blog – Adele Hawkes

Free ebook: The Secrets to Tackling Imposter Syndrome

adele — Mon, 22 May 2023 09:48:20 +0000

Ever experience that feeling of faking it and wondering when you’re going to get found out, even though objectively you’re achieving well?

Welcome to the Imposter Syndrome Club!

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Research shows around 70% of people experience this at some time. However, unfortunately, that doesn’t stop it impeding your successes or preventing you from reaching your potential in the first place.

Happily, help is at hand! I’ve put together a short ebook that will help you understand what imposter syndrome is, how it can impact you and why it’s a self-perpetuating cycle that needs to be broken.

Inside, you’ll find five practical ways to stop the cognitive distortions and self-limiting beliefs of imposter feelings, and begin a journey of growth, empowerment and confidence. If you consistently use them, I know you’ll see results. Don’t forget to let me know how you get on!

PS If you want more tailored support to ‘Re-Author Your Story’, there are a couple of options detailed at the end of the ebook. Please feel free to reach out to me directly for more info.

The-Secrets-to-Tackling-Imposter-Syndrome Download

Five ways to stay happy at work

adele — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 16:30:52 +0000

Happiness at work means good business. Adele Hawkes shares five ways to keep your employees happy for increased productivity

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Work Life and Practice Business

Understanding how to make people happy at work means great things for businesses; there are plenty of statistics that show just how important work happiness is for employers and for employees.

Research by The Guardian has shown that engaged teams can increase productivity by 20% and reduce staff turnover by a huge 87%. As a result, employees who are happy at work impact the bottom line, generating up to 43% more revenue. Similarly, Forbes reported that employee engagement and wellness can reduce absenteeism by 41%.

Employee happiness should matter to every organisation; here are five ways to make it matter to yours.

Encourage positive emotions

One of the biggest misconceptions about positive psychology is that it focuses so exclusively on the brighter side of life that it ignores the emotional complexity of being human. Recognising that our mental wellbeing is not entirely dependent on eliminating negative emotions is essential – in fact, discomfort, anxiety, fear and the like play a crucial role in our lives by flagging up areas where we feel challenged and signposting what matters to us.

The goal is always about balance, which means not succumbing to our natural negativity bias and acknowledging that positive emotions play an equally important role. Regularly experiencing things like joy, gratitude, hope, inspiration, enthusiasm, pride or fun at work help build psychological reserves that will actually act as a buffer when and if things get tough, helping people to reduce stress, persevere, come up with innovative solutions and cope more effectively.

Boost engagement

Have you ever felt so absorbed in an activity that time seems to disappear? In positive psychology, this is called being in ‘flow’, a state in which people often feel at their most industrious and contented. Unfortunately, without conscious attention, the opportunities for this intense sense of engagement can get swallowed up by the automatic assembly line of life. Perhaps, for example, you started a business because you felt passionately about the service you were able to provide, but most of your day now revolves around admin and chasing new leads. If that’s the case, it’s not surprising that you might start finding motivation hard to come by!

To boost engagement at work, there are three key areas to concentrate on – using your strengths (the things you are naturally good at), managing your emotions (through self and social awareness) and checking that your personal sense of purpose aligns with your employer of choice. This is the way to ensure you feel energetic, enthusiastic and able to optimally perform whatever task you are carrying out.

Build relationships

Positive relationships play a central role in a happy, functional work environment. Friendship, emotional support and connectedness to others are strongly correlated with positive emotions at work, while solid social ties foster a sense of resilience, belonging and even attachment to the organisation you are working for.

Having a collaborative team brings substantial wellbeing benefits, both subjectively (feeling positively about yourself and your life) and psychologically (looking after your mental health). It means you should never consider a quick coffee and chat with a colleague a waste of time; it can dramatically affect your overall satisfaction at work.

Find meaning

In which ways does your work give you purpose? It could be the opportunity to personally grow and develop, the chance to help others in some way and contribute to a higher purpose, or the opportunity to earn money flexibly, allowing you more time to pursue other passions and hobbies.

