Imposter syndrome? There might be no syndrome.

Today I finished GoPractice Data-driven Product management simulator. Thanks to my friend who got me involved in it. It was a really useful set of information beautifully packed.

Ok, now I’ll explain how it might be connected to my imposter syndrome :)

It’s pretty obvious that a Team Lead has a lot of different blocks of work activities. I suggest you to check this beautiful mindmap (in Russian) which is an attempt to summarise and organise them all.

In my case despite having “Product Management” part in each title so far I was on the positions where soft, people management and organisational skills were required more than tech skills. I was able to successfully build teams and processes without understanding the details.

For doing this kind of work the main skills I needed were common sense, empathy, and logical thinking. I think I got these skills naturally, thanks to my parents, school teachers, tennis coach, internet courses and books.

But I never studied product management seriously before and never had a deep knowledge of product analytics. I did feel I was missing it, though. I suppose this was the main reason for my imposter syndrome.

Finally I closed this gap. Plus the good thing is — soon I hope to be able to work as a classic PM for a while in a new culture where my soft skills will need some adjustments.

P.S. As usual, I did a quick search and found a paper that shows that I’m not the only one with such a case. It’s actually quite common for people with imposter syndrome to have good soft skills. Seems like the chicken or the egg for me.