Make Marketing Suck Less

Move from the Imposter Complex to Speaking Star with Tanya Geisler

If you have ever been on the verge of pushing the send button on an important email pitch – the one for the gig on a stage you have always dreamed of being and suddenly you hear a voice.

“Who do you think you are? To be pitching for that speaking gig. You don't have enough experience, maybe if you had a Ph.D. then you could pitch for that speaking gig. And what if you get it? What if you get it? They're all going to find out you don't know what you're talking about.”

If you've had that experience or you're thinking right now, “Michelle, get out of my head.”

You have experienced the imposter complex.

And in my work, I see it all the time with speakers.

It holds us back from making a difference with our audience and taking the action we need to take to drive our speaking business forward.

Today, we are so fortunate to be talking to  Tanya Geisler.

Tanya is my coach and I was just telling her that when I started working with her, I didn't think I had the imposter complex. But I do, many people do. You're not alone.

Prefer to Listen?

Defining the Imposter Complex

Michelle:         What is the imposter complex?

Tanya:               Well you did a brilliant job painting the picture for us. It is that experience of, who am I to? They will find out that … It's just a matter of time before X, Y, and Z. Maybe when I've done the blah, blah, blah, then I'll be ready to blah, blah, blah. It's all of that.

And I always attribute my teachers so I need to say that the imposter phenomenon is the term that was coined in '78 by the clinical psychologists Pauline Clanz and Suzanne Imes. They were working with high functioning women and noticed that these women seemed to be totally incapable of internalizing their success.

Any proof of their success, they would attribute to luck or fluke or timing or having deceived somebody into thinking they were smarter or more capable or more skilled than they actually were. Now, of course, these women were more than capable of internalizing their failures, no problem there! But their successes on the other hand, no, no. It was something that was completely external to them.

So while the phenomenon  was named in '78, it's been experienced since the beginning of time.

It is that feeling that we are imposters and they, this generalized other, is going to find out.

And then oh, lord have mercy! What happens then, right? So that's what the imposter complex is.

Michelle:       Two things that stand out for me is number one they were high achievers. Because I know with speakers, we're really stepping into more of a leadership role. We're showcasing our expertise, our story, our passion. And so it's us high achievers who have this little voice in our head that's like, “We're going to be found out about this.”

What really stood out to me was the  ”I'm just a” symptom. And then the other symptoms you were talking about: “if I do this, then I can do that.” I know you work with a lot of speakers, so how do you think the imposter complex is holding speakers back?

How Does the Imposter Complex Hold Speakers Back

Tanya:               First of all, let’s underscore, underline, bold italicize your point of it being high functioning, high achieving women.

Of course, we are talking about both women and men generally, but it is high achieving people really and truly, who experience this. They have strong values of mastery and integrity.

This is really important and I'm really glad that you hit on that. Because we feel the imposter complex mostly in areas of our life that are deeply important to us. Deeply, deeply important to us.

[Tweet “Speakers! If you feel deeply about your topic, this might be creeping into your speaking.”]

We don't experience it all across the board at any given thing, it's the work that we do in the world, it's the parenting we do in the world. It's the speaking we do, it's the coaching, it's whatever it is that is really deeply meaningful to us. That's where we are going to experience it because of those values of integrity and mastery and excellence. Thank you so much for naming that.

There are twelve lies that the imposter complex comes with. And I think that they absolutely show up for us as speakers, as writers, as creatives, as artists. There are twelve of them so that’s a lot! We won’t go into all of them now, but I talk about them in a video series on my site. (more on that later)

But there are six behavioral attributes that show up. And honestly, with speakers, they're all lit up. You don't experience all of these behavioral traits “a la fois,” as we say in Canada. But you might experience them at different times.

#1 Procrastination is a Symptom of the Imposter Complex

So one is procrastination.

We're going to procrastinate on sending that pitch out. We're going to procrastinate on making the ask. We are going to procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate.

Because, as long as we don't actually get into action, then nobody is going to find out we're not supposed to be here.

