Kris Kelso is a thought leader in the realms of entrepreneurship and leadership development. Kelso, author of the transformative book "Overcoming the Imposter: Silence Your Inner Critic and Lead with Confidence," dives deep into the heart of impostor syndrome—a phenomenon that silently afflicts countless leaders, making them doubt their achievements and fear being exposed as frauds. Through personal anecdotes and years of mentoring others, Kelso reveals how this syndrome is not a barrier but a common thread among high achievers.

Kris stresses the importance of embracing vulnerability and reframing failure as a fundamental part of the learning process, rather than evidence of inadequacy. Kelso's insights into developing what he calls 'humble confidence'—the ability to admit what you don't know and trust in your capacity to learn—resonate profoundly with listeners. This conversation not only demystifies the feelings of fraudulence that many leaders face but also provides practical advice on leveraging these challenges to foster genuine growth and confidence in leadership roles. Kelso's book serves as both a guide and a companion for those looking to navigate the complexities of leadership with authenticity and resilience.

Want to learn more about Kris Kelso's work? Check out his website at OvercomingTheImposter.com.

Connect with Kris Kelso on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/kris-kelso.

Key Points with Time Stamps

• Impostor Syndrome in High Achievers (00:01:29-00:02:05): Kelso discusses how common impostor syndrome is, especially among successful individuals.
• The Role of Failure in Success (00:29:24-00:30:47): Kelso emphasizes reframing failure as a learning opportunity, crucial for overcoming self-doubt.
• Vulnerability as a Leadership Strength (00:31:15-00:32:21): Sharing personal vulnerabilities can increase trust and connectivity, Kelso suggests.
• Embracing Humble Confidence (00:15:34-00:17:22): Kelso introduces the concept of 'humble confidence,' advocating for leaders to acknowledge their learning journey confidently.
• Practical Advice for Combating Impostor Syndrome (00:34:05-00:35:37): Kelso offers actionable strategies for leaders to confront and mitigate feelings of fraudulence.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;29;11
Craig Andrews
Today's guest is one that I've been looking forward to. He never went to college. Never took a college class. But he teaches them. He never went to business school, but he started running a business. Actually, he's run several businesses and done very well. And pulls out a reality that 70% of the population experiences something called imposter syndrome. And it's actually pretty prevalent amongst high achievers.

00;01;29;14 - 00;02;05;12
Craig Andrews
Well, Chris Kessler is our guest today. He's a keynote speaker, two time entrepreneur, certified coach. He is the author of Overcoming the Imposter, Silence Your Inner Critic, and Lead with Confidence. He's also the Dean of the entrepreneurship at the Professional Crushing Coaching Institute. A growth coach with heroic public speaking and advisor and instructor at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, and is a contributing writer for Fast Company Magazine, Yahoo!

00;02;05;12 - 00;02;14;18
Craig Andrews
Finance, and The Nashville Business Journal. And he's here to talk about imposters, or at least the syndrome thereof. Chris, welcome.

00;02;14;20 - 00;02;19;22
Kris Kelso
Thank you. Craig, it's so good to be here, man. I've been looking forward to this conversation as well.

00;02;19;24 - 00;02;58;19
Craig Andrews
So, you know, I heard about imposter syndrome probably about ten years ago. And it it resonated at the time, and I, And it reminded me of something. And so if I go back, probably about 20, you know, between 20 to 22, 23 years ago, 20 years ago, somewhere in that time frame, you know, so I was doing marketing and, I was marketing semiconductors for mobile phones, and I was spending a lot of time in Asia, primarily Taiwan at the time.

00;02;58;21 - 00;03;25;27
Craig Andrews
And I remember many times sitting on the tarmac, usually I was flying out of Chicago and I was flying business class. So I got on the plane before most people, and I'm sitting there and I'm looking out the window and my gut would just start churning. And the thoughts that raged through my head was, is this the trip when they're going to figure out that I'm a fraud?

00;03;26;00 - 00;03;54;07
Craig Andrews
And it just it was so uncomfortable. And the you know, what drove me to do. Because I didn't want to be found a fraud. I worked harder, I studied harder, and I prepared harder. But I really felt like. And I actually have some evidence that they believe things about me that were just not true. that were well beyond my abilities.

00;03;54;09 - 00;04;01;01
Craig Andrews
And so is this. Is this what we're talking about? Is this what you've you're talking about in your book?

