Imposter Syndrome Doesn't Go Away When You Reach the C-Suite

Many leaders expect the doubt to fade at some point. A bigger title, a seat at the executive table, a record that is hard to argue with. Then the role arrives and the feeling stays. If you have reached the senior team and still catch yourself waiting to be found out, you are far from alone. Imposter syndrome is reported by a majority of US CEOs and other senior executives in one large survey, and the reasons it lasts at that level are specific. This article covers what it looks like in high performers, why it persists, what the research does and does not show, and what tends to help.

Does imposter syndrome go away once you reach the C-suite?

For most people, it does not. Survey data points the other way: the experience is reported more often at senior levels than at the start of a career. In its 2024 workforce research, Korn Ferry surveyed more than 10,000 employees worldwide, including 400 CEOs. It found that 71% of US CEOs and 65% of other senior executives reported symptoms of imposter syndrome, compared with 33% of early-stage professionals. The figure was 57% for CEOs in the Middle East. India was close to the US result, and slightly under half of CEOs in the UK and Australia reported it.

Two caveats apply. This is a self-reported industry survey rather than a clinical assessment, so it shows how common the experience is, not how severe it is. Peer-reviewed estimates also vary widely. A 2020 systematic review in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found prevalence rates ranging from 9% to 82%, largely because studies used different screening tools and cut-off points. The review also noted that it is not an officially recognised clinical diagnosis. Researchers usually spell the term impostor and call it a phenomenon rather than a syndrome, which is why those words appear in the studies cited below.

The same Korn Ferry survey found that 85% of CEOs said their career progression gave them confidence they could do the job. Both findings can be true at once. A leader can trust the record and still doubt whether they are the right person for the problem in front of them.

Why does the doubt persist at senior levels?

Because senior roles keep supplying new reasons for doubt, and achievement on its own does not settle it. That second point goes back to the original research. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes described the impostor phenomenon in a 1978 paper in Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. Working with high-achieving women, they observed that accumulating accomplishments did not seem to change the belief of being a fraud, and that people often credited luck rather than ability. Later research found the experience in men and women and across age groups, as the systematic review above reports.

Several features of senior roles keep the pattern going.

The ground keeps changing. A 2024 scoping review in Frontiers in Psychology notes that a promotion into unfamiliar responsibilities, or any major role transition, can put people at risk of impostor feelings. In the C-suite that happens repeatedly: a first executive role, a move to a larger organisation, a turnaround, a new mandate from the board.

The demands arrive together. Korn Ferry's experts attribute the survey result less to leaders feeling incapable than to the number of pressures landing at once. Their list includes running and reshaping the business, setting the culture, deciding where AI fits, geopolitical risk, and the question of how and where people work.

Certainty is expected. Teams and boards look to senior leaders for confidence, and that can make admitting uncertainty feel costly. Korn Ferry's experts note that acknowledging limits reflects emotional intelligence. Even so, researchers have long described the experience as a secret one, which helps explain why many leaders assume their peers do not feel it.

The environment contributes. The scoping review notes that several authors see the phenomenon as partly systemic, shaped by organisational processes and the messages those processes send. On that view it needs attention at organisational level and not only through individual effort.

What does it look like in a high performer?

In a high performer, imposter syndrome rarely looks like doubt. It looks like diligence, high standards and thoroughness, which is why it often goes unnoticed, including by the leader. The behaviour can be identical to ordinary conscientiousness. What differs is the motive: the work is driven by a fear of exposure rather than by a standard of quality.

Several patterns are commonly described. Over-preparation is one: board papers reworked past the point of improvement, or a sound decision checked again and again. Overwork is another. The scoping review cites research linking impostor feelings with workaholism, on the reasoning that people work longer and harder to stay ahead of a feared failure. Some leaders hold on to tasks that should be delegated, because handing work over means someone else might see the gaps they believe are there. Others avoid visible risk, deflect credit when it is offered, or credit the market or the team entirely for a strong result.

At the costlier end, the pattern is associated with burnout and with weaker job performance and job satisfaction, according to the same systematic review. Those associations come from studies of various employee groups, including clinicians, so they describe a risk and not a certainty for any single executive.

Is it a weakness, or can it carry something useful?

The evidence supports both readings. The experience has documented costs, and some of the thinking behind it may also carry interpersonal benefits.

