301-SYB-Melody-Wilding.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Carol Cox:
I don’t know about you, but I definitely have imposter syndrome from time to time. Listen in to my conversation with Melody Wilding on why we get it and what to do about it. On this episode of The Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses running for office and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is speaking your brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I’m your host, Carol Cox. I am so excited for you to join us today because we are going to dive into imposter syndrome. I know you have heard that phrase a lot over the years. You may yourself have used that phrase whether to talk about yourself or maybe just using it in general. And so we’re going to dive in today. What exactly imposter syndrome is, how it can show up for us and what we can do about it. My guest is Melody Waldie, who is the bestselling author of Trust Yourself Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for success at Work. She has lots of accolades and she has worked with clients at the C-suite, with companies such as Google, Amazon and JPMorgan. She’s been featured in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. She’s a licensed social worker with a master’s degree from Columbia University, and she’s also an instructor for LinkedIn learning courses. So we’re going to talk about imposter syndrome, but we’re also going to talk about how she got that opportunity to be a LinkedIn learning instructor and the behind the scenes of how she creates her courses. Because I know we’re going to get a lot of value out of that as well. Melodie, welcome to the podcast.
Melody Wilding:
I am a long time listener, so I am thrilled to be here.
Carol Cox:
Thank you. Well, let’s jump right in to imposter syndrome. How do you define imposter syndrome and where does it show up?
Melody Wilding:
Imposter syndrome is defined as that feeling of being a fake or a fraud despite your accomplishments. And that last piece is very important. So people with imposter syndrome are typically very high achievers. They are accomplished, they have accolades and degrees and credentials, but they have trouble internalizing that success. And that’s a hallmark of imposter syndrome, too, that you have an ability to take in and recognize your accomplishments. So you end up feeling like you’re never enough, or you enter into new situations and question whether you have what it takes to rise to the occasion.
Carol Cox:
And where does that show up for us? Melody In our lives, in our work.
Melody Wilding:
Oh my gosh. In so many different ways. I think particularly for the listeners of this podcast, it comes up a lot in maybe you get a gig and you think, I don’t know if I belong on that stage. All of the other speakers are so much more accomplished and prestigious than I am. Who am I to be speaking for this company? You think about, Am I really the end all? Be all expert. There’s people in my industry who know more than me, so I can’t really charge what I want to charge for my expertise. I know an issue I’ve really had to counter in my own speaking career is feeling like a one hit wonder, feeling like, well, that gig went well, but the next one is one, I’m going to blow everything and everyone’s going to realize I actually have no idea what I’m doing. So not having that confidence that you can replicate your success next time.
Carol Cox:
Oh, Melody, okay. I have to go into that one because when you were first describing imposter syndrome, I started to think about experiences I have had where it was the first time for me. So the first time I went on the TV news, the first time I did speak on a stage. And even though I was very, very nervous, my heart was beating out of my chest. But I didn’t feel like an imposter in those situations. I figured I was invited. I’m just going to make the best out of it and I’ll just do the best that I can. Yeah. When you said the part about the success not being able to be replicated, I’m like that. That rings so true to me. I feel like. I think I feel that way a lot. Like, Oh, I did a great job at that speaking engagement, but surely I’m not going to be able to do great at the next one.
Melody Wilding:
Oh, yes. It’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes it also feels like the more successful you become, sometimes the more imposter syndrome can become acute because the path to success is more ambiguous. It’s not as clear cut what it means to be successful or the steps you have to take to get there. So as your business and as your career becomes more complex and you become more successful, things feel higher stakes, which can also exacerbate the feeling of feeling like a fraud.
Carol Cox:
Does it tend to be women who are in mid-career feel this way more than younger people?
Melody Wilding:
It’s interesting. There’s not too much research on looking at age, but what’s interesting is that imposter syndrome is pretty much equally felt between men and women. About 50% of people experience. On a daily or weekly basis. But of course, as women, we have other socialization layered on top of this. We hear things like, Well, you shouldn’t brag about your accomplishments, you shouldn’t show off and don’t post those types of things on LinkedIn. People are going to think you’re big headed or too big for your for your boots or however the saying goes, right? So we have this extra conditioning that also leads us to not fully internalize what we’re capable of and kind of push all of that away.
