CSP S2 E23 - Rachel Provan - Imposter Syndrome

In this insightful episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger are joined by Rachel Provan, founder and CEO of Provan Success. Rachel, a top 25 customer success leader turned brain-based CS leadership coach, shares her expertise on a pressing issue many professionals face: imposter syndrome.

Listeners will gain valuable insights into managing their own imposter syndrome and learn actionable steps to support their teams in navigating these challenges. Rachel's blend of personal anecdotes, professional experience, and practical advice makes this episode a must-listen for anyone in the customer success industry.

Key Points and Themes

1. Definition and Recognition: Rachel explains what imposter syndrome is and how it manifests in professional settings.
2. Psychological Insights: Understanding the brain's role in creating imposter syndrome and the common cognitive distortions that exacerbate it.
3. Practical Strategies: Techniques such as deep breathing, journaling, and breaking tasks into manageable steps to combat imposter syndrome.
4. Leadership and Team Building: How leaders can identify and address imposter syndrome in their teams, fostering a culture of openness and support.
5. Time Management: The importance of focused, strategic work periods and maintaining boundaries to enhance productivity and reduce stress.

Understanding Imposter Syndrome: Rachel starts by defining imposter syndrome as a common psychological phenomenon where individuals doubt their abilities and fear being exposed as frauds. This feeling often arises when professionals step into new roles or face new challenges, causing them to question their competence despite their achievements.

Brain Science and Cognitive Distortions: Rachel delves into the brain science behind imposter syndrome, explaining how our minds create false narratives to protect us. She highlights cognitive distortions such as black-and-white thinking, discounting the positive, and fortune-telling, which can lead individuals to underestimate their capabilities.

Combatting Imposter Syndrome: Practical strategies are a focal point of the discussion. Rachel advocates for techniques like deep breathing to increase tolerance to stress, writing down thoughts to gain perspective, and using the belief scale to gradually shift self-perceptions. These methods help individuals interrupt negative thought patterns and build confidence over time.

Creating a Supportive Team Environment: For leaders, recognizing imposter syndrome in team members is crucial. Rachel emphasizes the importance of one-on-one meetings, fostering open communication, and creating a safe space for employees to share their struggles. Encouraging team members to discuss their failures and learn from them without fear of judgment helps build resilience and confidence.

Effective Time Management: Rachel introduces the Focus Formula, a time management strategy that involves dedicating one hour each day to a strategic initiative. This approach helps professionals make consistent progress on important goals without being ov

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Transcript

Roman Trebon: 0:15

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook Podcast. I'm Roman Trevon and with me always is my co host Kevin Metzger. If you're listening, do us a huge favor and give our show a rating, subscribe, and like so we can continue to grow our audience. Kevin, I just made it up to Wilmington for a wedding and vacation. How you doing this week, man? You all good? Yeah, I'm doing great. Sounds like an exciting week you got ahead. It's going to be fun. I'm looking to unwind a little bit and a great way to kick off vacation because we have an awesome guest, Kev. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Rachel Provan, founder and CEO of Proven Success. Rachel is a top 25 customer success leader turned brain based CS leadership coach and the founder of Provan Success. In addition to helping CS leaders find their dream jobs, her flagship certification course, the CS Leadership Academy, transforms new or struggling managers, directors, VPs, you name it, of the CS world into world class CS leaders. today on the customer success playbook podcast, we explore the issue of imposter syndrome in the customer success industry. Rachel's going to share her insights on identifying and overcoming imposter syndrome, offering practical strategies for building self confidence and achieving professional success. Rachel, welcome to the show.

Rachel Provan: 1:39

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. I really appreciate it.

Roman Trebon: 1:42

Yeah, thanks for having. So let's start here. We're talking about imposter syndrome. How would you define for our audience imposter syndrome? Sure.

