The executives who sit with me after a big promotion are rarely short of ability. They are often working far harder than the job needs, to protect a secret that is not true: that someone made a mistake in choosing them.Dr. Prerna Kohli

The announcement went out, the congratulations came in, and the people who matter told you it was deserved. Then the first quarterly review arrived, or the first board meeting, or the first decision nobody could make for you, and a quieter voice started up. They will realise soon. The last person in this chair was sharper. You were picked because there was no one else, or because of timing, or because someone liked you. Every competent thing you do gets filed under luck; every small mistake gets filed as proof.

You are probably preparing for meetings far longer than anyone else, rereading emails before you send them, staying quiet in rooms where you used to speak, and telling nobody, because the whole point is that nobody finds out. Imposter syndrome after promotion is exhausting, and it rarely improves by working harder. If it is starting to affect your sleep, decisions or confidence in the new role, an individual consultation is where we assess what is driving it, privately, before it costs you more.

Imposter syndrome after promotion: what it is and what it isn't

Imposter syndrome after promotion is a pattern of thinking, not a diagnosis: the conviction that your success is undeserved and that exposure is coming, held in spite of evidence that says otherwise. The idea was first described in 1978 by two psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, in high-achieving women who could not take in their own achievements. It has since been studied across professions and in both men and women, and how often it is found depends heavily on how it is measured.

Three points are worth holding on to. It is not humility; humble people can take in praise, while the imposter pattern cannot. It is not a lack of competence; in my experience it clusters in exactly the people who are competent enough to be promoted. And it is not in any diagnostic manual. That matters, because what sits beside it sometimes is: research links it with anxiety and depression, and a feeling of fraudulence that has started to break sleep, flatten mood or bring on panic deserves an assessment, not just encouragement.

Why senior roles trigger self-doubt

A promotion changes the job in ways that feed the pattern. These are the shifts I see most often with newly promoted vice-presidents, CXOs and first-time board members.

• The work stops being measurable. As a manager you could point to targets met and projects shipped. At the top the job becomes judgement, influence and decisions whose results arrive months later. Without a clear scorecard, the mind fills the gap with its own verdict, and the imposter verdict is always harsh.
• The audience got more powerful. Boards, promoters, investors and the CEO are not colleagues; they are evaluators. Being watched by people who can end your career makes ordinary uncertainty feel like danger.
• The predecessor became a legend. The person who held the role before you is remembered for their best quarter, not their worst one. You are comparing your inside, every doubt and draft, with their outside, the polished version that survived. Successors in family businesses know this comparison especially well.
• You no longer have a peer group. The colleagues you used to think aloud with now report to you, and the people at your new level are rivals as much as allies. Self-doubt grows in silence.
• You were promoted for what you did, into a job that needs something else. The skills that earned the role, being the best analyst or the strongest seller, are rarely the skills the role now needs. Feeling less sure in the new job is a sign the job changed, which the imposter pattern misreads as proof that you are not good enough.

Some people carry an extra layer. Women in senior roles often report it, and in my practice so do first-generation leaders, the first in a family to run a large team or sit on a board, and people who rose from a different city, language or background into rooms where everyone else seems to belong already. The feeling is not evidence that you do not belong. It is often a record of how far you travelled to get there.

What it looks like from the inside

Most people with this pattern hide it well. The signs are usually visible only to them, and sometimes to the people at home.

• Over-preparing. Three hours for a meeting that needs one, rehearsing answers to questions nobody will ask. When the meeting goes well, the credit goes to the preparation, never to you.
• Discounting success, absorbing failure. A good result was luck or the team. A small slip is the truth finally showing.
• Going quiet in senior rooms. Holding back an opinion until someone more senior has spoken, then agreeing. The silence protects you from being wrong, and slowly costs you the influence the role needs.
• Not delegating. Doing work yourself because a mistake by someone else might expose you. In my practice this often contributes to exhaustion and burnout in new leaders, and it overlaps closely with the psychology of control.
• Avoiding the next step. Turning down a board seat, a visible project or a speaking slot, explained as being busy.
• Relief instead of pride. After each success, not satisfaction but a brief sense of having escaped detection, before the next test begins.

