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#159 | “I Feel Like a Fraud - And I'm the One Running the Team.”
Published 6 hours ago
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▶︎ #159 | “I Feel Like a Fraud - And I'm the One Running the Team.”
In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska names something that a significant number of tech leaders carry in silence: the feeling that they're making it up as they go, that their success belongs to luck or timing, and that sooner or later, someone in the room will figure it out.
That feeling is called the impostor phenomenon, and Alex is precise about what it is and what it isn't. It's not low self-esteem, and it's not a lack of skill. Research consistently shows it's most prevalent in highly competent, high-achieving people. It's a specific failure to internalize evidence of your own capability: successes get attributed to luck, circumstances, or the team around you; failures get attributed entirely to you. In tech leadership, this pattern hits with particular force, because most technical leaders were promoted without preparation for the human complexity of the role, then expected to perform certainty in rooms where they were genuinely still learning.
If you've ever sat at the head of a meeting and felt, somewhere underneath the confidence, like you were performing it, this episode is for you.
✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/
In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska names something that a significant number of tech leaders carry in silence: the feeling that they're making it up as they go, that their success belongs to luck or timing, and that sooner or later, someone in the room will figure it out.
That feeling is called the impostor phenomenon, and Alex is precise about what it is and what it isn't. It's not low self-esteem, and it's not a lack of skill. Research consistently shows it's most prevalent in highly competent, high-achieving people. It's a specific failure to internalize evidence of your own capability: successes get attributed to luck, circumstances, or the team around you; failures get attributed entirely to you. In tech leadership, this pattern hits with particular force, because most technical leaders were promoted without preparation for the human complexity of the role, then expected to perform certainty in rooms where they were genuinely still learning.
If you've ever sat at the head of a meeting and felt, somewhere underneath the confidence, like you were performing it, this episode is for you.
✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/