Rachel Provan: 1:52

I mean, honestly, it's something everyone has pretty much even if they don't have it every minute of the day, it's a normal human experience. If you are growing into something new and you haven't done it before, you're not going to be perfect at it, but that can be pretty scary. So a lot of times when people are promoted or they're doing something new, There's this sense that, Oh my God, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to get fired. I don't know what I'm doing. And like their brain just goes totally off a cliff. I tend to talk to my career coaching students about I'm going to get fired. I'm not gonna be able to find another job because I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to lose my apartment. I'm going to end up living under a bridge and oh my God, what about my children? And this is maybe because, you don't quite know what to put on a slide. For a slideshow, right? But you go there that fast and people laugh whenever I do that because we all have that same thought process. And that actually is a very normal thing that the brain does to protect us. it's a survival mechanism, but it's not very convenient. It's not very useful. And it doesn't help us in any way. you can't just rationalize your way out of it and not experience it anymore. It's something that you have to start to recognize sooner rather than later after the fact, because you're going to go on these little trips anyway, but the sooner you can stop it, the sooner you can be like, there is a mild possibility. That I might be taking this too far. Like, if I had to say this out loud to someone, would they fully agree with me? Or would they say, that sounds crazy? Cause in our heads we have no idea, that that sounds crazy. We all make up completely ridiculous stories, tell them to ourselves. And act on them as though they are true. And the fact that we're even able to talk to one another is honestly quite amazing, but when you are able to break things down, my biggest piece of advice for people in this is find the fact, you know, find a fact in here that everyone can agree on on this. Maybe you are new at this or you don't know what to put on this slide. You're having trouble with this presentation. you don't know what to put on the slide is the fact is I'm going to end up living under a bridge effect. No. So what I really love are, you know, like, all right, we're going to stick with the facts with this train of thought that we've run away with, right. Where are the lies? Because your brain lies to you all the time. So there are such a thing as cognitive distortions which basically means we know that the brain lies so much so that we have a name for it, that we have little nicknames for the different ways that it can lie. And it can do things like black and white thinking, which is basically like all or nothing things are this way or there that way, discounting the positive. I fully suck because I can't do this one thing. And my personal favorite fortune telling or mind reading. I know what's going to happen in the future because of all this. I know every domino that's going to knock down now and that's where my future is. And I know what you're thinking because clearly I've seen your face and now I know what you're thinking. All of these are ways that we try to protect ourselves and it just, it turns us looney tunes. So that is my sort of very long winded way of saying that is a relatable way of thinking of imposter syndrome and seeing how it plays out in all our lives.

Kevin Metzger: 5:16

I think there's a tendency when you start getting into this to start cycling, right? And how do you pull out of the cycles and start focusing on what's next? What are the strategies for the great

Rachel Provan: 5:30

It's a great question. It's a couple different factors. One is about increasing your window of tolerance that people talk about. Like, how high does it have to get before you freak out? And just sort of increasing that. to the point where you don't freak out quite as easily. Typically, ways that you do that are, going for a walk, doing some deep, slow breathing. If you take two minutes a day to just do some, slow, deep breaths with the exhale being longer than the inhale, your window of tolerance will actually start to increase. Why? There's some really complicated brain science behind it. I'm just going to tell you that that's kind of the quick route. The other thing I have people do this is more like the long term strategy versus like, what is the thought? I'm playing in my head over and over. That's ruining my day. That's the 1 to actually write on paper because. As soon as you write it down, you start to see like, all right, that might be a little over the top. So that's a clue already that it might be a little over the top, but what I really recommend most of the time is what I call the belief scale, because you can figure out that thought and that, you know, all right, fine, I was overreacting, but what you really have to do is change your beliefs about yourself and what you're capable of. And you, the fact is you are not going to go from, Oh my God, I'm a fraud and everybody knows it to, Oh my God, I'm the best CS leader in the world. Like, I am destined to be a CCO tomorrow. And you know, that's probably good because you'd probably seem a little weird and all over the place if you switch that fast. So. With anything that you believe about yourself, it's all about breaking it down into much smaller steps. no, I'm not going to go from like, oh my god, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing to that level. But I can go from, I have no idea what I'm doing to, I can learn. That gives me agency. I can actually do something I'm not doomed and I can go from, I can learn to and learning, you know, I actually am taking steps. Hey, I'm starting to know what people are talking about here. I'm starting to feel more comfortable. Hey, I'm actually getting kind of good at this. You know what? I really am a really good CS leader, you know, and that's how you get there. And funnily enough, when you approach it that way, you get there so much faster. Then just, you know, mentally beating yourself over the head with how much you suck, you know, it can happen in a couple of months versus what most people try and do, which is like outstudy it and be like, I'm going to work 10 hours and that'll do it. No, it's not that with imposter syndrome is it's really only what you're expecting. Unless you have lied on your resume, which I really encourage you not to do they know how much, you know, no one think, you know, if you've been hired into this position, you haven't done it before. They don't think that you know how to do every single thing. If you happen to say, like, you know what, that's a really good question. I'm going to look into a couple things and get back to you on that. That's a normal human response. All executive leadership is, is just like a bunch of grownups in a room, trying to figure things out the best we can. And the minute you realize that it's like, Oh, Oh, so there's really nothing different here. Oh, you know, it really is a huge realization that just like, I was thinking you guys had something special and you don't like, you're just people who are confident and, feel comfortable trying things out, having a discussion, trying things, failing and trying again.

