to be in the room. The good news in being a perfectionist means you care deeply about the quality of your work. The key is to continue to strive for excellence when it matters most, but don’t persevere over routine tasks and forgive yourself when the inevitable mistake happens.

3.Feedback Always Leads To Development

Use tools like 360 assessments and retrospectives to unearth opportunities for learning and development in a growth-oriented way. Empowering teams through the use of feedback makes sure expectations are understood, which helps reduce unnecessary self-doubt among individual contributors.

It takes emotional honesty, introspection, and feedback from others to achieve the self-awareness and self-acceptance needed to combat imposter syndrome. Support yourself and your team in taking an inventory of their strengths, perhaps with the assistance of a coach, who can help them leverage their strengths fully. A good coach will help pull out unique attributes that make a person shine in their work, and support them in taking consistent action to develop habits that help them succeed to their full potential.

Because identifying opportunities for development can introduce self-doubt, because there are four stages of learning a new skill, known as the conscious competence ladder. It’s important to realise that undertaking a challenge or assuming a new responsibility can be a vulnerable experience, so encourage yourself and others to approach it with a healthy dose of self-compassion.

Approaching development as a series of low-stakes experiments can also help. Confidence is a learned skill, after all, so adding playfulness to the process helps develop resiliency, so that everyone can bounce back a little easier when setbacks inevitably occur.

4.Reasonable Expectations

To overcome imposter syndrome, you need to stop setting unattainable standards and expectations for yourself and thinking that factors such as luck or help are responsible for your success. You also need to stop blaming your own limitations for mistakes or failures. Failures are part of life and we all deal with them. At the same time, learn how to accept a compliment and draw strength from it.

5.Work Support Network

The worst thing that people with imposter syndrome can do is to isolate themselves from receiving accurate and validating feedback from other people. Work hard to build relationships with your co-workers, so you have people to go to lunch with and lean on for support, especially as you navigate being the newbie. People can often normalise your experiences and reassure you that your belief about yourself isn’t accurate. You’ve got this!

Another relationship you’ll want to nurture? The one with your boss. Don’t wait for an annual performance review to get your boss’s assessment of your work. Ask for feedback on what you’ve done well and ask for what you could improve upon. When you’re starting a new job or a new career, it’s expected that you don’t know everything. Managers very much appreciate someone who is inquisitive and is wanting to grow, and asks good questions.

Once you’ve built a trusted network, you won’t be afraid to ask your coworkers for guidance if you’re unsure how to tackle an assignment. Instead of getting stuck in feeling like an imposter, ask for help if you are not sure what to do.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?

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Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/06/07/15-ways-to-overcome-imposter-syndrome-in-the-workplace/
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-ways-to-overcome-imposter-syndrome-in-the-workplace-2020-2#what-can-leaders-do-to-counteract-imposter-syndrome-3
https://hbr.org/2021/07/end-imposter-syndrome-in-your-workplace

Price Increases & Why You Should Tell Your Customers

01/07/2021/in Learning and Development /by Laura Dragne

Covid restrictions are lifting in some parts of the world and the economy is booming in some sectors. Some labour and material costs are rising due to shortages, as is customer demand. Many brands have a high pricing power at the moment, making price hikes almost inevitable. Brand managers may be clued in on the size of their price increase, but it’s no easy matter to communicate this unwelcome news to customers.

Many companies, and even entire industries, routinely raise prices without ever telling customers. In the consumer-packaged goods space, for instance, it is common practice to reduce quantity (the grammage of a package, item count, etc.) and maintain the price. This increases the per-unit amount paid by shoppers but keeps the more visible package price unchanged. Alternatively, brands may cut down on trade promotions and other forms of discounting, raising prices indirectly. For instance, when faced with a shortage and soaring prices for chicken, KFC recently removed in-store promotions for its crowd-pleasing $30 fill-up bucket.

Whatever the reason for your price increase, how you communicate the news is just as important as planning the increase itself. Your communications need to provide clients with detailed information, address questions and concerns, and reinforce your value as their chosen service provider.

However, these below-the-radar options are unavailable for products sold with subscriptions, leases, or contracts. In these cases, the manager must communicate to customers that prices have increased before the next billing cycle. This task is mined with pitfalls. When performed poorly, the news can lead to undesirable outcomes like customer complaints, social media outrage, and even worse, having to walk back the price increase, or losing customers altogether.