00;04;01;04 - 00;04;36;12
Kris Kelso
Yes. So that's a really good example of this thing that psychologists call imposter syndrome. And the basic definition of that is that you you have this pattern of thinking where you doubt the reality of your achievements, of your success, and that you you worry that your success isn't real despite the evidence. So despite the fact that you've been given a job, you've been given promotions, you've been awarded, you've been complimented that people seem to admire and respect you, and yet somehow you just can't believe it.

00;04;36;12 - 00;05;03;03
Kris Kelso
You can't believe it's true. And and furthermore, you feel like you have somehow pulled the wool over their eyes and you have tricked them unintentionally. Perhaps. But you've you've tricked them into believing that you know what you're doing when you really don't. And and there's this fear that, as you put it, that this may be the moment, this may be the trip where they figure out that I'm just making it up as I go, that I really don't know what I'm doing.

00;05;03;06 - 00;05;25;22
Kris Kelso
And, Craig, the reality is, most of us are making it up as we go. We're all learning on the fly and we feel like we're the only ones doing that. Everybody else seems to know exactly what they're doing and have all the answers and have it together, but we're figuring it out in real time. But that's actually what most of us are doing,

00;05;25;25 - 00;05;59;25
Craig Andrews
Well, somebody else that's making the the speaking circuit is Chris Voss. You know, he's famous for saying that you in times of crisis, you fall to your highest level of preparation. Yeah. And so there's some tension with what you just said and with what Chris Voss has said. And so as somebody, you know, as I said, I when I realized they believed I could do things I couldn't, I just drove me to prepare heart, prepare more so I could perform at a higher level, which is more in the Chris Voss level.

00;05;59;26 - 00;06;03;27
Craig Andrews
But, how do I resolve this tension?

00;06;03;29 - 00;06;35;23
Kris Kelso
Yeah, well, I think that, Chris Voss is right. When you're in a high stress situation, you you often do not rise to the occasion. You fall to your level of training and preparation. but most of life is not high stress. Most of life is not life or death stakes unless you're, you know, in, in the special forces or you're in some position, you know, perhaps, a firefighter or someone that, that puts their life on the line on a regular basis in those cases.

00;06;36;01 - 00;06;57;23
Kris Kelso
Yeah. You don't want to learn on the fly. If you're doing search and rescue or you're fighting fires or performing surgery, you know, doctors do not need to be learning in real time while they're in the operating room. That's why there are professions that have a pretty rigorous, learning and certification process for them. But much of life is not like that.

00;06;57;23 - 00;07;12;12
Kris Kelso
And many professions do not have those high stakes where you should not even start practicing until you are really, really well trained and really, really well. certified by some experts.

00;07;12;14 - 00;07;21;08
Craig Andrews
You know? So how do you know if you're in one of those versus not in one of those?

00;07;21;10 - 00;07;40;28
Kris Kelso
Well, I think you asked the question. What what are what is the risk of failure? What's the cost of failure? So here again, I'll go to if I, if I walked into an operating room and I put scrubs on and I said, hey, I'm here to perform surgery, I would absolutely be a fraud. I should feel like a fraud because I am a fraud, right?

00;07;40;28 - 00;08;01;13
Kris Kelso
I am not qualified to do that. And so this talking about imposter syndrome and overcoming the self-doubt is not about believing you can do anything, any time. And and that you should just go, you know, fail your way to any kind of success that you want. in those situations, the cost of failure is really high. Someone could die.

00;08;01;13 - 00;08;20;17
Kris Kelso
Someone's life could be permanently impacted by that. But let's go to another scenario like, oh, I don't know, starting a podcast. You when you started this podcast, Craig was was there life or death on the line? If you didn't do a great job on your first show?

00;08;20;20 - 00;08;24;26
Craig Andrews
No. Other than, you know, other than fear of making a fool of myself.

00;08;24;29 - 00;08;31;24
Kris Kelso
Yes. And that's a key thing, right? There is many times the only thing at risk is our pride.

00;08;32;17 - 00;09;02;02
Kris Kelso
And we place too much, too much value on the risk of embarrassment on saving face, on trying to preserve our reputation by not making a public mistake. And I think we miss out on a lot of opportunities when we let that fear of failure, dominate us and hold us back. Because really, the risk is just that you don't look like an expert, and that is not insurmountable.

00;09;02;02 - 00;09;21;18
Kris Kelso
One of the one of the fears of impostor syndrome, one of the sort of irrational thought patterns, is that failure is fatal, that if I have a failure on my record, if I make a mistake and it's public and people see it, that's going to put a permanent mark on me, that's going to scar me for the rest of my life.