Michelle:          What's interesting about procrastination is I also see speakers taking action on the wrong things.

Tanya:                Right.

Michelle:          So, they're tweaking their website, their speaker one sheet. They're re-editing their video reel for the nine hundredth time so that it keeps them actually from doing the important thing that gets them speaking gigs. Which is pitching and outreach and asking.

Tanya:               

We are so do the work, do the work, do the work. Do the work, right? This makes us feel like, “Look, I'm doing something.” I’m making progress, right? I am in action therefore, something is going to happen.

#2 Diminishing your success, skills, and accomplishments

We also have diminishment.

This is where people have areas that they feel very masterful in, and feel very confident about.  But we don’t want to be found out,  we don't want to have the big target on our back so we're going to use the ‘it's just' language. You're going to turn on ourselves, we're going to play a little bit smaller.

So we actually are giving ourselves clues that we are smaller than, that we aren't supposed to take up the space. We are doing this to ourselves. So once again we've got that double bind. So it's happening with speakers too.

Michelle:          I see that also with speaker's body language. Men take up space on stage, I like to take up space on stage. But women tend to keep themselves very small, their gestures just right near their body instead of taking up that stage. And I think that feeds into that ‘I'm just' feeling that we get. And I hear that so much from the speakers I work with. Like, “Oh, you know, I'm just this nurse practitioner, what do I know, why should I be talking about this?”

Tanya:                “I'm just telling my story, it's just a little story. It's just, it's just.“

#3 Leaky Boundaries & Not Standing Firm

Leaky boundaries is another behavioral attribute where we don’t stand firm with our boundaries.

Anytime we are experiencing the imposter complex in some way shape or form we might nod along to things that we don't necessarily agree with. Because we want to be sure that we are not found out that we are “othered.” We want to be able to fit in.

So this is going to probably show up for speakers. You know, we forget that we actually have choice in the matter.

We can say yes, we can say no, we can make a counter offer. But sometimes because we are so mindful of getting the gig, that we'll say yes to just about anything even though our soul is screaming, “No! No, no, no, no, no!”

But we will agree to the things that we think we are supposed to because our boundaries aren't nice and snug.

Michelle:          Yeah, that totally makes sense. Reminds me of once in the Rebel Speaker Facebook group, somebody posted, “Oh I got this offer to speak at a Fortune 500 company and they don't have a budget.” And I'm like, “Nope! Fortune 500 companies have money if they really want your expertise, they have to pay for it.”

The good thing was she does have very strong boundaries. It was more of a  ranty post.

It was suggested that she could get something else out of it, like a video or clients. But she was very clear that  those weren't her people. But I do think that often many speakers think, “Oh my gosh, I want this speaking gig so much that I will sacrifice anything to get it.”

Tanya:                And of course when you have allowed your boundaries to corrode or erode, we are then left standing.

We feel like frauds because we are standing in an opinion, an arrangement, an agreement that isn't us. That doesn't feel right and true, and so that once again, reinforces our sense of being an imposter. Because we are standing in this place that is not supposed to be ours, right?

#4 Trying to please others

People pleasing, of course, this shows up across the board but,  I am just going to straight up … this is my biggest tell. This is the one that , 44 years into this beautiful life of mine, I'm still coming up against this.

How much praise can I get? How much criticism can I avoid? So what that means for me is that  I want people to like me. Just do, can't help it.

So when I get those opportunities, and I got lots of opportunities, I'm very quick to discount that it was my work. My tenaciousness, my expertise that got me the gig. It was more like, “They're just being nice.”

So that's the double bind, right? When we have this people pleasing tendency, this once again colludes with our already exasperated sense of imposter-hood because we tell ourselves we just got the gig because we fooled them into liking us.

This behavior might show up with speakers if you get that gig and you say, “Well, I'm not really supposed to be here, I managed to convince them somehow.”

So then it starts getting a little bit amorphous and fluid and we're not really standing in our authority. We're not really standing in our expertise. We can often pull it out but lots of suffering goes into preparing for that gig, let me tell you.