A 2022 paper in the Academy of Management Journal by MIT Sloan researcher Basima Tewfik examined workplace impostor thoughts, defined as the belief that others overestimate one's competence at work. Across several studies, employees who had these thoughts more often were rated as more interpersonally effective by others, because they became more focused on the people around them. The thoughts did not come at a cost to measured performance or selection outcomes. The same research did find that they encouraged self-handicapping, which means setting up obstacles to performance that provide a ready excuse if things go badly.

These studies covered working adults in several settings and did not focus on C-suite leaders, so they are a signal and not a verdict. Kevin Cashman of Korn Ferry makes a related point: leaders benefit from combining confidence with humility, and feeling out of one's depth is not a problem in itself. The costs described in the previous section are real, however. A reasonable reading is that the benefit comes from attentiveness to other people, while the cost comes from concealment, overwork and avoidance. A leader does not have to remove the doubt to keep the first and reduce the second.

How can you tell it from a real gap in capability?

Look at how the doubt responds to evidence. A genuine gap responds to specific information: once you know what is missing and address it, the concern shrinks. Imposter syndrome tends to persist as evidence accumulates, and the evidence gets explained away, often as luck. That is the pattern Clance and Imes described.

Three questions help separate the two.

Can you name the specific skill or decision? "I am not suited to this role" is global and cannot be tested. "I have not yet led a restructuring" is specific, and it can be addressed through experience, advisers or development.

Does outside evidence support the concern? Feedback from several people, results over time and structured data are firmer ground than a private read taken in a difficult week. A structured assessment or 360-degree process gathers views from multiple stakeholders and gives a leader something sturdier than self-assessment to work from.

Does the concern change when the gap is addressed? If it eases once a gap is closed and the result is confirmed by others, it was a gap. If it moves to the next task with the same intensity, imposter feelings are the more likely explanation.

Both can be present at once. A leader can have a real development area and also a distorted sense of how large it is. Separating the two keeps the first from being ignored and the second from being obeyed.

What does the research say about what helps?

The evidence is limited. A 2020 systematic review concluded that treatments for impostor feelings had been little studied, and a 2024 scoping review of 31 publications found that interventions fall mainly into training and counselling approaches, including coaching, supervision and peer support groups. Its authors identified education about how impostor feelings show up, together with group support, as the main levers.

The limits are considerable. Most of the studies took place in healthcare and higher education, and almost half of the references used no formal research design. The review's authors call for more work with working professionals. One randomised trial in the review compared individual coaching with group training among young employees. Coaching produced a more lasting reduction in impostor scores, while training was better at building knowledge about the topic. The authors caution that the evidence cannot yet establish that one format is superior.

Practices that recur across this literature and in Korn Ferry's guidance for CEOs include:

Learning how the pattern works, so it can be named when it appears.
Keeping a record of how you explain your successes and what evidence supports those explanations, a technique known in the clinical literature as an attribution diary.
Having someone to speak with candidly. Korn Ferry's experts suggest a spouse, partner or trusted advisor.
Building a senior team whose members lift the leader's thinking, rather than relying on the leader to lift theirs.

Some leaders add one-to-one executive coaching, which provides a confidential setting to test self-assessments against evidence. Coaching is one of the approaches included in the research above, with the limits on the evidence already noted.

When is it more than a leadership issue?

When the doubt comes with persistent low mood, anxiety, disrupted sleep or exhaustion, it is worth speaking with a qualified health professional. The systematic review found that imposter syndrome often occurs alongside depression and anxiety. It advised clinicians and employers to assess for those conditions and not to treat the doubt in isolation.

Burnout deserves separate attention. Overwork driven by fear of exposure is one route into it, and exhaustion can make self-doubt harder to keep in proportion. Coaching addresses thinking and behaviour at work. It is not a substitute for clinical care.

What should a senior leader take from this?

That doubt at the top is common, that it does not by itself indicate poor performance, and that it responds better to evidence and outside perspective than to reassurance or longer hours.

For many leaders the feeling rises and falls with the demands of the role rather than disappearing for good. The practical aim is not to remove it. It is to limit the influence it has over delegation, decisions and how openly a leader speaks with their team. Korn Ferry's own reading of its 71% figure is that it reflects the load of the role and not a lack of capability. That is a useful frame for a leader who has reached the C-suite and is still waiting for the feeling to stop.