Connecting with your ‘why’ adds a real sense of value and commitment to your work that, again, can help build your resilience, overcome challenging situations and keep you driven despite tedious tasks or long hours. In short, it is one of the most empowering things you can do. If you are really struggling to identify why you are doing the work you do, it may well be time to start thinking about a change.

Celebrate accomplishments

Setting goals, and celebrating milestones along the way, are the final component to happiness. Taking steps to reach these goals – big or small – can significantly increase our sense of self-efficacy and motivation to keep achieving, especially when we focus on what we did, rather than what we didn’t do.

Remember, this isn’t about getting caught up in a spiral of intense pressure and perfectionism – when you evaluate your unrealistic goals against other people’s achievements, and find yourself lacking (‘comparison is the thief of joy’, after all) – no, this is about progressing and evolving in ways that are personally meaningful to you, and savouring every step of the journey.

You’ll also find that reflecting on your accomplishments gives you a good idea of where your strengths lie; this, in turn, this builds the type of solid inner-confidence and self-reliance that is an essential part of your roadmap to happiness, helping you secure that much coveted, long-lasting, personal and professional success.

Better Mondays

adele — Thu, 05 May 2022 16:46:00 +0000

Loved, loved, loved being invited onto the Better Monday podcast with the lovely Milla to talk about how to ensure you function optimally at work.

Want to know what the secret is to a better start to your working week? Interested in the difference between positive psychology and traditional psychology? Maybe you’re wondering about the best coping mechanisms to deal with set-backs and frustrations, without falling foul of toxic positivity or how to avoid burn-out at work.

From strength-based approaches, to imposter syndrome, to how to form an empowered and psychologically safe team, we cover it all in this fab interview. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

28 Days of Positivity: Imposter Syndrome

adele — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 17:14:00 +0000

People often think imposter syndrome only affects women, but the truth is it can affect any gender, any age, any nationality – it doesn’t discriminate!

It was really fun to record this short video as part of my fellow positive psychologist Zeena Hicks’ ’28 Days of Positivity’ series. Watch if you’re interested in a few easy tips to break the self-perpetuating cycle of the imposter phenomenon.

Leaders in Focus: Imposter syndrome and how to identify it

adele — Fri, 21 May 2021 16:57:00 +0000

I recently sat down with leadership and wellbeing consultant Charlotte Wiseman, to talk about imposter syndrome for a couple of articles she was writing. Here’s the article she wrote for The Leader’s Council:

I must admit, when I first heard the “imposter syndrome”, I was a little confused. When I heard and thought about the descriptions of what it was: basically, this lingering feeling that someone was going to work out that you were not really that good, I felt that this was just part and parcel of being human. A lot of the people I worked with seemed to feel the same. So, I was quite surprised when I discovered there was a name for this, and an assumption that some people do not actually experience it. And I have met people since who say they do not understand how people could have imposter syndrome.

Adele Hawkes explains “imposter syndrome” very well. She told me first and foremost that it is very widely experienced by people. In fact, research shows that about 70 per cent of people experience it at some time, and that is men and women, different nationalities, different ethnicities, different ages, different professions that do. So, it is quite a ubiquitous phenomenon, or Syndrome. In essence, what it is, is this feeling of being a fake, feeling like you are a fraud, this belief that you are simply winging it and that you are going to get found out at any moment.

Adele went on to explain that there was a crossover between imposter syndrome and self-doubt, and it has become something of a synonym. However, what was important to recognise was that imposter syndrome goes further, in that it is characterised by a persistent, inner narrative. So, you are telling yourself this all the time and you can be triggered particularly by certain things. So, it can be anything that triggers this stress. It can be something negative, so, if you feel that you are being stretched and challenged way outside of your comfort zone, it can trigger imposter syndrome, but it can also be around positive things, like receiving a promotion.

It is different to self-doubt, although there is crossover to it, and there are some negative connotations to it as well. It can self-handicap people, it can hold people back, it can curb their potential, and there is also this idea of chronic worrying, lots of anxiety, depression around it too.

