Let’s start with a confession.

Somewhere out there, right now, a Scrum Master is sitting in a sprint review thinking, “They’re all about to figure out I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”

Meanwhile, the Product Owner next to them is thinking exactly the same thing. And the Delivery Manager in the corner? Same.

It’s like a very anxious Mexican wave of self-doubt, except nobody raises their hands because that would draw attention to themselves.

Welcome to imposter syndrome, the psychological phenomenon where capable, accomplished people become convinced they are frauds waiting to be exposed.

It was first formally named by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978, and the fact we are still talking about it nearly fifty years later tells you everything you need to know. It isn’t going anywhere. Much like that one item that has been in your backlog since 2019.

Why imposter syndrome is so common

Here’s the thing that should both reassure and slightly unsettle you: you are in extraordinarily good company.

Neil Armstrong, the man who walked on the actual Moon, an achievement that remains, by most reasonable measures, quite impressive, reportedly struggled with his status as a hero and felt uncomfortable with the acclaim that followed him for the rest of his life.

Tom Hanks, two-time Oscar winner and beloved by virtually everyone on earth, has spoken openly about waiting for someone to tap him on the shoulder and say it was all a mistake.

Even Sheryl Sandberg dedicated space to it in Lean In.

So, if the first human to set foot on another celestial body quietly questioned whether he deserved the fuss, the rest of us are absolutely allowed to feel the same way on a Tuesday afternoon when a stakeholder asks a question we don’t know the answer to.

Why Agile roles can amplify self-doubt

So why does the Agile world seem to breed this particular flavour of self-doubt in industrial quantities?

Geoff Watts, one of the most respected Scrum coaches and trainers in the world and author of Scrum Mastery, has written compellingly about this.

Scrum Masters may be more prone to feelings of imposter syndrome than many other people in an Agile team or organisation, partly because of the lack of formal authority inherent in the role. They have no direct power, and so often find themselves doubting themselves and their position.

Add to that the fact the role can be loosely defined, depending on who you ask, and you have a perfect recipe for someone to sit in a retrospective thinking, “I’m basically just asking questions and moving sticky notes. Surely anyone could do this.”

Spoiler: they couldn’t.

But that’s rather the point.

It is not just Scrum Masters

Agile coaches walk into organisations and immediately encounter people who have been doing their jobs for twenty years and would very much like to know what on earth this newcomer thinks they are going to teach them.

Product Owners are expected to be the expert on the product, the business, the users, the market, and somehow also prioritise a backlog while attending every Scrum event and keeping seventeen stakeholders simultaneously happy.

And developers? They work in a field where the technology changes faster than most people change their socks.

The conditions are genuinely fertile for self-doubt to take root, water itself, and send the team a passive-aggressive Slack message about it.

Lyssa Adkins, who has coached Agile coaches for years, notes that the Agile world often throws people into new and contradictory mindsets compared with the dominant culture in their organisations. That makes it easy to feel like a fraud, particularly when it is not clear what to do or even what success looks like.

That captures it well.

Agile is inherently ambiguous, and ambiguity is imposter syndrome’s best friend. They probably went to university together.

The useful side of imposter syndrome

The good news, and there genuinely is good news, is that Geoff Watts makes a point worth sitting with.

Imposter syndrome, like many traits that come up in coaching practice, is not entirely negative. People who experience it are often humble, reflective and diligent. They try hard to prove themselves worthy and rarely settle for mediocrity because they are anxious about being found out.

As a result, people with a high degree of imposter syndrome are often high achievers.

So the very thing making you feel like a fraud may also be one of the reasons you are good at what you do.

Annoying, isn’t it?

Please feel free to add that irony to your backlog and never prioritise it.

The goal, then, is not necessarily to eliminate imposter syndrome entirely. It is to stop it running the show.

Talk about it out loud

One of the most practical starting points is simply normalisation.

Talking about imposter syndrome out loud, ideally to someone you trust, can have a remarkable deflating effect. The fear of being found out tends to thrive in silence and in your own head, where it can grow to spectacular and entirely irrational proportions.

The moment you say, “I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing half the time,” and the person across from you says, “Oh God, me too,” something shifts.

You realise the fraud you have been protecting is not real.

Build a brag file

Another useful technique is building what you might call a brag file.

This does not need to be as uncomfortable as it sounds. It is simply a record, kept somewhere you can actually find it, of positive feedback, things that went well, problems you solved and moments where someone explicitly said you helped them.

The brain, left to its own devices, is spectacularly good at discarding evidence of competence and filing away evidence of failure for easy retrieval at three in the morning.

A brag file is a direct counter to that unhelpful tendency.

When the doubting voice pipes up, you have receipts.

Separate feelings from facts

There is also the very useful approach of separating feelings from facts.

Feeling like a fraud and being a fraud are not the same thing.

It sounds obvious written down, but in the moment, the emotional experience of imposter syndrome can be so convincing that it feels like factual evidence.

Ask yourself: “What is the actual evidence that I don’t deserve to be here?”

Then answer it honestly. Not the catastrophising version. The actual evidence.

Very often, you will find the case against you is considerably weaker than your brain has been suggesting.

Cross-examine yourself. You may find the prosecution’s case falls apart under questioning.

Try the 5-5-5 technique

For those who want something more structured, there is a powerful exercise from Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan’s book The Coach’s Casebook called the 5-5-5 technique.

The idea is to identify five people whose opinions you respect and trust, give them five short questions to answer about you, and have them read their answers to you out loud, ideally in person.

As each person reads an answer, you pause and repeat what they have said in the first person.

So, if someone says, “I think your greatest strength is your ability to bring a team together,” you say to yourself, “My greatest strength is my ability to bring a team together.”

Then you thank them unreservedly.

The five questions cover things like:

• What word or phrase describes you best?

• What is your greatest achievement?

• What do they value most about you?

• What one thing might you change for your own benefit?

• What is your greatest strength?

It sounds almost too simple, which is probably why people are sceptical of it.

But the reason it works is precisely because people with imposter syndrome often have an almost professional-grade ability to deflect and dismiss compliments the moment they are offered.

They tend to put their successes down to luck, timing or other people, rather than internalising them. They treat a compliment like something to be politely rejected rather than accepted, when really it should be received like a gift.

The 5-5-5 technique forces you to slow down and let the positive evidence in, which turns out to be considerably harder than it sounds and considerably more useful than most people expect.

Try it.

Then resist the urge to immediately explain to the five people why they were probably wrong.

You probably belong here

None of these techniques are magic.

Imposter syndrome is persistent and, for many people, it never fully disappears. But there is something quietly powerful in knowing that you share this feeling with some of the most accomplished people in their fields and, if the research is right, with a significant proportion of the people you will ever meet.

Including, almost certainly, the person in your organisation who always seems to have the answer, never looks flustered and gives off the air of someone who has genuinely got everything figured out.

They don’t.

They are just better at hiding it.

Or they have not read this post yet.

Either way, you belong here.

You probably always did.

If any of this has resonated with you, share it with someone on your team. You probably know at least one person who needs to read it.

They might even be the person you least expect.