I Feel Like a Fraud. Do I Actually Deserve This Leadership Role?

Why imposter syndrome hits agency leaders hardest and what to do about it

You're sitting in a leadership meeting. Around the table are your MD, other senior leaders, maybe some clients. Someone asks for your strategic view on something important.

And for just a moment - before you answer - a voice in your head whispers:

"What if they realise I don't actually know what I'm doing?"

You answer confidently. Nobody notices. The meeting moves on.

But that voice stays with you.

If you recognise that moment, you're not alone. And you're not a fraud.

What you're experiencing has a name: imposter syndrome. And in my 30 years working in and around creative, experiential and events agencies, I've never met a senior leader who hasn't felt it. Not one.

The question isn't whether you feel it. The question is whether you let it make decisions for you.

Why Agency Leaders Feel This More Than Most

Imposter syndrome affects people across every industry and every level. But there's something specific about the way creative agencies promote people that makes it particularly potent.

You didn't get promoted because you demonstrated leadership capability. You got promoted because you were exceptional at delivery.

Think about it. The career path in most creative and events agencies looks like this:

Junior Project Manager → Project Manager → Senior PM → Head of Production

Or:

Account Executive → Account Manager → Account Director → Client Services Director

At every stage, you were promoted because you delivered brilliant work. You kept clients happy. You solved problems faster than anyone else. You made the impossible happen.

And then one day, you were handed a team.

Nobody sat you down and said: "Right, everything that made you brilliant at delivery is now going to work against you in leadership. Here are the new skills you need."

Nobody said that because most agencies don't know it themselves.

So you arrive in your leadership role carrying a deep, unspoken assumption: If I was promoted, I must be ready. If I don't feel ready, something must be wrong with me.

But you were never trained for leadership. You were trained for delivery. The gap you're feeling isn't evidence of fraud. It's evidence of a system that promotes people without preparing them.

What Imposter Syndrome Actually Feels Like in Agencies

It's not always the dramatic "I don't belong here" crisis. More often it's quieter than that. It shows up as:

The meeting you over-prepare for because you're terrified of being caught out. You spend three hours preparing for a one-hour client meeting, not because it requires it, but because you cannot bear the thought of not having an answer.

The email you rewrite seven times because the first six versions didn't sound "senior enough." You're not sure what senior sounds like, exactly. But you know this isn't it.

The idea you don't share in the senior leadership meeting. It's a good idea. You know it's a good idea. But what if everyone thinks it's obvious? Or worse, what if they think it's wrong?

The praise you deflect because it doesn't land. When someone tells you you're doing well, you nod and smile and think: "They don't know what I know."

The comparison that eats you - looking at your peer who seems so effortlessly confident, so naturally strategic, and wondering how they find it so easy when you find it so hard.

The late nights that aren't necessary - you stay late not because the work demands it, but because staying late proves (to yourself as much as anyone) that you're taking this seriously. That you deserve to be here.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The Fraud Narrative: Why It's Wrong

Let me challenge the story you're telling yourself.

You tell yourself you're a fraud because you don't feel certain. But certainty isn't leadership. Some of the most dangerous leaders I've encountered were completely certain. Certainty closes down thinking. Uncertainty keeps you curious, open, and honest.

You tell yourself you're a fraud because you don't have all the answers. But having all the answers isn't leadership either. Leadership is knowing the right questions. It's creating the conditions for your team to find the answers. It's direction, not omniscience.

You tell yourself you're a fraud because sometimes you get it wrong. But getting things wrong is how leaders learn. The leaders who never get things wrong aren't taking enough risks, making enough decisions, or pushing hard enough.

You tell yourself you're a fraud because someone else seems more confident. But confidence and competence are not the same thing. The most confident person in the room is not necessarily the most capable. They're just the most comfortable performing confidence. That's a different skill - and not always a valuable one.

The fraud narrative is built on a false definition of leadership.

If leadership means always knowing, always being certain, always being right - then yes, you're a fraud. But so is every leader who ever lived.

If leadership means direction, development, decision-making under uncertainty, and creating an environment where people can do their best work then you're probably more qualified than you think.

The Three Flavours of Agency Imposter Syndrome

In my coaching work, I've noticed imposter syndrome tends to show up in one of three ways for agency leaders:

The Recently Promoted

"I got promoted six months ago and I'm still waiting to feel like a leader."

This is the most common version. You expected that the promotion would bring a shift in how you felt. That you'd wake up one day and think: "Yes. I'm a leader now."

It doesn't work like that. Leadership isn't a feeling you arrive at it's a practice you develop. The confidence comes from doing it, not from being given the title.

What's actually happening: You're comparing your internal experience (uncertain, learning, sometimes lost) with your external perception of other leaders (confident, decisive, capable). You're not seeing their internal experience. It's as uncertain as yours.

The Experienced Leader Having a Crisis

"I've been doing this for three years and I still feel like I'm winging it."

This version is often more frightening because it comes with the added shame of "I should have sorted this by now." Three years in, you expected to feel settled. Instead, you feel like the fraud is just better hidden.

What's actually happening: Leadership genuinely is complex and you are genuinely still learning. That's not fraud that's reality. The leaders who stop feeling uncertain are usually the ones who've stopped growing.