As positive psychologists, Adele and I also discussed a positive side to imposter syndrome, and this is something that is gaining some traction. Adele mentioned that she had conducted a workshop recently where this idea really blossomed. At this workshop, a woman in attendance felt that she was definitely suffering from imposter syndrome, but that it was a driving force in her life. That is to say, that instead of holding her back, it propelled her on and gave her real momentum and a catalyst to go further, to try harder, to keep proving herself to herself, and also to the people she worked with.

Adele’s response to this was simply: “if this approach is working for you, do not change it, it is all good. If you are finding it to be a positive force in your life and you feel more empathetic, or you ask better questions of yourself because of it, then continue.”

The issue with imposter syndrome comes when it acts as a curb to your potential, when it is holding you back and making you question and doubt yourself to the point where you do not want to put your hand up in a meeting, or you do not feel that you can step into your power, or you can’t celebrate your success. That is a whole other issue in itself: being able to really celebrate the things that you have done well and really feel that you have owned that success instead of discounting it as mere “luck”.

If you discount the fact that you have achieved a PhD, or you discount the fact you have achieved a Distinction in your Master’s, that is no fun. Positive psychology is all about being you. It is about authenticity and functioning optimally, experiencing everything that life has to offer. So, if you are cutting yourself off from that source of joy and happiness and pride and awe and inspiration, then that is not a good thing.

When we have imposter syndrome, it essentially acts as a barrier to being able to celebrate your own growth and the progress that you have made and replaces that with dark and negative side of “I’m not quite doing enough”. If we explore this mentality in the context of the workplace, then it can really affect things.

Adele informed me about some of the individuals she had spoken to who have been dealing with imposter syndrome, and the extent to which they were affected was largely dependent on their individual circumstances. For example, if you are faced with a challenge, which we often are in the workplace, if something feels challenging and you know you are going to be stretched, there’s a big difference in the brain between approaching that problem and thinking: “oh, I am not sure if I can do that, I am going to have to really, sort of, gather my resources and really try”, and the alternatives of: “oh, I am not sure I can do that, I am going to close down because I do not want anybody to know that this is going to be difficult for me” or “I don’t want to ask for help because that shows that I don’t know what I’m doing”. These are the same sentiments of being challenged or stretched, but the pathways to the action are completely different.

Ideally, one wants to be in a position where one is always challenged. As humans, we love growth, we love developing and we love evolving, and these are all important things that we should embrace, rather than run away from.

You can also read an excerpt from our conversation on LinkedIn.

From music to football to……positive psychology?

adele — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 17:09:00 +0000

On Simon Cockram’s podcast, he talks to an eclectic mix of people across sport, entertainment and business – and that’s something I applaud. There’s nothing I like more than a really curious mind!

It was a particular treat to appear on his podcast as we were still in Tier 2, which meant we were able to get together (appropriately socially distanced, of course) in his new studio. In fact, I actually had the honour of being the first interviewee on these new premises which made our interview all the more special.

In keeping with Simon’s breadth of thinking, our conversation ran the gamut from self-limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome, to what success really means, to what to do when you meet the challenging goals you set for yourself. Time flew as we chatted for almost two hours – let’s just hope he’s a dab hand at editing!

The final version of the podcast and a youtube video should be ready around February time, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the end result.

How to use positive psychology to improve your life and career

adele — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 15:22:00 +0000

It’s always amazing to be invited onto different podcasts to talk about positive psychology (PP), and how it can help people live life in a way that really makes them feel happy and empowered. What I particularly love is the opportunity to let as many people as possible know that there is a huge amount of scientific research going on behind the scenes of PP. Yes, there’s an element of ‘self-help’ to the discipline but it’s backed up by a large and growing evidence-base of how and why these interventions work.

It’s also particularly lovely to talk about PP from a practical point of view, which is what I had the chance to do with the lovely Antonette Oloo. She invited me onto her She Owns Success podcast during lockdown, so we recorded our conversation virtually. We talked about my own journey to studying and researching PP (not without a few bumps in the road) as well as how imposter syndrome can hold people back – something that seems to have been exacerbated during the pandemic. But above all, we were able to talk about how to handle some of the challenges life inevitably throws at us and, most importantly, how to bounce-back stronger, less fearful and more resilient than ever.