00;09;21;18 - 00;09;39;28
Kris Kelso
The rest of my career is going to be tainted by that mistake. And again, if you're in a medical profession, if you're in a life or death situation, that may be the truth and it probably should be the truth. But if you're in most of life, in most professions, failure is not fatal. It's just part of the process.

00;09;39;28 - 00;09;54;09
Kris Kelso
It's how we learn. We learn more through failure than we do through success. And so we need to be able to take risks and fail when the cost of that failure is not nearly as high as we may believe it is.

00;09;54;11 - 00;10;19;22
Craig Andrews
You know. So what I mean, what feeds into this, what where are the roots of this? You know, because I especially a lot of people, you know, they're, you know, you're kid, you're brought up. And unless you just have horribly cruel parents, you know, you scribble some lines on a piece of paper and they call it a Picasso.

00;10;19;25 - 00;10;42;04
Craig Andrews
and so you have all this affirmation. That's how we're brought up. Oh, it's lovely. And that gets put on the refrigerator. yeah. Where does the imposter. Because the kids don't feel imposters are like, hey, look, look at my masterpiece. Right? And somehow we go from there to delivering what are legitimate masterpieces and being embarrassed by them.

00;10;42;04 - 00;10;45;08
Craig Andrews
We're feeling like we didn't. Yeah. Really deserve it.

00;10;45;11 - 00;11;09;26
Kris Kelso
Yeah, well, if we go back even a little bit further to infancy, when you're when you're a baby and you're learning things like how to talk, how to walk, how to interact with the world, we learn through failure, you know, babies learn to walk by pulling up and trying to take a step and falling over and figuring out how to balance and, and what do they do?

00;11;09;26 - 00;11;51;25
Kris Kelso
They get up and try it again. You know, they may cry for a few seconds if that hurts, but then they doggone it, they're going to go after it again. They're going to try and try and keep trying until they succeed. And so it's it's built in us from an early age to fail our way to success, to experiment and to try and and somewhere along the line, somewhere in our education systems, somewhere in our perhaps those, you know, very formative teen years when there's a lot of peer pressure and people are a lot more self-conscious, we start to build this, this fear of public failure, the fear of ridicule, the fear of,

00;11;51;28 - 00;12;14;19
Kris Kelso
of being seen as lesser than the fear of not fitting in. And, and when you combine that with social pressures, like, you know, social media and the sort of highlight real world that we live in now, you it's really easy to feel like everybody else knows what they're doing and is, has got it really together.

00;12;14;19 - 00;12;43;12
Kris Kelso
And I am still just figuring it out. I am still just failing my way. And so I think what happens is that, you know, we all continue to experiment our way to success, but we get better at hiding it. And that hiding it is the thing that makes us all feel like we're the only ones doing it, because everyone else acts like they actually know what they're doing, rather than all of us continuing to experiment our way to success.

00;12;43;15 - 00;12;48;19
Craig Andrews
Interesting. Yeah. That's really I can see that.

00;12;48;22 - 00;13;08;16
Kris Kelso
And so one of the reasons that I wrote a book about imposter syndrome and I, I share my story is I, I had a couple experiences where I realized that when I get vulnerable and when I open up to people and I tell them about my own struggles and some of the mistakes that I've made that that offer so much hope to them that it actually opens up a conversation.

00;13;08;16 - 00;13;29;22
Kris Kelso
And I can't tell you, Craig, how many times I've had somebody say, oh my goodness, I'm so glad you said that. I thought I was the only one. And it's really helpful. And so when I realized, how prevalent imposter syndrome is, statistically it's 70 to 80% of the population wrestle with this feeling of I'm a fraud. I'm not what everyone thinks I am.

00;13;29;25 - 00;13;59;09
Kris Kelso
And and it's more prevalent among high achievers. So in the kinds of people that I spent time with, entrepreneurs and innovators and professionals and, you know, really driven, ambitious people, that that number's even higher. And when I realized how prevalent it was and how the antidote is to talk about it, the the antidote to feeling like you're the only one who is just figuring it out and who is struggling to to hold up and to measure up to these images you see around you.

00;13;59;09 - 00;14;22;22
Kris Kelso
The the antidote to that is, is to open up that veil and say, look, we're all struggling at times. We're all learning in progress. We're all working our way, experimenting our way to success, and just letting someone know that remove some of that false barrier, that false comparison. That happens when we think everyone else has it all together.

00;14;22;25 - 00;14;43;10
Craig Andrews
Well, in something that's, you know, something's bothered me. I mean, as we're opening up about this, you know, I had that going back to, you know, when I was flying to Taiwan, I just had that intense fear, that sinking stomach, feeling in the stomach. And it's been years since I had that feeling. And I've, you know, I've shifted.

