When you feel like an imposter at work

Donna Michael, 33, a sales executive at an IT firm, was well-liked by her peers and colleagues at work. "Persons with IS feel like a fraud because they feel others are overestimating their abilities.," she says, adding that they fail to attribute their success to their own personal characteristics and instead attribute it to external factors like luck, chance, privilege etc. "Their beliefs could be despite the presence of objective markers of success like being well qualified, professionally successful, and skilled," she adds. "Researchers have created psychometric instruments which can help identify and measure it, but these are still in their nascent stages and haven't been systematically evaluated yet – especially in an Indian cultural context," she adds. "In professions where employee’s self-evaluations form an integral part of a company's performance appraisal process, experiencing IS can hold people back from realistically and positively appraising themselves," she states.