I Don’t Do Imposter Syndrome
You're two minutes into the meeting, and that familiar feeling hits you.
“Am I actually qualified for this?”
“Should I even be in this room?”
“Did I earn this seat, or did someone make a mistake nobody's caught yet?”
If you've felt that, you're in more company than you'd guess. It tends to hijack our mind’s attention when the stakes just multiplied: your first time taking a seat at the executive table, taking on a business unit twice the size of your last one, or increasing a scope of responsibility that stretches past anything you've ever carried before.
At the executive level, this sense of being an “ imposter” tends to stop showing up occasionally and becomes close to constant, the low hum running under everything else you're thinking: not qualified, don't belong, got lucky, going to get found out.
I've had it. Not the polite, occasional flicker–but the intense kind, the kind that showed up hard during certain stretches and certain assignments across three decades of my career. It's insidious. And when it's in the driver's seat, it eats your capacity alive: a parking brake bolted onto your ability to deliver results and make the impact you're truly capable of.
Let me point you to someone who never had much patience for the phrase “imposter syndrome” at all. Sallie Krawcheck, who ran Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, and Citi Private Bank before launching Ellevest, was once asked if she knew, going in, that she'd succeed as an entrepreneur.
Her answer: "I don't do imposter syndrome, and none of us should. I was fortunate that right out of college I went to Wall Street and was with the cream of the crop and the best of the best. I sat at the table with them starting from early in my career, and they are smart. But they are not that much smarter than I am."
And notice what Krwacheck didn’t say. She didn’t argue with the doubt or wait for it to resolve itself. She stopped letting it drive her and did her job, brilliantly.
Run her logic on your own room. The people you're convinced outclass you cleared the same bar you did. Similar results, same standards, same seat at the same table. The door only has one lock, and if it opened for them on merit, it opened for you on merit too. Krawcheck sat with the best of the best for years and drew the only conclusion the evidence allowed: they're smart, and they're not that much smarter than she is. The story that you don't belong can't survive that much contact with the facts.
The Moment the Grip Loosens
You don't have to win an argument with the voice in your head to get free of it–you just have to notice it's talking.
Next time you catch that familiar feedback loop running…
Not qualified
Don't belong
Got lucky
Going to get found out…
Stop it in its tracks and name it, even just to yourself. Even just this act of noticing buys you half a second of distance between you and the thought. That half second is the whole game, because it's where you get to choose what happens next.
Unfortunately, most people skip that half second. The thought drives them straight into a decision: staying quiet in the meeting, hedging the proposal, passing on the opportunity. But you don't have to let it. The thought can keep running in the background while you act anyway.
That's the real shift. Not silencing the voice, but refusing to hand it the wheel.
And the choice has a name. Moxie.
Defining Moxie
Moxie is a force of character, determination, or nerve. It names something specific: feeling the internal doubt and continuing anyway.
Executive search leader Keith Dorsey studied this in underrepresented corporate board directors and found something worth stealing for yourself. In his research, published in Harvard Business Review, moxie predicted motivation and goal achievement better than grit or self-control alone, because people with moxie invest more in their goals instead of waiting to feel ready. "I just figured, this is figure-outable," Krawcheck said of her own leap into entrepreneurship. That's moxie talking, not confidence.
Impostor syndrome tells you that you're not qualified. Moxie tells you to speak up anyway, make the call anyway, and figure out the rest on the way.
Impostor syndrome says you got lucky. Moxie remembers exactly what you earned.
As a leader, you need moxie to show up far more often than doubt does.
How to Build Moxie on Command
If you're anything like the executives I coach, you just read that and thought, “Sure, I'd love more moxie! I just don't know how to build it when I need it.” So, here's what actually works.
1. Build a file of evidence, and use it. This isn't a new idea. Clients working through this loop have done it for decades. One woman literally named her file "evidence I'm not an idiot." Next time an email lands congratulating your team, a launch goes well, or someone compliments your work in a review, screenshot it. Save it. Then go back to it often, especially on the days your brain insists none of it ever happened.
2. Borrow belief when you're short on your own. Sometimes you need someone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself right now. That's part of what an executive coach is for, but it can just as easily be a mentor or a peer. They don't need to validate every move you make. They just need to reflect back the proof you can't see from where you're standing.
3. Run the facts, not the feelings. Feelings are real and worth paying attention to, but they're not evidence. A classic exercise for this loop: line up every person you supposedly fooled, in your mind, and say to them, "I fooled you." Try it. It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous, and that's the point. You didn't fool a room full of smart people for years running. You earned the seat, one decision at a time.
4. Notice it, name it, keep moving. The point isn't to silence this voice permanently. It's to catch it faster each time. The gap between "there's that thought again" and "I'm doing the thing anyway" is a muscle. It gets shorter every time you use it.
Your voice belongs in the room. Not because you never doubt yourself, but because doubt was never proof you didn't earn the seat.
I work with executives on building exactly this: moxie you can call on in the room, and the instinct to notice when doubt is trying to drive. If that's what you need right now, book a call and let's get to work.
Dawn Garibaldi is a Leadership Transformation Expert, Executive Coach, and Founder of Amplify Strategy Group.
A former Fortune 50 executive with three decades of global leadership experience across five continents, she equips senior leaders to master complexity, own their presence, and build teams that are flat-out unstoppable. Through her signature coaching programs, strategies and workshops, Dawn equips executives to amplify their confidence, sharpen their edge, and lead with the kind of resilience that turns high-stakes moments into lasting impact.
Because getting back to killing it every day, no matter what gets thrown at you, is exactly what she helps leaders do.