00;14;43;11 - 00;15;05;10
Craig Andrews
I'm doing something a little bit different than was then. And the thing that I say is, you know, I'm not yet good enough to have imposter syndrome. That's funny. It's. But, yeah, it's a little bit of a joke, but it's also a fear of maybe I'm not doing as good enough work to have that fear.

00;15;05;12 - 00;15;34;22
Kris Kelso
To even have that feeling. That's interesting. You know, I think that one of the principles that I have really started leaning into and talking about is this idea of what I call humble confidence. And it may be, Craig, that you are exhibiting more of a humble confidence. And let me define what that means. A humble confidence is a place where you can simultaneously acknowledge that I don't have all the answers.

00;15;34;26 - 00;15;54;07
Kris Kelso
I don't, have it all figured out. I'm a work in progress. I'm learning as I go, but also be okay with that. And and you can build your confidence, or you can draw your confidence not from having all the answers, but from believing you can find the answers.

00;15;54;10 - 00;15;54;24
Craig Andrews
Yes.

00;15;54;24 - 00;16;25;19
Kris Kelso
So there are people that do not feel confident until they have experience with whatever they're trying to do. And that experience can be hard to come by because if if you're an innovator, if you're a person who's always pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, well then you're always dealing with inexperience. And in fact, everything that I've ever done in my career that was meaningful was preceded by a lack of experience, like every time I do something for the first time, well, I haven't done it before.

00;16;25;19 - 00;17;09;20
Kris Kelso
That's part of the process of accomplishing something new. And so if you can only draw confidence from experience with that specific thing, then you either have to stay in one lane and just do the same thing for the rest of your life. Or you have to constantly deal with insecurity and fear. However, if you can learn to draw your confidence from your ability to learn, then the game changes from I've never done this before and that puts me at risk to I've never done this before, but I've done lots of other things before, and I have a track record of learning my way through something, and I can be confident in my ability to figure

00;17;09;20 - 00;17;22;09
Kris Kelso
it out, even if I don't have all the answers right now. Not having the answers, it's just a starting point. Rather than an obstacle to success. That's humble confidence.

00;17;22;12 - 00;17;47;23
Craig Andrews
That's I like that. That's. That's very fascinating. Let's go back in time a little bit. You, you know, and let's talk about how you first started wrestling with us. Yeah. So you, you didn't take a business course, you didn't go to college. How did you prepare yourself?

00;17;47;25 - 00;18;08;28
Kris Kelso
Well, so I won't go through the whole long story of my background, but I spent my college years touring with a band all over the country and did some really fun stuff in that season of life. But, but then I transitioned into a technology role, and I did some software development work and infrastructure work for a couple of large health care companies.

00;18;09;01 - 00;18;46;26
Kris Kelso
And for a long time I said that I never wanted to own a business. I had no interest in the risk in the, the all the complex versions of insurance and taxes and employees and like all of that, just seemed like headaches to me. And then one day, it was as though I woke up and a switch had flipped, and I can't I can't tell you exactly how or why it happened, but suddenly the only thing that made sense to me was to go out on my own and go into business for myself, like I was dissatisfied with my work in this huge health care company, and I just couldn't imagine going and interviewing for

00;18;46;26 - 00;19;14;27
Kris Kelso
another job. I was I just said, I've got to make my own way. And so I had to start from scratch. I had no business training. I hadn't been to college. I had had a music technology background and software and, and so I, I remember very distinctly going to a large bookstore and buying a stack of books covering anything I thought I needed to know to start a business marketing, finance, sales, contracts.

00;19;15;03 - 00;19;33;08
Kris Kelso
I bought and read a book on contracts, how to write legal contract. Like I just I was like, what am I missing? And I'm going, I'm going to go educate myself really quickly. I read 5 or 6 books and I started a company, and those first few years, it's not like that was the end of my education, you know, 5 or 6 books.

00;19;33;08 - 00;19;56;25
Kris Kelso
That was just a starting point. Those first few years, everything I did, I was doing for the first time I was landing clients. I was doing these big consulting projects. I was, hiring contractors and eventually employees. I was, you know, building a business and just learning as I went. but, Greg, I tell you, I wrestled with imposter syndrome all through that period.

00;19;56;25 - 00;20;25;14
Kris Kelso
I didn't know what to call it at that time. I had heard of that term before, but I had this nagging voice in the back of my head that said, you do not know what you're doing. And these people that are paying you a lot of money have no idea that you read a book on this yesterday, and you're figuring it out and you're learning on the fly, and at some point, somebody is going to figure that somebody is going to discover you don't have a degree and you're going to be out like you're going to be done as soon as somebody knows you don't have a college degree.

