When Leaders Feel Like Frauds: Examining Leader Impostorism in The Field, Within Team Settings, And How to Manage It

In my PhD thesis, I investigate the commonly experienced yet understudied psychological phenomenon termed leader impostorism. It is defined as the belief that one is not able to meet the requirements of a formal leadership role, and therefore that acting in the role is deceptive and puts them at risk of being exposed as a fraud. Although scholarship on impostorism has been active for almost half a century, there is still a vast amount of uncertainty and unclear results. Consequently, there are an abundance of questions that remain unanswered, particularly in the leadership context. For instance, until recently, impostorism was viewed as a personality trait and one that could yield merely unfavorable outcomes. Conversely, current research suggests impostorism is an experience that is contextually bounded and can result in some more positive consequences. This thesis intends to expand our current understanding of leader impostorism by looking at its influence on (other-rated) leadership effectiveness through two competing discrepancy reduction pathways (Chapter 2), its impact on leader and team-level outcomes (Chapter 3), and how to manage the cognitive tensions through the development of a paradox mindset (Chapter 4). In Chapter 2, I explore the relationship between leader impostorism and leadership effectiveness. I propose and test that leader impostorism prompts leaders to either authentically or strategically reduce the self-perceived discrepancy via self-improvement and impression management. I complement this with further exploratory curvilinear analysis. In Chapter 3, I empirically examine how leader impostorism impacts leaders and levels of team trust among members during a team activity. I provide evidence for leader identity activation as a short-term intervention tool to reduce impostorism experiences. Finally, in Chapter 4, drawing on the insights from the previous two chapters, I introduce the concept of the leader impostorism paradox mindset and develop a set of learning principles and a practical pedagogical exercise to cultivate this mindset.