Every COO in a room raised their hand when asked if they felt like a fraud. The speaker explains this comes from massive responsibility and constant growth demands. The COO Alliance helps leaders shed imposter syndrome through confidence, networking, and execution skills.
Chapters
Almost every COO that I've ever met has something that we call imposter syndrome, meaning that they show up and they kind of think, I don't really have the skills to do this. I'm not sure I even know what I'm doing. Well, guess what? You're not alone. Actually, at one of our COO Alliance events about 5 years ago, I was speaking with one of the COOs, Brian, at lunch, and he said, you know what? I feel like a fraud. I feel like every other member of the COO Alliance that's in the room is smarter than I am. I said, hey, do you mind if I ask the members about that? And he goes, sure, no problem. So we literally walked right back into the room a minute later, and I didn't want everybody to know who, you know, gotten this idea or problem from. So I kind of told a bit of a white lie and I said, 30 minutes ago I was speaking with one of our members and they mentioned that they feel like a bit of an imposter. They feel like everybody else is smarter than they are. I said, just for fun, put your hand up if you feel like everybody in this room is smarter than you are. Everybody put their hand up and then they all started to laugh. The reality is we all feel imposter syndrome because every day that we show up, we're all trying to figure it out. The company is the biggest thing we've ever built. We're taking on new projects, we're taking on new initiatives, we're making promises to customers that we're not sure, quite sure how to keep yet. So yes, part of your growth as a leader is to gain the confidence and the connections to help you put it in place and to grow the skills, right, the competence to actually do what you're working on. So your role as a leader is to always keep growing and to remember that your job as a leader is to grow the people below you so that they have the confidence and the skills and the connections to do what they're doing. Because you're not the only person that feels like an imposter. COOs feel like an imposter, as do your members of your leadership team. And guess what? Your CEO, your entrepreneur, also feels like they have no idea what's going on either. Every day, this is the biggest thing you've ever done. One of the biggest value points we see for our members of the CEO Alliance is that first year of membership, they gain the confidence and the connections to help them scale as a COO. The second year is when they tend to get a lot of the systems and the skills. But in that first year, it's shedding that imposter syndrome so they can show up and go, all right, I got this. I can kind of put my head into this. I can put my back into it. I can really kind of start to figure out how to make this go true now. But they realize that everybody feels like we're just winging it. So there you go. You're not the only person that feels like an imposter.
