Imposter syndrome in a new senior role: managing former peers and leading experts

You have the new role. Maybe you are now managing people who were your peers last month. Maybe the team you lead knows more about the subject than you do. And a voice keeps asking when they will realise you do not belong there.

I have done it twice

In 2023 I became Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse. Suddenly I was managing people who had been my peers.

Then in January 2024, at UBS, I was asked to cover the Head of Reward role for Group Functions for six months: 50,000 employees. The team was a mix of UBS and Credit Suisse people who had not worked together before either. New team, new culture, new processes.

I was not a reward specialist. The team I was now leading knew a lot more about reward than I did at the time.

What got me through was not pretending. I never acted like the person with all the answers. I said out loud that I was not the expert. I asked questions and asked what people thought. Then I trusted their intuition, because on reward it was better informed than mine.

Neither time did I feel ready. The imposter syndrome was massive, but nothing collapsed.

What to do in the first months

1. Say what you are there for, and what you are not. You are not there to be the best specialist in the room. You are there to make the team work.
2. Ask before you decide. One question per meeting that you genuinely do not know the answer to.
3. With former peers, have the conversation early and one to one: what changes, what does not, and what they need from you now.
4. Write down, monthly, what the team delivered and what you changed. When the doubt is loud, read it back.

Feeling fully ready never fully arrives. You start, and the evidence builds.

Your next step

The Optionality Vault is a private monthly record of what you did and what changed because of it, the evidence that answers the doubt and builds your case for the next step. CHF 99 a year, with a full refund in the first 30 days.