Carol Cox:
I’m glad you mentioned that about it showing up equally between men and women, because I feel like, especially in the women entrepreneur circles that I run in for a long time, that there’s the belief that women suffer from imposter syndrome much more so than men do.
Melody Wilding:
Yeah, and listen, like I mentioned, there is socialization. There’s also a racial component to this. If you are the only person in the in the room who looks like you or who speaks in the way you do has your experiences, you are going to feel like you’re different because you are. So being in a minority, whatever fashion can lead to feeling like I’m an outsider and I don’t belong here. So it’s very complex.
Carol Cox:
Oh, that reminds me of a conversation that we had on this podcast not too long ago where we had a group of women who had been our clients who all work in STEM fields, so very male dominated fields. And they taught quite a bit in that conversation about that, this idea of imposter syndrome and feeling like how could they use their voice in a way where they could actually be heard?
Melody Wilding:
Yeah, exactly. And I think as you were saying with when you go through an experience for the first time, that’s not necessarily imposter syndrome. That’s just having a normal response to something that is new and scary. It’s it’s a good sign that you feel nervous. You’re excited about that opportunity. Imposter syndrome is when you have that fundamental belief, despite evidence to the contrary, that you can’t do something. And so I think that’s important here, too, to realize that if you’re in a room where you are the only person that looks like you, that you are not actually an imposter, we have to recognize that there’s not something wrong with you for feeling that way. And there was actually a article that went viral in HBR about stop telling women they have imposter syndrome, because I think many times we as women can blame ourselves and say, Well, it’s my imposter syndrome. I don’t feel adequate enough. Instead of recognizing the real facts of the situation that, Oh, I am different. That’s why I’m feeling this way. And being able to put that in perspective without criticizing or blaming ourselves for that.
Carol Cox:
Hmm. Thank you for sharing that melody, and I’ll make sure to include a link to that article in the show notes. And what the thought that comes to my mind is. Then what needs to change is who’s in the room. So there’s more people who look like each other. So you have that balance of that that one person doesn’t feel like they don’t belong there.
Melody Wilding:
And, you know, I am often asked to speak to companies on imposter syndrome. That is probably my number one topic that is requested. And what I have loved seeing is that at first when I was talking about this years ago, it was all women’s ergs, women only audiences. And now that’s very different. They’re making them much more inclusive to anybody in the company who wants to come. And I think that’s a very big step, again, from taking this away from just being a quote unquote, women’s issue and sort of blaming women for having imposter syndrome to normalizing this conversation.
Carol Cox:
Oh, I’m so glad to hear that Melody. Before we hit record, you said something to me which I know to be true for myself that we teach will be most need to learn. So can you tell me about when did you recognize that? Not only that you had imposter syndrome, but perhaps it was holding you back.
Melody Wilding:
Oh my gosh, I wish I could put my finger on the first time I experienced imposter syndrome, but I think it’s been with me the majority of my life. Always just feeling like I’m the next shoe is going to drop and I’m going to be exposed or I somehow tricked people that I’m smart and intelligent because I can be charming and I’m good at communicating and I can just get over on people. And I had battled with those thoughts. The earliest I can remember it is probably college. So I graduated as the valedictorian of my college class. And I remember sort of downplaying that because I didn’t have the most difficult majors. I wasn’t a biology or physics major or anything like that. I was a psychology major, and I felt like I had tricked everyone into becoming the valedictorian. And so that was the first moment I remembered it. And it has followed me throughout my entire career. And so I understand this topic deeply because I navigate. I did it to this day feeling like, am I qualified to be that person on stage who’s being an expert in this topic when in fact I still navigate some of these these demons myself?
Carol Cox:
Emily So let’s talk about some practical things that we can do, recognizing that many of us are going to have these feelings of imposter syndrome that show up in one way or another and that and obviously we want to achieve certain things in our careers and our lives. We want to stand on that TEDx stage. We want to deliver that keynote. We want to go and do that segment on TV news if we’re asked. And so and then, yes, to your point, we can probably do it the first time, but then recognizing that, yes, we are qualified and wanted to continue to do this and we’re going to continue to be successful at it. What are some things that you do to help yourself when those thoughts come up?