00;20;25;16 - 00;20;50;27
Kris Kelso
And so I had that sort of persistent fear. And I lived in this space of, how do I keep anyone from finding out that I'm just in learning mode here? And years later, I discovered that learning is is something I do really well. That, like figuring it out is a valuable skill, not a weakness. And it's something that I bring to the table and something I have leveraged through a lot of my career.

00;20;51;00 - 00;21;12;03
Kris Kelso
But it was years later, Craig, that I, that I learned about this thing called imposter syndrome. And it just hearing about it and understanding what it meant was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, like, oh my goodness, I'm not the only one. And there are other people that feel this way. And, and and then I started really studying it because I wanted to understand that psychological mind game that goes on.

00;21;12;03 - 00;21;25;24
Kris Kelso
Why does it happen? How do you counteract it? And so for several years I studied it, I talked with people about it. And that eventually culminated in the book that I wrote. And now I speak on that topic all around the world.

00;21;25;27 - 00;21;32;24
Craig Andrews
Wow, wow. What's the most interesting place you've ever spoken?

00;21;32;26 - 00;21;58;06
Kris Kelso
well, I've done, I've, I've spoken around the U.S quite a bit. most of my international stuff has been virtual because my book came out in the beginning of 2021. So, you know, everything was virtual. So I've spoken to, audiences all around the world on almost every continent. I'm waiting on a gig in Antarctica, but, you know, just about every continent in the world.

00;21;58;09 - 00;22;21;13
Kris Kelso
and, it's been really interesting because when I wrote the book, I'll be honest, I wasn't quite sure, and I didn't address the fact, or the question of, is this just an American phenomenon, or is this a universal like, is it cultural? Because my context was what I knew here in America, I can tell you, without any hesitation.

00;22;21;13 - 00;22;47;26
Kris Kelso
Now, having spoken around the world, that it is a it is not a cultural problem. It's not a, a socio economic problem. It's not a, American problem. It's not a, male or female problem. It's a human problem. And I've talked to people from all kinds of cultures that have identified with and, and raised their hand and said, yes, I wrestle with that self-doubt.

00;22;47;29 - 00;22;54;25
Kris Kelso
And I'm so glad that there are solutions to help me work with work through that.

00;22;54;27 - 00;23;21;12
Craig Andrews
You know, that's that is comforting. you know, there's two things I see that are comforting in that. One is that if you're feeling that you're not alone, and two, if you're feeling that it's not because you're raised in America or wherever you know who are listening. Yeah, it's it's a phenomenon that hits people from all cultures. Yes.

00;23;21;14 - 00;23;44;29
Craig Andrews
So here's a question. Let me go back to, you know, 20 years ago when I was going to Taiwan, at one point, I changed companies and I went back, with a new company. But I had dinner with the country manager of my old company, and for some reason, she took me to a western restaurant that night where they didn't have a printed menu, and they she just spoke out the, the menu.

00;23;45;02 - 00;24;16;02
Craig Andrews
And I looked at Cindy, who was my host, answered, Cindy, you're going to have to translate that for me. And she said, Craig, you forgot your Chinese. So the bizarre thing is, I don't speak Chinese. I've never spoken Chinese. I've never pretended to speak Chinese. Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I, I eventually figured out what was happening, why they believed I could, was in when we were meeting with customers.

00;24;16;04 - 00;24;35;29
Craig Andrews
I didn't understand Chinese, but I understood their face. And when. Yeah, when they were translating something, if I wasn't seeing the look on the face that I should see, sometimes I would stop them mid translation and say, hey, let's try it this way. And I think that they took that I spoke Chinese.

00;24;36;01 - 00;24;37;11
Kris Kelso
Oh interesting.

00;24;37;13 - 00;24;52;06
Craig Andrews
But see there's an example where I was a legit imposter. They believed I could do things I couldn't. Yeah, yeah deal with that. I mean, how do you sort out when you know you're legit an imposter?

00;24;52;08 - 00;25;18;11
Kris Kelso
Yeah. And in those moments, there is a temptation to fake it, right? There's an taste, a temptation to say. Oh, yeah, or, you know, or to give some vague, ambiguous answer where, you know, I didn't lie. I didn't tell them, but I but I just let them believe that, that I could speak Chinese. I, you know, I just made a joke about it or I swept it under the rug.