To avoid such fiascos and to blunt customer resentment, here are three actions that managers should take when communicating a price increase. They are backed by evidence found in academic research and shared experiences from working with companies.

Call the action what it is: a price increase

In emails and letters to customers, well-loved brands such as Netflix, Microsoft, Sling, and YouTube TV have all referred to a price increase as “updating price” or “adjusting price” in the past. This is common practice because managers are naturally reluctant to tell customers they are raising prices. While this may seem like a small thing, euphemistic messaging can cause serious harm, fraying the relationship with loyal customers. Decades worth of consumer psychology research has consistently found that attempts to obfuscate bad news rarely pay off for brands. Customers know that brands are trying to influence their opinions and behaviour and appreciate it when they use helpful, transparent, and informative influence methods.

Authenticity and honesty matter to customers, especially for bad news. When a brand uses a euphemism to convey a price increase, it does not distract customers or dilute the negative impact of the news, as managers may believe. Instead, it arouses suspicion, making recipients more vigilant and critical of the information contained in the announcement. Some customers may interpret the euphemistic phrasing as talking down to them. It may stoke indignation in others, leading to venting on social media and the potential to snowball into widespread anger. Even customers who are on the brand’s side may feel that they are being deceived. Where communicating price increases, it is best to call it what it is: a price increase.

Avoid apologising & over-explaining

Increasing prices is a standard part of running a growing business, and enables a company to continually provide better services over the long term. Rate fluctuations naturally follow a company’s growth plan. Nobody can grow by staying static. While it can be tempting to provide long-winded explanations and apologies for increasing your rates, giving too much information can take away from the key message you’re trying to communicate and ultimately confuse your clients. In addition, apologising could send a signal that the price increase will negatively impact your clients and/or that you’re not confident in the increased value you’re providing.

When communicating a price increase to customers, ensure that your messaging only contains essential information and avoid adding unnecessary details. Don’t be afraid to own your decision!

Offer plenty of advance notice

Although price increases are an expected part of doing business, it is important to give your clients sufficient time to process the information and potentially look at other service providers offering lower or competitive rates. (Depending on the significance of the increase, your clients may be required to secure additional approval or funding to continue to do business with you – especially if the business is facing challenges.)

To help your clients feel valued and give them time to make any necessary changes on their end, provide as much notice as possible before the price increase will come into effect. If you’re able to provide a few months’ notice, consider following up with a reminder closer to the effective date (either via email or over the phone) so the price change – and any consequential business changes – doesn’t turn into a last-minute disaster.

Prove that the Price Increase Is for the Customers

The most effective price increase communications are customer-centric. They provide a value narrative — a vivid and compelling story for why the price is being increased that focuses on customer value. As an example, when United Airlines raised prices of its United Club membership, the company provided this explanation:

“To provide a more productive and relaxing experience, we’re investing more than $100 million in renovating existing locations and building new spaces with expanded seating areas, more power outlets and upgraded Wi-Fi. We’re also investing in a brand new complimentary food menu that you can now find at most of our hub locations across the U.S. and will be available soon at the rest of our locations.”

This explanation tells United Club members that prices are increasing to give them more benefits they’ve been asking for. A compelling value narrative establishes the sequence of actions for the price increase. It starts with customer feedback, then leads to identifying unmet needs, is followed by a significant investment by the brand, which results in new features, and finally culminates in the delivery of benefits that customers value.

As the United Airlines communication illustrates, the value narrative is concise — only a few sentences long. But it provides a credible explanation for the price increase that resonates with core customers. Most importantly, it places the customer at the centre of the price increase story, linking the price increase to substantial added customer value. A well-crafted value narrative conveys to customers that the brand has undertaken the effort to understand how its customers derive value and factored this knowledge into the pricing process.

At its essence that managers should approach the unpleasant task of communicating a price increase to customers with the same degree of sincerity, attention to detail, and customer focus that they bring to other brand-building projects like introducing new features or extending product lines. Such effort will be rewarded with a price increase that sticks and customers that feel like valued partners of an authentic brand with their interests in mind.