You can listen to our chat here

I hope you enjoy it!

REAL: Women in Leadership training

adele — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:14:00 +0000

Colliers International, a leading professional services and investment management company, is an organisation very attuned to the fact that the the experience of women achieving senior positions can be different to their male counterparts.

As part of their ‘Business in Balance’ diversity and inclusion drive, they selected 13 female senior surveyors and associate directors to take part in a year long REAL (Real Estate And Leadership) programme. And I was invited along to hold an interactive workshop on Imposter Syndrome and how to tackle it.

It was an absolute joy to work with such an incredible group of engaged and ambitious women, and all the more special as it turned out to be my last face-to-face session before the first COVID-19 lockdown. Feedback was fantastic too – it’s always nice to be told people love your session, but it’s more important that attendees find it useful and apparently they did!

If you’d like to find out more about how tackling imposter syndrome and/or the science of positive psychology can benefit your talent development, please get in touch.

Can creativity change the way we experience life?

adele — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 16:31:00 +0000

What does it mean to be creative? How highly (or otherwise) would you rate your own personal creativity?

Do you think that it’s a rare gift bestowed on the chosen few? Or is it a natural capacity that we can tap into daily, in order to live a life full of meaning, engagement and pleasure?

As a positive psychology researcher, I’d argue for the latter. However, it’s fair to say that creativity and good mental health haven’t always been thought of as natural bedfellows – just consider the mad scientist, crazy inventor and tortured artist stereotypes from films, fiction and sometimes even real-life.

And yet, from a positive psychology perspective, with its focus on what makes ordinary people flourish and thrive, a very different picture of creativity emerges. It turns up as an important character strength and a pillar of psychological adaptation that allows us to solve problems as they arise.

No surprise, then, to learn that our creative skills play a big part in developing our resiliency reserves in the face of adversity and setbacks. In fact, the capacity for thinking and acting creativity is closely linked to many key well-being concepts, including (but not limited to) authenticity and self-enlightenment, finding meaning and flow, self-expression and autonomy, and even physical and psychological health improvements. Clearly it’s powerful stuff!

So it’s more of a surprise that creativity is an area in which we know very little about empirically-speaking. In fact, historically, it’s sat on the periphery of psychology research. This can be explained, in part at least, by the pre-Christian notion that creativity was ‘a gift from the gods’ rather than a human act. In other words, it’s taken a while to see that creativity is a suitable field for scientific study. Happily, that seems to be changing now.

Nevertheless, the idea of creativity as something that is accessible only to those who possess incredible talent in the arts or significantly push forward humanity with their inventiveness persists. We might even stop thinking of ourselves as creative at all. Certainly, this was my own experience. I come from a family of extremely artistically talented people – my husband is one the world’s best known aerial photographers, my brother is an incredible computer animator who works on big-budget films, my son’s ability to draw and create in a style all of his own has blown me away since he was very small (he’s the one who draws the simple and gorgeous little people I use for my presentations). Given that my own ability to create art is (to put it politely) ‘limited’, a few years ago the idea of thinking of myself as creative was laughable.

But what if it’s perfectly possible to make a creative contribution without being brilliant in one of these ways? What if it can be found in the more prosaic, everyday actions that we all take, such as baking or gardening or arranging a room? What if it can help us approach a difficult situation or tackle obstacles in a better way? What if it’s characterised by freedom of thought and the original interpretation of experience? What if it’s a skill we all have and can hone to keep our perceptions fresh and our judgements insightful?

And what if, by tapping into our innate creativity, we can make life more interesting and fulfilling? Certainly, in terms of flourishing, creativity and well-being go hand-in-hand. In fact, recent research suggests that the two interact in a cyclical manner, creating an upward spiral so that as we increase our creativity we boost how happy we feel and vice versa. (If you’re interested, ask me about the ‘broaden-and-build’ theory, because this fits in perfectly!)

