What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from The Impostor Phenomenon
Guiding someone else through a hard decision or a rough patch requires a kind of steady authority that can feel hollow from the inside. A client's breakthrough gets credited entirely to their own readiness, a mentee's promotion gets read as something that would have happened anyway, and the guidance you actually gave quietly disappears from the story. Helping others see their own progress clearly can be easier than applying that same clarity to your own contribution.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Explaining away the growth you helped create
A client's breakthrough gets credited entirely to their own readiness, a mentee's promotion gets read as something bound to happen anyway, and a good coaching session gets filed away as the client simply being an easy case.
Crediting the client's readiness alone instead of the specific questions and structure you provided erases the guidance that actually helped shape the outcome.
After a client's win, name one specific thing you did in your sessions together before allowing any talk of them being naturally ready.
The session-relief loop
Anxiety before a difficult coaching conversation or a mentee's big moment often drives over-preparation, the session goes well, and the relief reads as "I got through it" instead of "the preparation and approach worked."
Treating relief as a narrow escape leaves the same dread waiting before the next difficult session, no matter how many have gone well.
Right after a hard session goes well, name the specific approach that made it work before the relief fades into vague luck.
A field that measures the client, not the coach
Coaching and mentoring cultures often measure success entirely by the client's outcome, and someone praised early as a natural listener can come to see careful preparation as unnecessary rather than as the actual source of good sessions.
Assuming your contribution should stay invisible so the client gets full credit keeps you from ever building a clear, honest sense of your own skill.
Once a month, write down one specific coaching move you made that changed the direction of a client relationship.
Letting the evidence actually land
Another successful client rarely settles the doubt on its own, because the discounting habit adapts and finds a new reason each time, a client who was already motivated, good timing, an easy case. What helps is a smaller, repeatable habit: pausing right as a success is about to be waved off, and treating "I am not sure exactly what made that work" as a reason to look closer rather than dismiss it. Practiced across many client relationships, this shifts what evidence is allowed to count, even when no single case feels conclusive alone.
A client breakthrough and a client who is struggling can land in the same week, and the instinct is to erase credit for the breakthrough while treating the struggling relationship as proof you are not actually helping anyone. When both show up together, address the struggling relationship first with a plain, practical look at what might shift, then return to naming what the breakthrough actually required from you. Trying to weigh both at once usually lets the struggle take over the whole story.
Name one thing, honestly
- Which recent client success have you already credited entirely to them rather than the guidance you provided? - Is there a coaching move you make consistently that you have never named clearly, even to yourself? - What would change if a hard session that went well counted as evidence of your skill rather than luck?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Once a month, write down one specific coaching move you made that changed the direction of a client relationship.