When it becomes something more

For many people the feeling settles as they grow into the role. For some it does not, and in my experience these are the signs that it has crossed from a common adjustment into something that needs proper attention.

• Sleep has broken. Lying awake replaying meetings, or waking at four with the next day's exposure already running. Why work stress keeps leaders awake is covered separately.
• Panic in high-stakes rooms. A racing heart before presentations, a mind that goes blank, or a full attack. New, severe or unexplained chest pain or palpitations need prompt medical evaluation first, and local emergency services if symptoms are sudden or severe; once the medical side is clear, panic before presentations usually responds well to treatment.
• Mood has flattened. Little pleasure in the achievement, irritability at home, a sense that none of it is worth it. That can be burnout or depression, and the two are treated differently.
• Something is being used to cope. Alcohol to switch off at night, or anything else that has quietly become necessary.
• It is changing decisions. Refusing opportunities, over-deferring to others, or planning an exit from a role you are doing well, simply to end the fear.

What helps, starting this week

Most of these you can begin alone; a couple involve a trusted person or a conversation at work. They are starting points, not a substitute for assessment when the anxiety, sleep loss or self-doubt persists. They work better as practice over weeks than as a one-time fix.

1. Name it as a pattern, not a fact. "I am having the thought that I'll be found out" is different from "I'll be found out". The first is something your mind does under pressure; the second is a prediction it has no evidence for.
2. Keep an evidence file. Decisions that worked, problems you solved, feedback you received, written down when they happen. The imposter pattern deletes good evidence within days; a file keeps it.
3. Set a preparation limit. Allow the time the stakes really need, then stop, and notice afterwards which preparation was useful and which was driven by fear of being found out. Over-preparation is the habit that keeps the belief alive, because every success gets credited to it.
4. Ask for the scorecard. In the first months of a senior role, agree with your board, promoter or CEO what success looks like at six and twelve months. Clear criteria starve the vague verdict the pattern depends on.
5. Find one honest room. A mentor, a peer outside the company, a spouse who is told the truth, where it is safe to do so. In my experience, saying the fear aloud to someone trustworthy shrinks it more than any amount of private reassurance.
6. Separate the role's difficulty from your worth. Senior jobs are hard. Finding them hard is information about the job, not a verdict on you.

What a psychologist does that coaching does not

Coaching can be useful here, especially for the practical side of a new role: stakeholder maps, the first ninety days, executive presence. Where coaching stops is the clinical layer: the anxiety, low mood, broken sleep and older patterns that can sit under the self-doubt. That is where my work as a psychologist starts. In my practice I work with newly promoted leaders on where the "fraud" verdict came from, often a long way back, in a family where only the top mark counted, a father whose praise never arrived, or a school where they were always the outsider; on the anxiety that drives the over-preparing and the silence; and on the sleep, mood and panic that sometimes come with it. The belief is examined and tested, not argued with, and the habits that protect it are changed one at a time.

A 2020 systematic review found no randomised treatment trials among the studies it examined. Since then, controlled studies, including a large 2023 trial of online group coaching with over a thousand women doctors in training, have reported lower imposter scores. That is encouraging, though it does not show the same results for senior executives or for every kind of help. The anxiety, low mood and burnout that travel with it are a different matter, and those are well-established territory for psychological treatment. Executive coaching vs therapy explains where the two kinds of help divide, and many of my clients keep a coach alongside. Sessions run online from anywhere in the world or in person in Gurugram, and nobody at your company hears from me that you are here, within the usual ethical and legal limits.

If you recognise yourself in this, you do not have to wait until it costs you a night's sleep before every board meeting, or the next opportunity. You can begin privately, without telling anyone at work. Book a first session or message me on WhatsApp.