The High Achiever Who Can't Accept Success

"Every time something goes well, I feel like I got lucky. Every time something goes wrong, I feel like that's the real me."

This is particularly common in people who were exceptional individual contributors. You built your identity on being brilliant at the work. Now that the work is leadership rather than delivery, you don't have the same evidence base for competence. When things go well it must be luck or the team. When things go badly it must be you.

What's actually happening: You're applying an asymmetric filter to your own performance. You're holding evidence of failure to a different standard than evidence of success. That's not honest self-assessment - it's a cognitive distortion.

What Imposter Syndrome Does to Your Leadership

Here's what nobody tells you: imposter syndrome doesn't just affect how you feel. It affects how you lead.

You avoid difficult conversations because being challenged might expose you. If you raise an issue and someone pushes back, what if you can't defend your position? Better not to raise it.

You overwork to compensate for the "fact" that you're not as good as everyone thinks. You can't be as smart as them, so you'll work harder to make up the difference.

You can't delegate because if someone else does the work, they'll see how capable they are. And then where does that leave you?

You people-please because if everyone likes you, maybe they won't notice you're a fraud. You agree when you should push back. You accommodate when you should lead.

You micromanage because your imposter brain tells you that if you let go of control and something goes wrong, everyone will know it was really your fault all along.

Can you see how imposter syndrome and Below the Line leadership feed each other? Feeling like a fraud keeps you doing, solving, controlling, firefighting. And doing, solving, controlling, firefighting keeps you feeling like a fraud - because you're never developing the leadership skills that would build genuine confidence.

Imposter syndrome isn't just a feeling. It's a leadership trap.

Five Things That Actually Help

I'm not going to tell you to "believe in yourself" or "fake it till you make it." Those are not useful. Here's what actually works:

1. Redefine What Competence Looks Like

You're measuring your leadership competence against the wrong benchmark. You're comparing your insides to other people's outsides. You're measuring certainty when you should be measuring direction. You're measuring perfection when you should be measuring progress.

Try this: Write down three specific things you've done in the past month that positively impacted your team or your clients. Not things that went perfectly. Things that made a difference. Look at that list every time the fraud voice gets loud.

2. Name the Voice (And Stop Believing It)

Your imposter syndrome voice isn't the truth. It's a pattern of thinking that developed at some point in your career probably when you were first given responsibility you weren't ready for, or when you received criticism that cut deep.

It's not objective. It's not evidence-based. It's a habit.

Try this: When the voice appears, notice it. Name it if that helps. "There's the fraud voice again." Don't argue with it. Don't try to prove it wrong. Just notice it and carry on anyway. Acting despite the voice is how the voice eventually loses power.

3. Get Comfortable With "I Don't Know"

The leaders who seem most confident aren't the ones who always know. They're the ones who are comfortable saying "I don't know - let me find out" or "I don't know - what do you think?" without their worth feeling threatened by it.

Try this: In your next team meeting, deliberately say "I don't know" about something. Notice that the meeting doesn't end. Nobody looks horrified. Your job remains intact. The sky stays up. This is important evidence against the fraud narrative.

4. Seek Feedback Directly

Imposter syndrome thrives in the absence of honest feedback. When you don't know how others actually perceive you, your brain fills the gap with the worst possible story.

Try this: Ask someone you trust - a peer, a direct report, your MD - for specific feedback on how you're perceived as a leader. Not "am I doing okay?" (too vague) but "what's one thing you think I do well as a leader, and one thing you think I could do differently?" The answers are usually far more positive than your imposter brain predicts.

5. Invest in Your Leadership Development

Here's the thing about imposter syndrome in leadership: sometimes it's pointing at something real. Not that you're a fraud but that there ARE skills you need to develop. That the transition from delivery to leadership genuinely requires new capabilities. That the gap you're feeling is real, even if your catastrophic interpretation of it isn't.

The most effective antidote to imposter syndrome isn't confidence exercises. It's genuine development. Learning the frameworks. Building the skills. Having support through the transition. When you're genuinely developing, the imposter voice gets quieter because you're building real evidence of real capability.

This is exactly what coaching addresses, not the feeling of inadequacy, but the actual transition from delivery to leadership that creates it.

A Final Thought

Maya Angelou - one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century - said: "I have written eleven books, but each time I think 'Uh oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody, and they're going to find me out.'"

If Maya Angelou felt like a fraud, you're in decent company.

The question was never whether you deserve this role. The question is whether you're willing to do the work of growing into it.

Feeling like a fraud means you care. Caring is the foundation of good leadership.

The leaders who don't feel it at all are usually the ones who should be worried.

What Happens Next

If you're reading this and recognising yourself in these words, here's what I'd suggest:

If the imposter feeling is recent: Give it time and be deliberate about building real capability. The feeling often settles as you accumulate evidence of your own competence.

If the imposter feeling is persistent and affecting your leadership: It's probably worth exploring with a coach. Not because something is wrong with you but because the transition from delivery to leadership is genuinely hard, and you shouldn't have to navigate it alone.

Book a free discovery call to talk through what you're experiencing. No obligation, no pitch - just an honest conversation about whether coaching might help.

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Or take the free "Leadership Line Index" assessment to understand more about how imposter syndrome might be affecting your leadership style.

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Suzy Malhotra Founder, The Leadership Line Leadership Coach for Creative, Experiential & Events Agencies