Nerves and Impostor Syndrome
On Sunday I set off for Johannesburg to explore participatory grant making for my Churchill Fellowship. I’ve been doing work on participatory grant making in the UK for the last two years developing a funding programme through participatory approaches. I’ve been living and breathing participatory grant making, embedding myself in conversations about shifting power, speaking to other funders working in this space, using user design principles to engage hundreds of people in the development, decision making and grant management for the Leaders with Lived Experience Programme and sharing my work, challenges and successes.
Despite this I feel nervous meeting with those who have been working in this way for years and years. I’m nervous meeting the people whose work I have been following on twitter and learning from to inform my own practice. I’m nervous about wasting peoples time. I’m nervous about asking them questions about things they may have talked publicly about before. I’m nervous about just repeating the incredible body of work out there, particularly the amazing grant craft report, rather than adding to it. I’m nervous about not knowing enough, about not being able to answer their questions, about getting lost, about turning up at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m nervous about missing planes, or trains. I’m nervous about being on my own when I get to San Francisco. I’m nervous about a lot of things!
But that’s kind of the point of the Fellowship. To challenge yourself, push yourself out of your comfort zone and learn from best practice elsewhere to help inform the work going on here and I have to keep reminding myself that even though the impostor syndrome is consuming me I do understand this stuff and that people are excited to talk about their work and are willing to spend time sharing the amazing things they are doing.
Impostor syndrome is a horrible thing, it can consume you and fill your belly with anxiety, it can stop you doing things you are more than capable of doing and it can mean that the opportunities available only ever go to those who have the confidence to do it. It’s important to recognise it, talk about it, realise you aren’t the only one and then do the thing anyway. Otherwise those who get the opportunities, have their voices heard, are leaders in their field will always be the same types of people, the ones with unwavering self-belief and confidence. It means we don’t have the breadth and depth of experience that we need to strengthen the conversations and widen our understanding.
I am incredibly lucky for the opportunity so I’m going to put my fear aside and enjoy it, even if it is scary.
I am also incredibly lucky joined by my partner Jess for nearly the whole of the fellowship apart from my week in San Francisco. Jess received a diagnosis of thyroid cancer two days after my interview for my Churchill fellowship and two days before the launch of my Leaders with Lived Experience Programme, that was a particularly heavy week! After a lot of months of anxiety and treatment we took the decision that life is too short so Jess is tagging along, and I am eternally grateful to have someone to help me with my time maths and logistics. I’m really looking forward to getting started and proving to myself that I am more than capable and have something to add that will hopefully help others in the UK and further afield to re-address power imbalance and put communities at heart of decision making.
