The doubt you feel may be an accurate reading of a biased room, not a defect in you
The standard advice tends to be friendly and, on the surface, sensible. When you feel like a phony in a room you fought hard to enter, the fault must lie in your inner monologue. Hire a coach. Start a file of your accomplishments. Tell yourself you belong until it sticks. Most women leading organizations here in Greater Louisville have heard this at least once, tucked under the phrase imposter syndrome.
The trouble with that phrase is that the unease you carry into those rooms frequently isn't a glitch. It's a fair response to how the people in the room are treating you. Naming it a personal defect points you toward the wrong repair.
First. The label describes an emotion rather than a job setting.
In a 2021 Harvard Business Review piece titled "Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome," Tulshyan and Burey argued that the diagnosis takes a structural issue, how certain people get received at work, and moves it inside the individual. Once the problem is filed inside you, you are the one who must absorb the cost of fixing it, and the room is free to keep operating as it always has.
Second. The room is reading you differently
According to McKinsey and LeanIn's 2025 Women in the Workplace report, female leaders are mistaken for junior staff at roughly double the rate of male leaders. Deloitte's 2025 survey of 7,500 women across 15 countries found that 28% had experienced microaggressions over the previous year. So when you walk into a meeting and sense that some people aren't sure you belong at the table, that reading isn't a distortion. Some of them really aren't sure. Your instinct is doing its job.
3. Were self-assurance the real problem, then coaching alone would have eliminated the disparity.
The same McKinsey and LeanIn findings reveal that when 100 men are advanced to manager, only 93 women are, and among women of color the figure drops to 74. Those data also show that women and men want advancement at nearly the same rate, 80% versus 86%, and that the difference vanishes once women get the same backing men already receive. A confidence problem doesn't evaporate when the manager changes. A support problem does.
Where the conventional wisdom still holds in Louisville
Hesitation that comes with simply starting a new role is normal and can even be helpful. The first ninety days in a bigger job should feel like your feet aren't quite touching the floor. An accomplishments file is a good habit. Noticing the feeling is the part that goes right, so the trouble starts elsewhere. It treats every uncomfortable moment as a verdict on you.
Better practice going forward
The next time the doubt hits, run a two-column check. Start with a first column asking what you truly did wrong. Column two: what did the room do? If column one is empty and column two reads "called me by the admin's name" or "my idea landed only when he repeated it," you don't have a syndrome. You have evidence.
Then voice that record once, directly, to a single person in a position to make a change. "My recommendation gained momentum only once Tom repeated it, and I noticed that." "Going forward, I'd like to be the person who presents my own work." Saying this is not a grievance. It is an adjustment, offered at the point in the organization where adjustments actually get made.
Therefore, when someone in Greater Louisville or anywhere else attaches that label to you, first ask what precisely the room is doing that has produced this feeling.