00;25;18;14 - 00;25;44;12
Kris Kelso
And in those moments, when you when you give in to that temptation to sort of save face and preserve your image, you set yourself up for more stress and more pain down the road. Because if you if you deepen that deception and, and I'm, you know, I'm going to assume, Greg, that the deception was accidental. You didn't try to convince them, right, that you spoke Chinese.

00;25;44;14 - 00;26;10;07
Kris Kelso
Those things happen sometimes. People sometimes assume I have a college degree because of some of the things that I've done. And when it comes up, I have a choice to make. I can either go along with it and pretend and not, you know, rock the boat or not. burst that bubble or I can stop and clarify and say, you know, actually, I don't have a college degree, but here's how I've learned differently.

00;26;10;09 - 00;26;33;10
Kris Kelso
Right? And so you can be clear and honest, but also put a twist on it. Here's how this has actually helped me or here's why I've been able to be successful in spite of not having that. But that temptation is very real. And if you give into it even just a little bit, you, you sort of perpetuate the problem.

00;26;33;10 - 00;26;40;03
Kris Kelso
You dig the hole deeper and eventually you are actively deceiving them and you get yourself into trouble that way.

00;26;40;06 - 00;27;04;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I can't remember how I responded. I the reason she took me to a western restaurant was I had broken my right wrist, and for some reason she thought it would be easier for me to eat Western food than Chinese food. Chinese food is all bite size. You don't have to cut it right? So any any new ability was was, gone when they brought the meal.

00;27;04;14 - 00;27;10;22
Craig Andrews
And I was like, Cindy, can you cut my meat for me? Yeah, right. My mom was sitting there cutting me out.

00;27;10;25 - 00;27;14;04
Kris Kelso
Of a broken wrist. And I'm gonna order a big steak. Yeah.

00;27;14;06 - 00;27;33;10
Craig Andrews
but you know what? What was happening in those days is I would finish my workday and, like, leaving my last customer meeting, I would pop a Vicodin, you know, just to get the pain under control. I then went beyond Vicodin months and, you know, customer meetings because I needed my wits about me. But. So I don't remember how I responded.

00;27;33;12 - 00;28;02;01
Craig Andrews
I, other than just being shocked. And I step back and I thought about it, and I had flashback to a number of scenes where, one scene was in the days right after 9/11, I landed in Taiwan three hours before 9/11 hit. Whoo! And and we're in a cab, and, we're going to a customer meeting. I'm listening to the radio, and I speak a couple words, literally a couple.

00;28;02;01 - 00;28;23;17
Craig Andrews
And I heard Meg walk, which means America. And so our sales guy, I said, Vincent, what did he say? You know, again, me not trying to pretend I speak Chinese. I just heard something like, what do you say on on the radio? And I remember the look on Vincent's face. He was terrified. And it hit me when I later figured out that they thought I spoke Chinese.

00;28;23;20 - 00;28;47;25
Craig Andrews
If Vincent thought I didn't speak Chinese culturally, he would have lied to me about what they said on the radio. Because what they say on the radio was America brought nine over 11 on itself. and so culturally. And they are going to avoid offense. And it would it would be culturally acceptable for him to lie to me and say something like, they're very sad for America.

00;28;47;27 - 00;28;53;12
Craig Andrews
Yeah. But the look on his face was, I don't know how much of this he understood. I can't lie.

00;28;53;14 - 00;28;55;00
Kris Kelso
Yeah.

00;28;55;03 - 00;29;02;08
Craig Andrews
And all of a sudden, you know, so at some sometime after dinner that I started putting the pieces together because it just blew me away. It wasn't what I expected. Yeah.

00;29;02;11 - 00;29;10;19
Kris Kelso
Yeah, yeah. And in hindsight, you realize how that played out differently and you, that you didn't understand it in the moment.

00;29;10;21 - 00;29;23;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So we're let's say you're dealing with somebody, you're counseling somebody who's struggling with imposter syndrome. Yeah. What do they do? How do they get how do they find peace. Yeah.

00;29;24;02 - 00;29;55;14
Kris Kelso
So there's a couple of principles, that are key mindset shifts to starting to overcome this self-doubt. And one of them we've touched on we've touched on a couple of them, actually. One is that you you have to change the way that you think about failure and the value of failure. And so you reframe failure as learning. imposter syndrome is, at some level the fear of failure.

00;29;55;14 - 00;30;16;27
Kris Kelso
It's a fear of public failure. It's the fear of the embarrassment of failure. But if you can recognize that failure is the path to success, that the learning that comes through failure is what leads to success, then you can approach situations where you don't have all the answers and you can say, well, okay, one of two things is going to happen here.