Melody Wilding:
The first one is to create psychological distance from those thoughts because it’s very easy to get fused and we just get hijacked by those imposter syndrome thoughts which just automatically buy into what they have to say. And then our actions follow suit, right? We don’t submit a proposal. We don’t raise our rates, what have you. So psychological distancing means putting some space between our thoughts. So we have a moment to consider. Is this what I want to be thinking? So the easiest way to do this is to turn your imposter syndrome into a character. So if your inner critic had a name and Carol, I’m asking this to you, so I want to hear your answer. If your inner critic had a name, what would it be called?
Carol Cox:
Oh, okay. This is. Yeah. So my my regular alter egos name is Carrie, but that’s like a positive version. So that’s the first name I came up. But I want I don’t want to use that name. Okay. So what came up to me and this I hope there’s no Nancy’s living listening to the podcast. I thought, like, Nasty Nancy, because I like alliteration.
Melody Wilding:
So perfect. Perfect. Nancy is take take. No offense. The amount of time someone tells me, Karen, probably that’s the most popular answer and I apologize to all Karens out there. But having this sort of handle for your negative, Nancy, that comes up is very helpful to bring some lightness to this. Right, To bring some humor that it’s not the serious, just dreadful thing that comes up, but it gives you that moment of pause to say, oh, there’s negative Nancy again, and you can identify it and not automatically buy in to what it says. So using that labeling, naming your inner critic is the first step.
Carol Cox:
I like that. Okay. That’s very helpful. Melody, what else can we do?
Melody Wilding:
My favorite strategy, I think, and something I do for myself, is having a brag file. So in this context, your brag file is a place where you collect all of the positive testimonials, comments from your talks, photos of you on stage killing it. That is your place that when you are having a bad day, when you have that moment where you are doubting yourself, you can turn back to that and remind yourself of what good you’ve done in the past. Because as I said earlier, imposter syndrome is all about that difficulty internalizing what we have done. And you have to train yourself into doing that. You have to constantly be putting your attention on what went well and what shows. I’m actually competent at this, so I make it a habit. After every talk, whenever I get positive feedback, I save the chat. I put everything into a file. I’ve all my speaking testimonials because I know there’s going to going to come a rainy day where I need to look back on that melody again.
Carol Cox:
This is I’m so glad you mentioned this too, because I actually have I have a testimonials document to client testimonials, podcast reviews, and then also speaking testimonials. So I love that. And then I also have a list of all of my accomplishments thing from college forward. I think I skipped high school, but college forward and and I do go back and look at that periodically, just a bulleted list of different things. And the reason I do it and I’m just connecting this now is to show to myself there’s a track record of success that was that I was not a one hit wonder.
Melody Wilding:
Exactly. You you nailed it. And I love that you make it a regular process, right? That this isn’t just a one off thing. This is something you can regularly be doing once a week, once a month. So that again, you turn it into a habit. You train your brain to look for those positives.
Carol Cox:
What else can we do?
Melody Wilding:
This is a simple one. It’s not necessarily easy, but accepting compliments, right? When someone says, Wow, you did so great, or I really love that talk. I know I am guilty of then explaining that away, saying, Oh, I just had a good day, or oh, that audience was was an easy audience, right? We explain it away. We push away that feedback. Right. So accepting compliments again simple to. Thank you so much for sharing that. That means a lot to me to hear. Or better yet, asking a question saying, I’m so glad you like the talk today. What resonated with you the most? Right. It’s it’s simple, but it’s not easy because that sort of pushing the feedback away comes so naturally, especially to us women who are conditioned to reject it.
Carol Cox:
And I’ve gotten good about accepting verbal compliments. So and I’ve trained myself like you just described it. Just say thank you. Maybe to ask a question in an exchange to that. Here’s the thing that I still struggle with a bit. At the end of a talk. You know, you’re standing on stage. I’m standing on stage. And the audience applauds as as their want to do at the end, especially after like a keynote or that type of talk. And I find that so incredibly uncomfortable. I literally just want to run off the stage, go run behind the podium, go get my notes, go do whatever, go get a drink of water. And I don’t like standing there accepting the applause. And I actually had an audience member about five years ago. She came up to me afterwards, so grateful for her. And she said, Carole loved your talk. You need to let the audience applaud you. That’s the value exchange. That’s their way of saying thank you. Just like when you go to a player ballet, it’s a performer’s right off the stage. You and the audience would feel like you didn’t get to complete the the experience with them.
Melody Wilding:
I love that. And it’s so true, right? When we reject a compliment, it’s like throwing a gift in somebody’s face. So do it as much for the other person as you do it for yourself.