Michelle:          Yes, I know that one showed up for me when I spoke at Tara Gentile's Quiet Power Strategy Summit. I love Tara, I've worked with Tara, we're friends. And part of my brain was like, “Well you're only speaking there because Tara likes you.” And I'm like, “No, that's not how Tara operates.” I knew that about her. But it was funny how that little voice would crop up for me.

Tanya:                Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you named that because you know we do our due diligence. Would you have me on your show if you didn't actually believe that people here really wanted to hear what I had to say? It wouldn't be true, right? So why would we assume that Tara wouldn't have done her due diligence and invite you up on this extremely sacred space. It just doesn't make sense. We go through, our whole life looking for proof of what we believe and that is who would want to have me on their stage? So we've done the work, we know better. But there is still some suffering that goes into it.

#5 Falling into the Comparison Trap

Another behavioral attribute is  comparison, that's a fun one.

For speakers, how much time gets spent in the name of research? We spend an enormous amount of time checking out everybody else's work and then comparing ourselves in this very damaging way.

And once again it's this double bind. So we get in this place of comparison and then we don't feel that we are ever going to ever be able to stack up. So we're just proving to ourselves once again that we are the imposter.

Michelle:          Yeah. And for me, I always reframe that for my speakers because if I'm working with you in a longer term mentorship, part of our thing is finding you other speaking opportunities to pitch. And one of the best ways to do that is to look at people who are speaking on similar topics and where are they speaking? And it's about viewing them as friends and colleagues instead of a person you should be comparing yourself to.

And even reaching out to them and saying, “Hey, I noticed that you and I have this in common, I'd love to chat with you about it.” To think of them as colleagues in the field instead of viewing them as, “Oh, man, they're so much further ahead than I am.”

Tanya:                I have a great story about that, actually. So, Lauren Bacon is a leadership coach as well in this space. She works more with women in tech, I would say. She actually came to see a group of us that were doing TedX talks on Vancouver Island years ago. And I knew of her work, I'd seen her, she's hard to miss, she's just an incredible woman.

And I saw her doing a piece on the imposter complex. I think she called it syndrome back then. And I was like, “Hey, we're having the same conversation, let's come together.” And there was interestingly, a piece that I left out of my TedX talk in the process of discussing the imposter complex, was this piece on comparison.

But I had this intuitive sense that it is important to do our due diligence.

To see what else is out there to have some sort of metric from which we can say, “All right, that women is a model of possibility for me, uh huh, that is how I want to do it. I'm going to bring my own juju to that.” Yes, that is really powerful and inspiring to me.

So allowing it to be  energy rather than cause a  shutdown. So interestingly, when we had this first conversation, Lauren and I. I was like, “So this is the conversation I think is missing, it's on comparison.” Out of that conversation we crafted an entire program called Beyond Compare. We decided that since we're having the same conversation, let's bring it together and let’s talk about his one thing that actually could have been decisive between us. This could have been a problem but instead  we created this gorgeous program, and I got one of my favorite best friends in life now because of that. It's really important to reach out and say, “Hey, how do we expand this conversation together.” Right?

Michelle:          Yes, yes. I love it.

Tanya:                I think that it's important to look at people that we admire as simply teachers for what we want.  If we can see that, it's because we own it ourselves. That's the only way we can recognize it.

#6 The Curse of Perfectionism

And then finally the last one is perfectionism.

Michelle:          Oh, I don't know anything about that.

Tanya:                No?

Michelle:          No! Never!

Tanya:                The pencil's never sharp enough, you know, we are never fully prepared. So really and truly, we have this thing. It has to be perfect, I don't know how we got this gig in the first place. Has to be perfect, has to be.

And then so we get ourselves into it either doesn't go exactly as we wanted it to and then we just use that as proof of our lack of perfection. Or we knock it out of the park, which happens so often, but then…what is your first response when you knock it out of the park?  There's a nanosecond of celebration, and then we start thinking about how it could have been better.

