It is often associated with youth, inexperience or a lack of passenger confidence. However, impostor syndrome also strikes experienced leaders, sometimes at the top of their success. Behind controlled growth or remarkable fundraising, some SME bosses or Scale-Up founders admit to living with a diffuse feeling of illegitimacy. Not because they fail, but precisely because they succeed without always feeling up to what their company, their team or their environment expect from them.
Success as a trigger
In 2022, during an interview for the entrepreneurs’ echoes, Céline Lazorthes, founder of Leetchi and Mangopay, explained that she had felt a strong discomfort when his company reached a European dimension. “I had the impression that one day someone was going to realize that I was not worth there.” This declaration, coming from an entrepreneur considered as a model of French tech success, surprised by her sincerity. She joins other similar testimonies, more frequent than we imagine.
The impostor syndrome does not occur in the doubts of doubt, but often after visible success: publication of a strong turnover, high valuation, entry on the stock market or resale. At these specific moments, the difference between the projected image of the manager and what he feels internally becomes particularly difficult to wear. Success becomes a source of anxiety rather than a marker of legitimacy.
Isolation reinforced by notoriety
When media success is added to economic development, the leader’s isolation increases. In 2021, Alexandre Mars, entrepreneur and philanthropist, evoked in Challenges the difficulties to confide in his uncertainties, even though his name was associated with social and solidarity success. “As soon as you succeed, people think you have all the answers. But that is not true.” The impostor syndrome does not mean that we doubt his technical skills, but that we can no longer connect his inner identity to the public image conveyed.
This phenomenon is reinforced by the projection effects of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The entrepreneur is often perceived as a role to play, a costume to put on, with little margin for vulnerability. Business networks and specialized media expect him that he embodies a course, vision, stability. Little space is provided for moments of floating or self-interrogation.
Perfectionism as a aggravating factor
Among the leaders at high level of requirement, impostor syndrome manifests itself less by the fear of failure than by the inability to be satisfied with success. Pauline Laigneau, co -founder of Gemmyo, evoked in her podcast the gratin how much doubt comes up regularly, even after successful projects: “I often say to myself: and if what I built was nothing worth?” A form of interior self-sabotage, nourished by a need for permanent control.
This feeling is exacerbated in the company’s transition phases: change of scale, international opening, managerial structuring. These steps require to delegate, to get out of operations, therefore to let go of a part of what reassured. For some leaders, this letting go is experienced as a decline in their own legitimacy in collective success.
The difficulty in expressing doubt in French entrepreneurial culture
In France, the manager remains little encouraged to talk about his flaws or his uncertainties. In a country where the entrepreneurial account values courage, mastery and endurance, there is little space for existential or identity doubt. Frédéric Mazzella, founder of Blablacar, explained during a France Digital Day event that the gap between external perception and the reality of everyday life could be dizzying: “We congratulate you on what you are building, but sometimes you don’t recognize yourself in it.”
The impostor syndrome, in this context, becomes a taboo subject. It only appears through subsequent confidences, personal podcasts, often isolated speaking. No institutionalized space exists today to allow managers to talk about it collectively, in a neutral and secure setting.
Still rare resources for the managers concerned
Unlike managers or employees, managers do not benefit from any systematic psychological support. Coaching programs are sometimes available via networks such as Entreprendre or Bpifrance network, but they do not specifically target this type of discomfort. In 2022, a group of managers accompanied by The Boson Project spoke of the need to invent new speech spaces during a confidential report “Outside performance”to evoke what cannot be said elsewhere.
The clubs of leaders, often focused on the strategy or exchanges of good practices, only marginally treat the affects related to piloting. Emotional support remains an unthought of entrepreneurial management in France, contrary to what is observed in certain Anglo-Saxon circles where the speech groups between founders have long been structured.
When success becomes suspect in his own eyes
What makes the impostor syndrome so special among business leaders is that it does not occur despite their success, but because of it. The more their business grows, the more they doubt their own legitimacy to embody this success. This poorly documented paradox is however central in the trajectories of many founders.
The founder of Devialet, Quentin Sannié, declared in 2020 that he had taken him years to accept that the innovation he was wearing was not an accident. “I thought it was too good to be true. I was waiting for the moment when I would be told: it’s over.” A sentence that resonates with many entrepreneurs, even at the head of proven success.