00;30;16;27 - 00;30;47;06
Kris Kelso
I'm either going to succeed or I'm going to learn. And either one of those is a net benefit to me. So I can take a risk. I can try something even when I'm not 100% sure how it's going to work out. So that that reframing of failure as learning and adopting the approach of I'm going to succeed or I'm going to learn, and either one of those is going to benefit me, will help keep you from giving in to the fear of failure that often comes with imposter syndrome.

00;30;47;08 - 00;31;15;25
Kris Kelso
The other mindset shift is about vulnerability. And I have a whole section of this about this in, in the book and in my keynote talk that I give, where I talk about the power and the importance of being vulnerable. And I mentioned earlier that when I learned that when I would share a little bit of my story and some of my fears and insecurities, it would open up conversations and it would offer hope.

00;31;15;27 - 00;31;45;15
Kris Kelso
The other thing that I realized that I learned is that sharing those things did not erode risk, affect, and trust with people. It actually increased it. Yeah, that being vulnerable, being honest and authentic actually cause people to trust and respect me more, not less. And that is often the fear. You know, one of the things that I, that I often say is that imposter syndrome is the fear of vulnerability, and yet vulnerability is the cure.

00;31;45;17 - 00;32;13;17
Kris Kelso
The thing that you fear is exactly what you need. Because when you open up and acknowledge something and the person across from you says, oh my goodness, I'm so glad you said that, because I have felt that way too. All of a sudden that fear just disappeared. That fear begins to drain that that worry that I'm the only one, that I can't let anybody know that if people find out, they're not going to respect me, that melts away when you just open up and get honest and you hear from other people.

00;32;13;17 - 00;32;21;20
Kris Kelso
And so though vulnerability is what you fear, it actually is the cure. It is what you need to overcome this.

00;32;21;23 - 00;32;32;10
Craig Andrews
That is is so insightful. There really is. You know, as you were talking about fear.

00;32;32;13 - 00;32;52;09
Craig Andrews
You know, singing about and I can think of a something in my journey where I really put myself in a worse situation because I let fear dominate. And it was fear of public ridicule. so I, you know, I think, you know, I was in a calm, you know, a couple, a couple of years ago, two and a half years ago.

00;32;52;12 - 00;33;19;13
Craig Andrews
And when I was coming out, they had me pretty heavily medicated and I think some of my dreams were just hallucinations. well, I was I had started developing bed sores on the heels of one of my foot feet. And they put my feet in these little boots, special boots to prevent bed sores. And I remember one day looking down at my feet, and all my toes had been arranged like little sausages, and I thought somebody was having fun with me.

00;33;19;13 - 00;33;48;04
Craig Andrews
I thought they were humiliating me. and 2 or 3 weeks later, when I left that hospital and I was going to a rehab hospital and I still had a bed saw, somebody said, hey, do you want to take your boots? And I said, no, because I felt that pain of the humiliation that was never real. Right. And so when I got to the new hospital, they still still had to isolate my feet for the the bed sores.

00;33;48;06 - 00;33;57;27
Craig Andrews
And I'd made my life more difficult because I let fear of public ridicule drive my decision.

00;33;57;29 - 00;34;01;08
Kris Kelso
Yes.

00;34;01;10 - 00;34;05;16
Craig Andrews
How does that play out for folks dealing with imposter syndrome?

00;34;05;19 - 00;34;40;11
Kris Kelso
Well, I mean, there's a thousand ways that the fear of public humiliation or embarrassment can work against you. it happens with when you're, you're with people that are smarter than you or more successful than you, people that intimidate you. And rather than lean into those conversations and actually learn from them, you pull back and maybe even you separate yourself out of fear of not looking smart enough or not being able to keep up in the conversation.

00;34;40;13 - 00;35;05;21
Kris Kelso
So you have an opportunity to learn and grow. You have an opportunity to build relationships with people who may be able to help you, but out of fear of appearing weak or inferior, you go find some people that you know you're smarter than or that you know you can sort of hang with, so to speak. And, and you put limits on yourself for that fear of public embarrassment, humiliation.

00;35;05;21 - 00;35;37;12
Kris Kelso
It happens as well when, when we don't ask questions because we're afraid of looking foolish. Right. We're afraid of the the stupid question. So we don't ask. And then you don't learn something. You actually limit yourself. You you hold yourself back from learning because you're afraid to say, I don't know. Something. I don't know that that little three word phrase, I think is one of the hardest phrases to say, people are afraid of it.