Michelle:      I've seen speakers that I've worked with get on stage and get a standing ovation and literally walk off while people are still standing.

Because in their head there was something wrong, there was the criticism. There wasn't this, “Oh my gosh, look at all I did right. Look at how I impacted members of this audience.” It was, “Oh, I forgot this one part of my speech, I can't believe I did that, how did that happen?”

Tanya:                Somehow managed to fool them into something, maybe this audience wasn't as savvy as I thought they were.

Michelle:          Oh my gosh, right?

Tanya:                Coming and going, coming and going. So those are the six behavioral attributes that affect us: Procrastination, diminishment, leaky boundaries, people pleasing, comparison, and perfectionism. And again, we don't experience them  all at the same time and some of us have stronger leanings towards one or the other. They definitely show up in most speakers.

How do we Combat the Imposter Complex

Michelle:          So what do we do?  What should be the first step?

Tanya:                Well first of all, decide you're not a speaker and hide under the duvet and just quit!

No, the opposite of that. Recognize first of all that you are in absolutely exquisite company. Okay, so absolutely everybody that you admire has experienced it in one way, shape, or form. Every speaker that you've ever seen take that stage has had this experience.

I remember Oprah saying that it doesn't matter who had been on her show, each of them would always ask her, “How'd I do, is that okay?” Like, “Did I do okay?” Every single person that you've ever seen take that stage has had to overcome it in their way.

Another thing I want to say here is, we never fully overcome it. It's like a traveling companion and really and truly, it continues to show up every time we are at  our edge.

When we are at our edge we feel resistance. I love to say that the party is on the other side of the resistance, it doesn't feel like it is.

But oh, that is where the growth happens. Right, when we keep coming up against it again and again. So every single person who has managed to take that stage has done a variation of three of strategies that I talk about all the time. And it really comes down to breaking down the three things that the imposter complex stands for.

It wants you to doubt your capabilities. It wants to keep you out of action. It  want you to quit, to stay nice and hidden under the duvet.

So your job is to come up against the criticism that you are feeling. It really means challenging each of those internal beliefs that you have. Instead of thinking  “they're just being nice,” really look at what the record shows here? What am I actually afraid of? What happens if I actually get the gig, then what's going to happen? Are the saber toothed tigers really going to hunt you down and eat you alive?

Michelle:          Maybe.

Tanya:                Maybe, could be, depends. But really face up to what it is that you are deeply afraid of. If you are afraid of failing, if you are afraid of success. You're probably afraid of being alone. Okay, not to put too fine of point on it but you need to go through this process of “What am I actually fearful of happening here?”

And then when you start to really look at that. There is a fear there that needs to be addressed and wants to be acknowledged. I think it is really unhelpful to say, “Just get over it!” You can’t “just get over it,” you can’t  lock that part of you off. It doesn't work like that.

So if we can be more discerning, more kind and compassionate with ourselves and go, oh, okay. So at the bottom of that fear, I'm afraid of being alone, all right. Cool. I got that, now knowing that is my deepest fear, how do I construct this pitch? So just like recognize what it is and then go, “Now I got it.” Like, my thighs don't need to be that thin for me to be able to take that stage. Right?

If you start to get really granular about what you think you're afraid of, it starts to shift. So the first thing is meeting the critics. And those are internal critics and those are also external objections that we might have. Like, “I can't do this because I don't have my PHD.” So challenge those beliefs for yourself. Okay? Yeah?

Michelle:          Yes.

Tanya:                Second, the imposter complex really wants you to discount your capabilities.

So again, that confirmation bias thing. We have  a whole lifetime of buying into those beliefs, a whole lifetime of constantly proving to ourselves over and over and over, “I knew I didn't deserve that gig, that's the reason I didn't get it, I knew it, I knew it.” Right? We love to be right about places where we don't meet what we wanted.

So, let’s do the opposite. Let’s really bolster our own authority thesis.

And for me this is a two pronged approach. One is to look for the internal proof. Before we go externally, go inwards. What are all of the things that you have done and survived and healed and lived and drafted and created and sold?