Our everyday creativity is an essential component of how we adjust to new and novel circumstances. For many of us, whether we realise it or not, it’s had to really kick in during the pandemic and resulting lockdowns, as we’ve navigated how to work, live, and home-school during very strange times. It’s also why I cover how to unlock and maximise creativity as part of my ‘Navigating Change’ workshops and talks.

So it really doesn’t matter that you’re not the next Salvadore Dali or James Dyson. Your creative activities, pursuits, appreciation and/or thinking can still have an incredibly uplifting and positive effect on how you experience life. If it’s a resource that’s available to us all, it’s also something we can nurture and develop, and call on to help us solve problems as and when we need to. And who of us wouldn’t benefit from that during 2020 and beyond?

Feeling like a fraud?

adele — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 17:00:03 +0000

Imposter syndrome is absolutely fascinating to me – so fascinating that it’s the subject of my MSc research dissertation.

Positive psychology and coaching offer huge potential for helping curb feelings of being undeserving of your success, and developing the authenticity and self-awareness needed to keep any unfounded self-doubt triggers at bay. Through my MSc, I’m really excited to be able to add to the existing research on imposter syndrome in some small way.

The first step is actually talking about how you’re feeling so I was absolutely delighted to be asked to contribute to an article in Dental Nursing recently. Read below for my five top tips on overcoming this too-common phenomenon.

Don’t believe everything you think!
One of the most effective ways of stopping imposter syndrome in its tracks is simply being aware that the feelings of self-doubt you are experiencing have absolutely no bearing on your competence to do the job. Emotions are data, not decisions. When feelings of faking it come up, question your thoughts – what evidence do you have to think this way? What has past experience taught you? When you’ve started off without the skills to complete a task, how have you adapted and coped?

2. Share how you feel
An interesting quirk about coaching people with IS is that it’s rarely the reason they seek coaching in the first place. It tends to surface around session two or three. Funnily enough, this was also noted when IP was first identified back in the 1970s –people took several psychotherapy sessions to admit to feeling like an imposter as they were convinced firstly that these feelings were unique to them and secondly, that nothing could be done. Neither of these are true! So speak up – to a trusted friend, family member or colleague, or to a coach or mentor. You’ll soon discover you are not alone and that there is plenty you can do to turn down an overly critical inner narrative.

3. Keep a record of positive feedback
One of the traits of IS is that you get very good at rejecting anything that doesn’t tally with this view of yourself as unworthy and a fake. Dismissing positive feedback is a case in point i.e. ‘My boss says I’ve done a good job – little does she know that I was winging it and just managed to get away with it this time!’ To break this habit, start keeping a written record of positive comments that you receive from different people. Then, instead of brushing things off, experiment with taking a few minutes each day to savour and internalise these comments. It might be uncomfortable to begin with, but it can be very powerful in helping you take some ownership of your successes.

4. Think about progress, not perfection
A common thinking trap for those with IS is the idea of ‘perfection with ease’. In practice this reveals itself as setting unreasonably high goals, and then beating yourself up as a failure if you don’t meet them quickly, easily and without much effort. After a while, this negative spiral can prevent you trying to achieve all you could if you simply factored in a little self-compassion. Try to think about yourself as a ‘person-in-process’ instead. It’s ok if you don’t know how to do things perfectly straightaway; it’s ok to pick things up as you go along; it’s ok to get things wrong and learn from your mistakes.

5. Accept your strengths and your flaws
The most long-lasting ‘solution’ to IS is to build a much more realistic picture of your strengths and accept that you also have flaws – we all do! With IS, people tend to focus almost exclusively on the negative, so it’s time to shift your thinking not only to the positive things about you, but also about how you can leverage these strengths to help you tackle more challenging times, tasks and thoughts. Start by listing your strengths, then think in-depth about how you can use them on an everyday basis. If you find this hard, you can try a free strengths survey such as http://www.viacharacter.org, which will give you an objective overview.