Kevin Metzger: 9:08

Yeah, it's a conversation that I often have with my CSMs, even when like, it's okay not to know an answer. That's one of the things I think in it's sometimes they feel a little less comfortable when you're in a leadership position, not having the answer, but it's still, it's same situation. It's okay to not have an answer. It's actually, I think you come off as more confident when you're like, yeah, I don't know the answer to that question, but

Rachel Provan: 9:34

yeah.

Kevin Metzger: 9:35

This is where we think we're going to go and then we'll figure out the next piece and kind of drive it that way.

Rachel Provan: 9:42

It so comes down to how you feel, like the confidence level you feel, If you're just like, you know what? That's a good question. And honestly, I don't know that's still secure. The thing is with the people who follow you, they just want to know like, okay, you seem okay with where we're going. Like you seem comfortable with the fact that you're in charge and the way you're taking us. So even if you don't know something you seem okay with that. So now I'm not going to freak out. And it actually creates a lot of psychological safety. That's like, Wait a minute. He didn't say he doesn't know that's an option. I can say I don't know. He's like, yes please do. Then we can tell you the answer.

Roman Trebon: 10:23

Yeah. Rachel, I was so excited to have you on the show to talk about this, because I suffered. I would say suffered, in past tense, from this a lot early in my career. it was always the same thing you explained, right? And so I came from teaching into the corporate world. And so I always thought I was going to get exposed like, Oh, they're going to know that I, you know, I didn't go to business school or I didn't know this. And there was a part for a while. It really drove me, right? Like you said, I'm working 10, 12 hours. I'm taking extra trainings. But that gets very unhealthy, very fast without other strategies. And you mentioned a couple already, which I really like sharing, like talking about it, just verbalizing what I'm going, thinking in my mind. Like you said, I'm not going to live under a bridge just because the PowerPoint isn't exactly how I want it. Writing it down. Journaling, I think for me is a big one, right? Getting it on paper, just getting that idea out of my head. What, what other tips and strategies would you recommend for people that. Start to sense that maybe anxiety coming on that can really help kind of alleviate this.

Rachel Provan: 11:23

Yeah, I mean the deep breathing is honestly one of the best and I put that out there because for some people the word meditation has a lot of baggage with it and it sounds hard and it's like I don't want to I don't feel like it. It's kind of like going to the gym It's like yeah, I know I should is what everyone says about meditation. Can you breathe you're probably going to anyway can you just stop what you're doing for a minute and do that? And I like to keep things, anything that feels hard, breaking it down to its smallest possible component to the point where it feels ridiculous, to not do it. Like, I got in the best shape of my life by doing one setup a day. Now I did more than that, but I only had to do once a day and there were days where I did, but most of the time it's like, Hey, I'm already on the floor. I might as well do more. Otherwise this was kind of silly, but there are days where I take one deep breath and that's it. Most of the time, my little alarm goes off. That's like breathe. Yes, I need an alarm to tell me to breathe and I'll sit there for a minute or two and it's fine. the world feels a little less crazy. But we do need to practice not having what people refer to as the monkey mind, which is just going a thousand miles an hour is not logical and. You know, has not changed all that much from when we were trying to avoid being eaten by a tiger. So that kind of mind is going to be very reactive and anything that has to do with your career, it sees as a basic human need. So, that's how you get your food. That's how you get your shelter. So, you know, except for like air where it's like, okay, this is a really big emergency right now. It's going to see that as we got to fix this right away. Like fight, flight, freeze or bond are the four reactions. So really the way that you increase that window of tolerance to not go into fight or flight with your nervous system is breathing meditation walks. You know, and there's a reason that we get these things over and over it's like, say, if you're trying to bake a cake and get angry that people keep telling you to use like flour, eggs, salt, sugar, like, I'm sorry. Those are the ingredients. That's literally how you make a cake. So it's like, I apologize that there isn't a different answer, but you know, those are the things, but also, yes, journaling. My personal favorite, I have a really close friend that I've had since I was five years old, like, she knows me better than I know myself, and we both do this for each other, it's like, what would I tell you, in this situation, she'll say to me, what if this was me, what would you tell me? And I'm like, oh, clearly. Like you're amazing.