Carol Cox:
All right. So for all of you listening, accept the compliments, but also accept the applause. You can even do like a little funny bow if you want to. Maybe I’ll try that at the next one. I can like I can play with it. All right. Anything else that we can do?
Melody Wilding:
Last thing is, with imposter syndrome, you might notice that you have a habit of when something good happens, you explain it away as the result of luck or timing or what have you. So you need to shift what’s called your explanatory style. And your explanatory style in psychology is basically why are things happening to you? Are they happening to you because they are outside of your control or are they happening because of something inherently within you? And so when good things happen to you, think about what about my character, my effort, my values, my performance, what caused this? What led to this? Rather than always just looking at those external factors that are outside of your control?
Carol Cox:
Oh, that’s a great addition for the brag book. The list of accomplishments is okay, so we have these accomplishments and it’s true. Sometimes I will say, Oh, well, it was just timing or I was just in the right place at the right time, but I need to go back and say, no, there was effort and there was intention and there was there were things that I did like that that I deserved to have done to get to where I got to.
Melody Wilding:
And Carol, I do have one more, I’ll add.
Carol Cox:
Yes.
Melody Wilding:
And that is that look for opportunities to mentor other people. So if there are other speakers who are earlier than you in your journey or in the area that you speak on, people who are newer in their journey, look for opportunities to mentor people and share your knowledge, which obviously we all have stages and opportunities to do that, but that has actually been shown to combat imposter syndrome because not only are you normalizing that, Oh, actually everyone doesn’t know everything. I’m not the only person that feels like I don’t have it all together. But you show to yourself, Oh, wow, I’ve come a long way. I do have wisdom and competency that I can share with someone else. So it’s powerful on a few levels.
Carol Cox:
Oh, that also reminds me that and this is one thing that we when we work with the women in our Thought leader Academy, we help them set their speaking fees and we share some of the fees that fees that we charge or other clients have charged because we want them to know what going rates are and we encourage them as they get more experience to raise their rates. And there’s always a time and place for free speaking engagements. I did a whole podcast episode about that back in August of this year. But there is also a time as speakers where we need to charge and we need to raise our rates. And my argument to them is not only do it for yourself because of all the experience and the value that you bring, but also because if you continue to charge too low, whether speaking or in your business, you’re actually taking opportunities away from newer speakers who need those gigs and will do them for free or low price. But you are more experienced. You need to up level yourself to give room to their speakers. And if an organization comes to you and they have a small budget and you just and you can’t do it, recommend those newer speakers so that they can get that experience, that’s excellent.
Melody Wilding:
I love that it’s such a win win.
Carol Cox:
All right, Melody, so thank you so much for sharing about imposter syndrome. I want to talk now about the LinkedIn learning courses because you have you’ve done them. It is a full production. They are so well done. So let’s start off. How did this opportunity come to you to be an instructor on LinkedIn?
Melody Wilding:
Yeah, well, I wish I could say that it happened overnight. I think this is the result of just steadily and incrementally being present on LinkedIn for, gosh, probably over eight years now and just steadily showing up and building a body of work and a platform on LinkedIn because that’s one of the things they look for is instructors that have a reach and a platform. So it was part of that building a presence, but also a big part of it was my book. It was my book, Trust Yourself. And so I was approached by LinkedIn learning right around the time when the book came out, and it really my expertise happened to align with what was happening in the world at that moment. A lot of interest in mental health, well being work life balance, which very closely aligns with my work. So it was a match match.
Carol Cox:
So in what year was this?
Melody Wilding:
My first courses came out in 2021, so I believe I filmed my first courses, let’s see, I think in September of 2021.
Carol Cox:
Okay, so then tell me what the process was like. So LinkedIn, they found you in the platform, you’re active, you have an engaged audience, you have a topic that you’re an expert in that they wanted to create some courses around. And so what were the steps after that?
Melody Wilding:
Yeah. And so you do go through a contracting process with them. Can’t talk too much about that. But working with LinkedIn has been one of the best experiences of my professional career, and it’s because everyone there is really focused on not only being making a great experience for the instructors, but making a great experience for the learners. And so what I found really fascinating is that, of course all of this was still going on during the pandemic. And so we filmed both of my first two courses, entirely remote, and so they sent all of the equipment here to my apartment. I set it up right in this room here, and we filmed all of the courses right here. And so it was an amazing process to have this really high quality, top notch production experience with their whole team being largely located in California and controlling the camera and the shots and everything remotely. It was really amazing.
