The Letter:
Dear Sonia,
I have been “faking confidence”! I’ve been in leadership for almost a decade. I have a great team, a title I worked hard for, and results I’m proud of. But almost every day I walk into work feeling like someone is about to figure out that I don’t actually know what I’m doing. So I perform. I speak with certainty I don’t feel. I never admit when I’m confused. I project this version of myself that feels nothing like the person I am at home.
The problem is, it’s working. People follow me. They trust me. And somehow that makes it worse. Because now I’m not just faking it for myself, I’m faking it for them.
I’m tired. And I’m starting to wonder if the whole thing is built on something that isn’t real.
— Exhausted in the Executive Chair
Sonia’s Response:
Dear Exhausted,
Can I start by saying…thank you for writing this. Truly. Because what you just described takes more courage than anything you’ve done in that boardroom. You named something most leaders carry quietly to their graves, or at least to their retirement dinners. The fact that you’re asking the question means something important is already shifting in you.
So before anything else: you are not alone. Not even close.
Dr. Pauline Clance, the psychologist who first identified imposter syndrome back in 1978, originally observed it in high-achieving women — but decades of research since have confirmed it touches leaders across every industry, gender, and level of seniority. A 2020 study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that an estimated 70% of people will experience imposter phenomenon at some point in their lives.
Seventy percent.
That’s not a personal failing.
That’s the human condition dressed up in a blazer.
But here’s where I want to gently sit with you for a moment, because you deserve more than just reassurance.
What you’re describing has moved beyond the occasional whisper of self-doubt. You’ve built an entire architecture around it — a performance, a persona, a version of yourself that clocks in every morning so your real self doesn’t have to.
And while that persona has served you in some ways, it’s costing you something precious: the experience of actually inhabiting your own success.
Research from Dr. Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability and leadership puts it beautifully — armor protects us, but it also keeps us from being known. And leaders who cannot be known cannot truly connect.
And leaders who cannot connect, they eventually run out of fuel. Which, my love, is exactly where you are. Here’s the reframe I want to offer you, and I hope you’ll hold onto it:
The qualities you’ve been performing — steadiness, clarity, decisiveness — are not fabrications. They are skills you have genuinely built, brick by brick, over a decade of real work.
The performance isn’t a lie. It’s just you, not yet trusting that you own what you’ve earned.
Psychologists call this the competence-confidence gap — the lag between when we actually become capable and when we internally believe it.
High achievers are especially prone to it because they keep raising the bar. The moment they reach one summit, they’re already looking up at the next one, wondering if they deserve to be climbing at all. So what do you actually do with this?
You don’t fix it by performing better. You fix it by letting the gap close — slowly, safely, intentionally. That might look like replacing false certainty with honest curiosity in meetings:
“I want to think this through with you all”
Instead of projecting an answer you don’t fully have. It might look like finding one trusted person — a coach, a peer, a mentor — and letting them see the seams. Not to unravel, but just to breathe.
Research on psychological safety, pioneered by Harvard’s Dr. Amy Edmondson, shows that when leaders model even small moments of openness, it gives entire teams permission to do the same.
Your honesty is not weakness. It is, quite literally, a leadership superpower.
And when the voice comes — and it will come, because it always does — try responding to it differently.
Not with louder performing. With a quieter, firmer:
“I’ve done hard things. I’m still here.”
That’s real. Because it is, Exhausted. It really, really is.
You’re not built on something fake. You’re built on something true that you haven’t learned to fully claim yet.
And the most courageous thing you can do right now isn’t to fake more confidence — it’s to start telling yourself the truth.
The chair is yours. You earned it. Now it’s time to actually sit in it.
With so much warmth and a gentle nudge,
Sonia x
This Week’s Courage Prompt:
Think of one moment in the last month where you performed certainty you didn’t feel.
Now ask yourself — What would have happened if you’d said:
“I’m not sure, let’s figure this out together” instead?
Write it down. Sit with it. That’s where your next level of leadership lives.
📩 Have a question for Sonia?
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Ready to stop performing and start leading as your whole self?
If this letter landed for you, you’re not alone—and you don’t have to keep carrying it quietly.
Reply to this email and tell me, where do you feel it most?
And if you know a leader who needs to read this today, forward it to them. It might be the permission slip they’ve been waiting for.
See you next Saturday.