00;35;37;12 - 00;35;57;19
Kris Kelso
And so one of the the mental switches that I've really worked on making is being quicker to say, I don't know, like just admit upfront that I don't know something. But here's the thing I don't know. Doesn't have to be the end of the sentence. You can say, I don't know, but here are some theories I don't know.

00;35;57;19 - 00;36;24;26
Kris Kelso
But here's how I would go about researching that. I don't know, but I know someone who might know and maybe we can go ask them, right? There's all kinds of things you can say after the phrase, I don't know, but that fear of saying I don't know will it? It takes all of those other phrases I just said off the table, because if you don't say, I don't know, you can't say those other things and you miss out on opportunities to learn and grow.

00;36;24;28 - 00;36;43;13
Craig Andrews
That is that is powerful. Chris. That's really powerful. Chris, this has just been a fascinating discussion. I've learned a lot in the course of it. And, I know you have a book, Overcoming the Imposter. Where did people get that?

00;36;43;15 - 00;36;56;07
Kris Kelso
Yeah, that book can be bought just about anywhere you buy books. certainly online. Amazon. you can go to Overcoming the imposter.com, and there's a bunch of links to different stores where it's available.

00;36;56;09 - 00;36;59;17
Craig Andrews
Okay. And then you have an online course.

00;36;59;19 - 00;37;20;17
Kris Kelso
Yes. So a couple of years after, the book. Well, really, right after the book came out, I started to hear from readers who said, I want more. This is really valuable. This is really helpful, but I want a workbook. I want some exercises, like how do I, you know, really go deep and put this into practice and build some behaviors and habits.

00;37;20;17 - 00;37;44;26
Kris Kelso
And so, I developed an online course, six modules, about 23 video lessons and a brand, a 75 page workbook that, really goes deeper in unpacking some of the concepts from the book and gives you some specific exercises and things to work through to begin to change your mindset in some of the ways that we've talked about today.

00;37;44;29 - 00;37;51;21
Craig Andrews
Very cool. And then you also do, speaking, for what what type of audiences do you speak for?

00;37;51;24 - 00;38;31;06
Kris Kelso
Yeah, I have had the privilege to speak to audiences, all around the world. and it ranges from, corporate audiences, conferences and, and large events to some universities have spoken to several, both student bodies and faculty and staff of some large universities. I've done a lot of private company events where I come in to, you know, an all hands meeting, maybe an annual retreat with the company and, you know, bring some ideas and start some really good conversation to spark better vulnerability and more open dialog within an organization.

00;38;31;08 - 00;39;05;14
Kris Kelso
And, this year, I'm starting to speak to a lot of marketing audiences. This this content has resonated with a couple of different audiences, you know, types of people. And one of those has been marketing. And so I've been leaning into that, though I don't have a marketing background myself, marketing professionals for, for some specific reasons within that industry, they often wrestle with impostor syndrome, and they often are put in positions where they have to pretend to have all the answers and be able to guarantee results, when in fact, what they're going to do is go run a series of experiments and try to figure out what works.

00;39;05;17 - 00;39;26;14
Kris Kelso
And that is the job. But they don't feel like they can say, that's the job. So I've been helping some marketing audiences and marketing teams, change their thinking about this humble confidence idea of just saying, look, we don't have the answers because you can't have the answers until we go run some experiments and trials and figure out what works and be okay with that.

00;39;26;16 - 00;39;37;13
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Excellent. well, as as a marketer, I know that your message is resonating with me. so how do people reach you?

00;39;37;15 - 00;40;09;10
Kris Kelso
I am really easy to find online, if you remember that my name starts with a K, so it's Chris kelso.com or Chris Kelso on most of the major social platforms. I am most active on LinkedIn, but I'm also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter x and and search. So Chris kelso.com or overcoming the imposter.com. And at either one of those sites you can actually get a free chapter, a sample chapter from the book.

00;40;09;12 - 00;40;28;18
Kris Kelso
And it is the chapter all about overcoming the fear of failure. So it's not chapter one where, you know, it's just a setup of the problem with no real solution. It's actually one of the media's most valuable chapters from the book. So I would love for your listeners to go grab that, free chapter to get a sample of the book.

00;40;28;20 - 00;40;36;29
Craig Andrews
Absolutely. And I do hope people reach their, reach out and get that and reach out to you. Chris, thank you for coming on. Leaders and Legacies.

00;40;37;02 - 00;40;42;27
Kris Kelso
Yeah. You're welcome. Craig. Thanks for having me. This was a great conversation.

00;40;42;27 - 00;41;11;25
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;41;11;27 - 00;41;35;07
Craig Andrews
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00;41;35;09 - 00;43;45;23
Craig Andrews
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