Carol Cox:
Similarly, so you created the course content, so you figured out, okay, here are the topics that I want to do. Here’s the flow. Here are the modules here. Here’s how they build. Do they then go over the course content and give you feedback and recommendations?
Melody Wilding:
Yes. So as an instructor, you write all of your own content and yes, you have a producer who works with you to refine your content, suggest improvements, look for areas to engage learners, this and that. So you are working and going back and forth with someone throughout the entire process.
Carol Cox:
And then more recently, did you do the video filming at a studio?
Melody Wilding:
I did. I was also very fortunate. I’ve had both experiences that their studios recently reopened and I was one of the first courses to film and that was really fun to be flown out to California to have a first class, almost movie studio level. That course should be coming out probably in a few weeks, maybe out by the time this airs.
Carol Cox:
Okay, great. Well, we’ll make sure to include a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well as to wherever the best link is on LinkedIn to take a look at your courses so that the listeners can check that out. I can’t wait to check them out as well. Mellody, let me let me ask you about creating the course content. So as the listeners of this podcast were speakers, we do in-person, thank goodness in-person is coming back in person speaking obviously a lot of virtual presentations, especially over the past few years, webinars. So the thing with the LinkedIn learning is that it is not live the people watching it, you can’t engage with them in the same way that you can on a live in person or virtual presentation. And so how did you think about keeping the content engaging?
Melody Wilding:
Well, LinkedIn has that baked into their process in many ways. So the videos are no longer than about 2 minutes, 2 to 3 minutes, I would say. And that’s intentional because people’s attention spans are very, very short. And so the videos have to be extremely bite sized. You’re encouraged to include and and I did this often, including a lot of stories, case studies, examples, illustrations of the topic. You want to make sure your videos start with a catchy hook. Because if someone doesn’t want to watch past the first ten or 15 seconds, then they’re going to fall off and probably not watch the entire course from a high level thinking about what’s the learner journey? Where are someone at the beginning of your course emotionally and skill wise, and what do they need to be at the end of the course? And then what needs to happen in between to fill those gaps?
Carol Cox:
Fantastic. Melody. Anything else that you want to make sure to share with us about either LinkedIn or about imposter syndrome and even the other work that you do.
Melody Wilding:
What comes up for me, and it’s come up a lot in my speaking career, it’s related to imposter syndrome. Is people pleasing? You know, as speakers, I have been guilty of this that earlier on in my career I made a bespoke custom presentation for every single gig and I was forced to come to a point in my career where now if someone does not want to hire me for the few presentations that I offer, then they’re not going to hire me. And that was really hard. That was a really hard realization to come to and accept. But creating some of those personal policies and frankly, boundaries for yourself is key because imposter syndrome not feeling good enough. I need to provide more value to show people I know what I’m doing right. That can really become a very slippery slope.
Carol Cox:
Yes, I hear you that now. I of course, love creating presentations. Hence that’s why I started a business called Speaking Your Brand. But I too have dramatically narrowed down my presentation topics and really, they’re all the same thing. I just titled them or emphasize certain things versus the other, but most of the core content and examples are the same from presentation to presentation, and that actually will help to combat imposter syndrome because you’re going to get really, really, really good at delivering that content.
Melody Wilding:
Yes. And I think that has contributed to my confidence as a speaker the most is that I feel more in command of my content when I get on stage. I think I know this front to back. If someone throws a question at me, I know what they’re going to ask. Rather than being spread so thin across so many different topics.
Carol Cox:
Well, I have one more tip for those of you listening to Combat Imposter Syndrome is take our speaker archetype Quiz is free to take is just ten multiple choice questions and then you’ll find out which type of speaker archetype you are. And the reason to do that is so that you can leverage your strengths, like really dial into those strengths that your natural communication style and then figure out what are some things that I want to start adding and incorporating into my talks to just up level them and make them even better. So you can take that quiz as speaking your brand slash quiz again, speaking your brand dot com slash quiz melody. Thank you so much for coming on the Speaking your Brand podcast. I have learned so much just in our conversation today and I’m excited for listeners to connect with you on LinkedIn.
Melody Wilding:
It was my pleasure. Thank you so much.
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