**Caution: This post is long, and kind of old. I wrote it a few months ago but never published it. I had to break it up into two parts so your eyes would stay in place.**

Have you ever felt that you did not belong?  Perhaps you were an imposter to your own game?  Maybe you acquired access to a high-clearance area, got giddy, yet immediately questioned why anyone would have allowed you to be there?  And every time you turned a corner, opened a door, or read a document, you kept saying to yourself, “Did they mean to let me see this?  When are they going to find out ?”

This takes me back to the Bizarro Jerry episode on Seinfeld when Kramer uses the restroom in an office building, tries to help someone fix the copier machine after he leaves the bathroom, and gets mistaken for a full-time employee. He rides this mistaken identity for all it is worth and begins showing up to “work” each day, working 9 to 5, throwing jokes out at the water cooler, bringing in a suitcase full of crackers, and living that corporate dream. Eventually the jig is up, and Cosmo Kramer ends up in the boss’s office, where he is told he is being let go, only to respond with, “But I don’t even work here.”

Even though Kramer was living that uninhibited dream, me, myself, and I had a lurking, uneasy feeling of trespassing when I was a “leader.” Imposter Syndrome was a real thing.

Paint That Pollock – An Ode to a Damn Good Mentor

The person who initially let me through the door to corporate leadership was and still is an amazing person; they are part of the 3% (see Scary Happiness and the Corporate-Corpse Revival or Office Zoos, Innovation Incubators, and the Mother of All Schedules if you need a refresher). They knew what was up then and they still know what is up. They are my mentor for my life and they never signed up for that. Now they succumb to my midnight texts when I discover yet another thing that makes my brain swirl.

My mentor led me in to the Room Where It Happens, knowing I would f*ck sh*t up (in a good way of course). This act of promoting me into a manager role with zero formal leadership experience was similar to leaving a toddler alone in a white room with a box of markers and a tub of paint.

You say messy, I say “Damn, look at that badass Pollock-esque mural.”

When I was given the manager role, I was astounded. I said to my mentor (who then was not my mentor), “Really? You think I can do this job?”

They said with kindness and confidence, “Yes you can do it, and you will fail at times, but I will be there to pick you up when you fall on your face in the dirt.” And oh how they were correct. I ate mud and continued to smear my face with muck throughout my leadership tenure.

Not only did they believe in me, but they opened the door and guided me throughout most of the journey. Much like Gandalf, showing up when necessary yet offering autonomy most of the time. They allowed me to vent, to cry, to get angry, to be an idiot. At times it felt like we were on a tram ride at a zoo, but instead of animals, it was people in suits – VPs, CEOs, District Managers, all the fancy titles. When the time was right, my mentor would say to me, “Look over there, that is a monkey that looks sweet. Beware, if you come near it with a treat, it will eat your face right off.” or “Check out that tiny fox. So soft, so fuzzy, so cute, but don’t be fooled, it will scratch your eyes out if you get in that cage.” “See that bird with the beautiful plumage? Those claws show no mercy. It will shut down your creativity faster than the blink of an eye.”

My mentor taught me how to read people without having to tell them I was doing so. They showed me how to recognize discrete and subtle toxicity. Valuable life lessons that I am still learning.

Closer to the [Sun’s] Heart

Snapshot of how I felt each day in leadership – I showed up, I busted my ass, I used the techniques my mentor showed me, I exposed, I infiltrated, and I stood for integrity. Life was good. I was able to put more good in the world than not, and I was an advocate for the right thing.

My goal of not replicating actions of the terrible bosses I endured was being accomplished. My life plan was working. Most of you do not know this, but one of my main motivators for becoming a leader was to reverse the culture completely. To be a mole on the inside. To have more ability to changing the workplace for the better being closer to the “sun.”

As an hourly employee, I tried my damndest to get things changed, and I was met with little to no response. I have spoken up for my beliefs since I took a job at sixteen years old. A job where I was felt up by an older male employee one time, and when bringing it up to the leaders of the joint I was told by the female boss to “not worry about it because touching my lower back and butt was not a big deal.” Why should we accept this kind of leadership? How do so many toxic ideas rise to the top? Well I was climbing closer to the top to at least try and overcome the poisonous motives, and if I could not diminish the nonsense, at least I would be able to joust with the self-centered, money-hungry powerful people (and hold my own).

When I was given a leadership role, I felt like I had somehow tricked the head honchos into letting me run the show. It was quite exhilarating to feel like an imposter. But once they caught on to my works of integrity, that is when the blocking, suffocating, and withholding began in regards to carrying out my ideas and strategies. They brainwashed me into thinking I was doing something wrong whenever I brought up an initiative or pointed out a gap in the processes. Whenever I proposed a big project that would improve the workplace for years to come, I would get so confused when someone would shoot down my ideas, their reasoning being that it did not meet business needs, it costs too much.

What these power-playing people really wanted to say was the idea was increasing equality, making people happier, and making it a more fair playing field. But the idea was costly, moneywise, when in reality it was probably equivalent to one week’s worth of their pay. But they would never come out and admit it. They wanted to be the one with the ideas, not me. Day in and day out, I would shrink. The Imposter Syndrome was accentuated – and they made me feel like having integrity was a bad thing.

At that point, whenever decisions needed to be made, I would revert to the new mindset they instilled in me, looking only at the money, treating people like animals in order to make or save a few extra dollars; it was disheartening and defeating, and it jaded me in a weird way. I became like the others, making odd decisions that moved the business along but not the people.

Groundhog Day, All Day, Every Day

Minorities and women probably suffer more from Imposter Syndrome than anyone else, but that could be another fact that I just made up. We have watched the leaders from the sidelines so much that we have formed this twisted idea on how offices and businesses should be run. If we think about it, we are being told this is the way, slam the door on innovation, fight to keep everything the same. We must be robots. Can you really say that this is THE WAY? Is the paperwork that built this country in 1776 still THE WAY? I think not – that shit is in desperate need of an upgrade.

We update our phones on a frequent basis, we renovate our houses occasionally, we modify our hair, we change our minds, but why are laws and foundations of society (and business operations) the exception to this practice? Why are we letting people from 100 years ago dictate how we talk to and treat people? Times have changed, we have discovered a great deal, we have uncovered amazing techniques, but yet chauvinism and prejudice still remains in the world and the workplace. How old-school.

One of my interests is reading books from the early 1900s because it is fascinating to see how little things have changed. History certainly does repeat itself, and it is not ashamed of it either. People harp about learning from your mistakes, but our biggest role mode – our very own human race – does a terrible job at maintaining that rule. Way to set an example.

This post does not wrap up in a nice manner, but I am crabby and am spending little time on closing it up. If you want to keep reading, move yourself on to Part 2 please. I still love you all, but my head hurts trying to give you the closure you need right now.