Now, when we do this process, A, it can be challenging because we forget. Cause we don't celebrate, right? We don't lock in, we walk off the stage while they're still cheering. Right? We're so busy thinking , “Here are all the ways that I screwed that up.”

We don't take the moment to really internalize that celebration. So, that's just clues to the puzzle here, right? Looking at your own experience, it doesn't matter if it was a grade three science project that you won and that you felt cool at the front of that stage or the front of that classroom doing.

Remember that moment because those moments are the proof that you've been at this precipice before. And you survived and the saber toothed tiger didn't hunt you down and eat you. And the party wasn't even on the other side of the resistance.  Right? Like you broke through.

That's what you're trying to do here. Just the internal calibration first and then we can start looking to the tweets that people say, the testimonials, the reference letters, the invitations. Start gathering all of that so that we have something  physical.  You know I advocate printing it all out. I'm sure you do the same. I think you have something very similar, what do you call it?

Michelle:         

When I'm working with speakers especially on pricing, I make them do an ‘I'm awesome list.' Which talks about all of their experience, their expertise, what they've learned, how many years.

And it's interesting because most of the time I have to get on the call with them and start teasing it out of them because they don't feel comfortable spending a lot of time being like, “Yes, I'm awesome.”

But if we're going to do pricing work and fee setting work, you have to be grounded in those amazing testimonials and your 18 years of experience and your education and the things that you've published and you've done and you've won and all of those triumphs in order to be in a place where you're like, “Okay, I can confidently set my fee because I'm going to push you to set that higher than you're going to feel comfortable with.”

Tanya:                Yes you are.  In some ways, it's the same quality. It's sort of the internal because we can't, we don't believe the external stuff until we have a felt sense of it internally first. Right? It's like, water off a duck's back. That's why it's impossible for us to accept a compliment and just go, “Thank you.” Right? Like we can't accept the compliment. The imposter complex hates thank you more than anything else.

Michelle:          Say thank you.

Tanya:                Yeah, say thank you.

Michelle:          You did an amazing job!

Tanya:                Thank you. Thank you.  That felt good.

Michelle:          Yeah it does, doesn't it?

Tanya:                And then finally, I always have people look is the imposter complex wants you to feel isolated.

It wants you to feel low and out of action and it wants you to feel like you are alone and you cannot speak the shame to anyone. Which is one of the lies of the imposter complex. You must not tell anyone about this. It wants to keep you alone.

So, the strategy is to get social. Make sure you are surrounded by the best. You are surrounded by people who want to lift you up because here's what I believe with every single cell in my body, your people want you to succeed.

So your job is to let them help you. Surrounding yourself with the best, surrounding yourself with people who actually know where you struggle with the imposter complex. To remind you on a cellular level all that you have done and all the times you have been here and now you can, and what else you can get. What else you can do, what other heights you're intended to ascend. And if those don't feel like the people you have in your life, okay, well you have to do some work there too.

And then, of course, there are people that do this work, Michelle, professionally and can help you to see that which you can't see for yourself or if it feels really uncomfortable to face. So, you are not supposed to go it alone. Don't do it, don't do it.

Michelle:          Well, and that brings me to my final question for you.

Tanya:                Final question, oh my gosh!

How to Ask for the Gig, the Fee or Support You Need

Michelle:          I know, can you believe it? One final question, this is where I struggle with the imposter complex the most. And that's with asking, and as a speaker, you have to be asking all the time. Asking for the gig, asking for the fee, asking your colleagues if they know anyone they can introduce you to that could help you find your next gig. But asking is so hard for so many of us, so what should I do when I find myself hiding out and not wanting to ask people?

Tanya:                So, what should you do? Okay, first the reason this is challenging is that we have, and when I say we, I have a very strong belief that pretty much everyone that's listening in places a very strong value on connection. Which is actually what makes you such a powerful speaker. The desire to connect with the audience in this way, right? Connection is huge.

