Imposter Thoughts in Times of Change: How Accomplished Women Can Reclaim Their Leadership Evidence
At the beginning of my career in the IT sector, I did not understand how important it was to recognize and communicate my accomplishments.
I believed that if I worked hard, delivered excellent results, and supported my team, people would naturally notice.
I assumed that when I felt ready to ask for a promotion, my manager would consider everything I had contributed.
I was wrong.
When I felt ready to become a manager, I was asked to prove myself, repeatedly, even though my annual performance reviews consistently exceeded expectations.
It was discouraging. I began to wonder whether I was truly ready. I questioned whether I had enough experience, whether I had demonstrated enough leadership, and whether others saw the same potential in me that I was beginning to see in myself.
Over time, I realized that something important was missing.
I needed to share my wins more consistently, not only during my annual performance review.
I began communicating my successes with people beyond my direct reporting line, including internal customers, business leaders, project stakeholders, and other IT leaders.
This was not about seeking attention. It was about helping others understand the value I was creating, the challenges I was navigating, and the leadership capabilities I was developing.
As I became more intentional about sharing my contributions, something changed.
My confidence grew because I could see the evidence of my own progress more clearly.
Others also became better equipped to support me, influence decisions, and advocate for my promotion.
That experience taught me an important lesson:
Your accomplishments cannot strengthen your leadership narrative if you continually minimize, forget, or hide them.
Why change can reactivate self-doubt
Imposter thoughts do not only affect people at the beginning of their careers.
They can appear when accomplished leaders enter unfamiliar territory.
You may experience them when you:
Step into a larger role
Lead a transformation
Present to senior executives
Manage a team with new expectations
Learn an emerging technology
Enter a room where few people share your background or lived experience
Change often removes the comfort of familiarity.
Suddenly, the skills that once made you feel capable may no longer feel sufficient. You may focus on what you have not done before while overlooking everything you have already learned, navigated, and achieved.
You may think:
“I should know more before I speak.”
“Perhaps I am not ready for this opportunity.”
“Others seem more confident than I feel.”
“What if I cannot meet these new expectations?”
These thoughts can feel convincing, but they are not always accurate.
A new challenge does not erase your previous experience. It gives you a new place to apply it.
Confidence becomes stronger when it is grounded in evidence
Positive encouragement can be helpful. Telling yourself, “I can do this,” may give you a temporary lift. However, confidence becomes more sustainable when it is connected to factual evidence.
Instead of relying only on a reassuring statement, ask:
What results have I already delivered?
What tricky situations have I successfully navigated?
What have others trusted me to lead?
Which decisions have I influenced?
What capabilities have I developed through experience?
When have I learned something unfamiliar and applied it successfully?
Evidence reminds you that your confidence is not based on wishful thinking. It is based on growth, action, contribution, and experience.
For example, you may not have led this exact transformation before.
However, perhaps you have aligned diverse stakeholders, solved complex problems, introduced a new process, supported a team through uncertainty, or learned a new area quickly.
Those experiences matter.
Leadership capabilities are often transferable, even when the environment changes.
Courageous action can come before emotional certainty
Many women wait to feel fully confident before speaking, applying, asking, or stepping forward.
Yet complete certainty rarely arrives before an important leadership move.
Confidence does not require absolute certainty.
It requires trusting yourself enough to move forward while uncertainty is still present.
Courageous action may look like:
Sharing your recommendation in a senior meeting
Applying for a role before you meet every stated requirement
Asking for a stretch assignment
Requesting feedback from a trusted leader
Starting a conversation with a potential sponsor
Describing your accomplishments without minimizing your contribution
Volunteering to lead an unfamiliar initiative
The action does not need to be dramatic.
One small step can interrupt the cycle of doubt and create new evidence of capability.
Action builds experience.
Experience builds evidence.
Evidence strengthens confidence.
This is how a new leadership identity begins to take shape.