Kevin Metzger: 14:00

I really, I was actually sitting here thinking of this question. I wanted to ask him actually describing the strategy. I wanted to ask you what you thought about it. Tony Robbins talks about a strategy for when you don't know what to do, kind of reposition the question. If I did know what to do, what would I do? And that's one

Rachel Provan: 14:21

of those things and I love him, but those kinds of questions, like I have. Many coaches and one of them's late and I'll go on and I'll say, you know, Oh, I don't know. I don't know what to do for this thing. They're like, if you did know, what would you do? And I'm like, yeah, I don't know. And that is why I'm here. But I can tell someone else what to do. I'm great at giving advice. It's when it's me that I can't see clearly. So sometimes I can listen to her say that or sometimes I have to be like, no, this is an emergency. You don't understand and need an actual sane person in that moment to say, okay. Here's the reality of things. And here's how I know, because I've known you for a long time. Here is the history of you not being an idiot, not failing all the time. This is the reality of things. Somebody I know says like, you can't, you can't read the prescription from inside the bottle. And that's, that's how I tend to think of it as well. And it's hard, especially like, as a coach myself, as a leadership coach, still experiencing these things to this day, you know, and I tell people this all the time. I'm like, these things that I'm telling you to do, I fail all the time at them. If you don't have perfect adherence to this, that doesn't mean it's not working. Like, you know, some progress still counts. I just do this enough of the time that I'm less and less crazy and I can help other people with their confidence. That is kind of the main thing that people say that they walk out of my program with, because honestly, you're not going to build and scale an entire CS department in three months, much as I wish you could, like you have a lot of reference material, you know, I can help you with the phase that you're at. But that's the one thing that everybody walks away with because I give them those tools and I focus so hard on the confidence aspect on the boundaries. And I know a lot of this sounds like therapy, but there's a reason it's necessary, part of the whole imposter syndrome thing also is when you don't have confidence, other people can sense it, and then they don't have confidence in you. And If you can't set boundaries and say like, no, I know what I'm doing. And this is what I have to be doing. And I can't do that now when you're piling things on top of yourself, you really are going to start to get into a situation where you're not going to be successful because you're spread too thin. So a lot of those things like, you know, the time management, the mindset, you know, executive presence tends to be, it's a term I don't really like very much, but it's, it's just, you know, fancy business words for confidence, and it's not going to look the way that you might think it would. You know, confidence is going to look different for me than on like a 45 year old guy, there's nothing wrong with that. But if I try and act like what I think executive presence looks like, which has been traditionally like some guy in a suit, I'm going to come off really weird. And guess how I know, because that's what I did. The first time I was a manager, I was so cringe. It's just leaning into who you are, What that looks like when you know what you're doing and are trying to help others. once they kind of relax and see that People go forward and they're able to do these really great things because even if they have little moments here or there, it's not a part of their identity anymore. They have this confidence going forward of just like, yeah, I know what I'm doing. And it's amazing what a difference that makes in almost any situation.

Roman Trebon: 17:50

Yeah, and being vulnerable and say, like, I don't know, right? It's okay to ask for help, right? And so as a CS leader, Rachel, you work with CS leaders all the time. how can they create a team environment that fosters confidence? And how can they maybe recognize when maybe one of their team members may be going through, these feelings of inadequacies, as they are in the CS world?