So we have a belief that asking is somehow going to create some discontent in the connection. So it's like, now we have this personal bond and I am going to mess it up by asking someone somebody to do me a favor. We don't want anyone to feel put upon but that feels like what we are doing.

And then we also have experienced the sting of unmet expectations where we have asked people and they have let us down.

And so for people, this is at the bottom of our sphere of success, fear of failure.  So first of all, what if they say no? We forget that they are also free agents and maybe their boundaries aren't as leaky as ours and they will say yes, no or they will make counter offers. So there's that.

I would just invite you to, as much as possible, remember that this you are running a business.  Many of us have had corporate gigs in the past.

Do you remember how when you were in a corporate gig it was pretty easy to ask for the business, it was pretty easy to close the deal. Because we are in business. So now somehow because we are speakers, we are creators, we are artists, it's not a business anymore. But it really is still a business!

Michelle:          It is a business, that is one of my big themes.

Tanya:                It's a business! So in business, we are required to ask. So our job is to make it less personal. This is not a favor. This is a negotiation, this is a business transaction. There is cause, there is effect. There is money exchanging hands, energy exchanging hands. This is a business. You can bring your own values of connection and passion and all of your own values can come into the equation and in fact, they must for it be a magnetic invitation and magnetic ask. But the actual transaction is business.

[Tweet “Speaking is a business so ASK for the gig.”]

So that's really important to just recognize that the answer is not commensurate with their experience of you as a person. Remember that we are all in business here, so the options are yes, no, and counter offer. Very simple.

Michelle:          I love it because there's that detachment to it. Instead of being, “Oh my gosh, what if they say no?” It's like, “Okay, it's going to either be a yes, no or counter offer.” And I know oftentimes when somebody, a friend or a colleague emails and asks “Hey, do you know anyone who needs this or does this?” I'm always like, “Oh, thank you for thinking of me.” Because I think the other things is people do like to be asked. They want to be helpful.

And if you go into a situation with like, “Okay, I am running a business and I'm going to assume that people want to see me succeed.” What we were talking about before, and that they want to be helpful, then this can be a productive conversation. And even if it's no, it's still a productive conversation.

Tanya:                Absolutely and I would also get extremely granular about where it is a favor versus where it’s a business transaction.If you're asking your friend to open a door for you perhaps, there is a quality of the personal in there. And so I love that you brought that in, that's actually your people, I remind you that they want you to succeed. That is available to them, so they're probably going to be a yes or a counter offer, right?

There is an art to asking, that I don't need to tell anybody on this call about because we've all done it. We know how to make a reasonable, respectful, timely sensitive ask. We have all done our due diligence. Your ask is not the problem. That's not the problem, okay?

And then when you're at the point of negotiating your fee, transaction, we are now in business. We understand, we know what we are doing here. You're in business, that's it.

Michelle:          I  had an interview with Jen Gresham back in January that's all about negotiation and asking for money. And she says, “When you're in negotiation it's about getting to that win-win scenario. It is not this personal thing, it is a transaction, it is business.

You have to step into that mindset that even though my speech is personal, my expertise is personal, my experience feels so personal, I'm running a business.

Michelle:          Tell everyone where they can find out more information and find you online.

Tanya:                So I'm at tanyageisler.com, and if you scroll to the bottom you'll see my four part three video series on the imposter complex. It's called the Imposter Complex 101 and one of the things you will get is the 12 Lies of the Imposter Complex. Because honestly, knowing these 12 lies, when you hear them you will say, “All right, I know what that is, I can redirect based on that.”

Michelle:          Awesome, because I think that would be so helpful for speakers to have access to. Because it would be great to you know that number one you are not alone with this voice in your head and number two that there are strategies that you can implement that help you take action. Help you make the ask. It's going to make all the difference in driving your speaking business forward.

So thank you Tanya, for being here on the Rebel Speaker. And for all of you speakers, get straight with your imposter complex because that will help you grow your speaking business.

[Tweet “Get straight with your Imposter Complex to share your message on bigger stages!”]