Create your Leadership Evidence Portfolio
One practical way to reclaim your confidence is to create a Leadership Evidence Portfolio.
This is a living record of the value you create and the leader you are becoming.
It can be a document, journal, spreadsheet, or private digital folder. The format matters less than the habit of maintaining it.
Include the following five areas:
1. Results delivered
Record measurable outcomes and meaningful contributions.
Consider:
Revenue generated or costs reduced
Time saved
Risks prevented
Processes improved
Projects completed
Customer outcomes strengthened
Employee engagement or team performance improved
Do not only record what the team accomplished. Clarify your specific role in making the result possible.
2. Challenges navigated
Leadership is often most visible in difficult moments.
Capture situations where you:
Led through ambiguity
Rebuilt trust
Managed resistance
Resolved conflict
Responded to an unexpected problem
Supported others through organizational change
Made a difficult decision with limited information
These examples reveal resilience, judgment, adaptability, and emotional steadiness.
3. Positive feedback
Save meaningful comments from managers, colleagues, customers, team members, and stakeholders.
Do not dismiss positive feedback as someone simply being kind. Look for patterns.
Are people consistently recognizing your strategic thinking, calm leadership, creativity, collaboration, communication, or ability to inspire action?
Repeated feedback can help you identify the value others already see in you.
4. Decisions influenced
Leadership is not limited to formal authority.
Document moments when your ideas, questions, recommendations, or relationships shaped an outcome.
Perhaps you:
Helped senior leaders see a risk differently
Encouraged a team to explore a new solution
Improved the quality of a decision
Brought an overlooked perspective into the conversation
Created alignment between groups
Advocated for a colleague or emerging leader
Influence is part of your leadership evidence.
5. Capabilities developed
Growth often becomes invisible because we quickly normalize what we have learned.
Record the capabilities you are building, such as:
Strategic communication
Stakeholder influence
AI fluency
Change leadership
Team development
Executive presence
Conflict navigation
Business acumen
Decision-making
Cross-functional collaboration
Ask yourself not only, “What did I accomplish?”
Also ask, “Who did I become while accomplishing it?”
Turn your evidence into a leadership narrative
Collecting evidence is the first step. The next step is learning how to communicate it.
A strong leadership narrative connects your actions to their impact.
Example 1:
Instead of saying: “I helped with a technology implementation.”
You might say: “I brought business and technology stakeholders together to clarify priorities, address adoption concerns, and support a smoother implementation.”
Example 2:
Instead of saying: “My team completed the project.”
You might say: “I created alignment across the team, removed key barriers, and helped us deliver the project while maintaining stakeholder confidence.”
This is not exaggeration. It is accurate communication.
When you continually soften your contribution, decision-makers may not understand the full scope of your leadership.
Your work deserves an honest and confident voice.
Visibility creates opportunities for advocacy
Your manager may support your growth, but career advancement often involves several decision-makers.
That is why visibility beyond your immediate team matters.
People can only advocate for you when they understand:
What you have accomplished
How you create value
What kind of leader you are
Which opportunities you are ready to take on
Where you want to grow next
This does not mean sharing every achievement with everyone.
It means communicating relevant contributions thoughtfully and consistently.
You might share progress during stakeholder updates, describe lessons learned after a major initiative, recognize the team while clarifying your leadership role, or have intentional career conversations with influential leaders.
Visibility is not about becoming the loudest person in the room. It is about making your value understandable.
Reclaim the evidence you have already earned
Imposter thoughts often invite us to build a case against ourselves.
A Leadership Evidence Portfolio helps us build a more balanced and truthful case.
It reminds us that while we may still be learning, we are not starting from nothing.
We bring experience, lessons, courage, the evidence of challenges already face, and contributions already made.
The next time self-doubt appears, pause and ask:
What evidence have I forgotten? Then choose one courageous action that honours the leader you are becoming.
Which accomplishment have you minimized that deserves to become part of your leadership narrative?