Rachel Provan: 18:14

You know, it's a great question and it's a little tricky because, you know, some people are just introverts. I am an extroverted introvert, which means like I can fake it really well and I can enjoy this, but then I will need a serious nap after this, So some people, if they're not speaking up a lot, they may have imposter syndrome or they may not like to talk a lot in front of people. That's okay. But that's why you have one on ones. And that's why it's important to keep your team relatively small, like six and under, because you need to be able to have regular one on ones where people can tell you, Hey, here's what I'm dealing with. Here's what's hard. And you have to be approachable enough. And it's okay to fail. It's okay to say, you don't know something for them to feel safe doing that. otherwise they're going to be constantly keeping it from you. Like anything that they don't know, they're going to keep from you, which is only going to result in mistakes. So, and again, you can't do this if you're not confident, it starts with you. You set the tone. You know, I always like to have people start a weekly team meeting with a weekly win one personal and one professional. Just sort of get to know each other and then one thing where it's just like what was a major fail this week like just so the rest of us can avoid it because we're all smart people here and if you did something that didn't work out well I'm probably going to try the same thing so if you would save us the trouble that would be great I had this PowerPoint presentation and I tanked it and that sucked, but you know what? Here's why I think that happened and here's what I've learned from it and here's what I'm going to do going forward. So that people get comfortable with the fact that that's how you learn and that's how we share knowledge.

Roman Trebon: 19:57

Yeah, so Rachel we are almost out of time here. I know we have a tight window here. So I have to say, if our audience has to go to proven success. com, you have so much great stuff on your site. You have amazing tips and tricks for people new into the customer success world You're big on time management I know we're going to go a little bit off topic talk about a little bit the importance of time management because I love the Stuff that you're sending out on time management

Rachel Provan: 20:23

Yes, I have a free worksheet on that, like a free resource called the focus formula. And this is essential for whatever role that you're in. But especially as a CS leader, where you really have to create those boundaries, because our biggest trap is becoming that miscellaneous department where we're just kind of doing work from everywhere because, oh, it has to do with the customer. It all has to do with the customer. it's our job to get them their results that they came for. That's how we get the revenue. that's why people stay. That's why they buy more, We're here to get them the results that they came for. So my number one tip, and you'll see this in the focus formula to a greater degree is it's about being realistic, block off one hour a day. That's it one hour and have one strategic initiative that you know, is going to move you closer to increasing NRL. there can't be five. First priorities, pick one per quarter in that one hour a day, slack off, email closed, phone where you can't just automatically snatch it up and work solely on that. And that's how you make measurable progress every day. Because if you don't do that, if you don't pre plan it, you'll come in and the day will just take you. The day will seize you. You can't seize the day, the day will seize you. So it's something that you have to plan for. And you have to tell your boss, like, this is something I'm going to be doing. I'm going to block off this time. But you're just like, so I'm going to close these things. Here's how you can reach me in case of an emergency. Here's an example of an emergency. Like someone is hurt. Someone needs to leave an emergency is not an angry client. We are not surgeons, no one is bleeding out on a table somewhere, like a client will still be angry in an hour and they will not leave because it's like, well, you didn't get back to me in 30 minutes. So you know, that hour has to be just sacred. I prefer the morning because you will lose that brain power, that ability to focus and think creatively and you'll end up using it as catch up time, which No, just don't do that. You may not use it to catch up on email. It is strictly for strategy. And I also like to leave little breadcrumbs be like, all right, here's where I finished up, pick up tomorrow at, because I will come to it with a completely blank brain and be like, what the heck was I talking about? So I do show you in there how to break it down to these really small. Pieces so that it's not like, Oh, I have to read you onboarding today. It's just, Oh, I have to email three people about their onboarding experience. That I can do. That's doable. It's not this huge strategic theoretical thing I can sit down and I can make progress on that.

Roman Trebon: 23:00

I love it. So, Kev, any last questions for Rachel before we let her go?

Kevin Metzger: 23:05

I think Rachel, we appreciate having you on. It's been really great and appreciate everything that you've shared.

Rachel Provan: 23:13

Thank you so much. I love talking about this stuff. I also have a podcast, Psychology of Customer Success, where I speak exclusively about this kind of thing. But yeah, feel free to find me on either of those places on LinkedIn. I am the least scary person in the world. So come say hi,

Roman Trebon: 23:28

say hi to Rachel. She's amazing. I said, you definitely check out her website, check out her podcast. And everyone again, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. Check us out on LinkedIn at Roman Trevon at Kevin Metzger. Find us on our customer success playbook podcast page. And as always, kevin

Kevin Metzger: 23:46

keep on playing.