In this high-impact episode, Eric Nitzberg, Founder and Principal of Sierra Leadership, shares why even successful CEOs battle imposter syndrome and identity struggles in stage 5. If you feel exposed, question your role, or wonder “who am I now?” as your company grows beyond your hands-on control, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why imposter syndrome actually increases at senior levels and is a normal response to bigger challenges

- How to reframe your role from “doer” to strategic leader who focuses on vision and talent

- What it really means to be both fully authentic and fully strategic in your communication.

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 5 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Eric Nitzberg is the founder of Sierra Leadership, an executive coaching firm that partners with mission-driven CEOs and senior executives. His coaching combines strategic insight with a grounded, human approach, helping successful leaders evolve and lead with a sustainable perspective. Since 2015, he has coached over 150 leaders at Google/Alphabet, including C-level executives and VPs. He previously served as a communication coach at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching executive presence and persuasive storytelling. He specializes in leadership team effectiveness and high-stakes executive communication across fast-growth sectors.

Want to learn more about Eric Nitzberg's work at Sierra Leadership? Check out his website at https://sierraleadership.com/

Connect with Eric through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericnitzberg/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the start, scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a

founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and there are many

of you founders listening today who've hit a point where the

skills that made you great are now actively working against

you. If you're in that Chief Executive stage, you may have an

idea of just what I'm talking about, because you've got the

team, you've got the titles, but somehow you feel more exposed

and less in control than ever, and it leaves you asking the

question, Who am I? It probably, maybe even most definitely,

we'll see here in just a moment. May leave you feeling like

you're the only one in the world who struggles with imposter

syndrome, if that's you, which is all of us, you are in for a

treat today, because to help us navigate this whole space of

being a CEO, an authentic CEO, at that is Eric Nitzberg, who's

an executive coach and trusted advisor to CEOs And C suite

leaders across fast growth sectors like technology,

software and life sciences. He has two decades of experience

guiding hundreds of high performing leaders through

complex business challenges, personal growth and lasting

transformation in one long standing engagement at a fortune

100 global tech company. He's worked with more than 150

leaders, including C level executives, VPS, GMs and heads

of emerging business units. He previously served as a

Communication Coach at Stanford Graduate School of Business,

teaching executive presence and persuasive storytelling, and

he's here with us today. Eric, welcome to the show. I'm so

excited to have you here. One of the challenges that I see a lot

is when folks from the outside look at senior executives and

and there's kind of this impression that they've got it

made like it's pretty good, but I have found that the truth

behind the scenes can be a little bit different in two

areas. The first one is the the in the room, you know there

tends to it's not as easy to be an executive as one might think.

And, and the other one is in the person inside an executive, it

gets hard for a lot of reasons we're not expecting at this

time. And, and so I'm wondering if you could just break those

down for us and and explain what's going on in the room, and

even more so, what's going on in the person?

Yeah, thanks, Scott, and it's a pleasure to be

on the show. Let me start with what's going on in the people,

because I think that's what's probably surprising to many of

your listeners, that the sense of imposter syndrome, self

doubt. I'm not sure if I can do this, I'm not sure if I can

succeed in this role. Is not something that is limited to

folks who are earlier in their journey. It actually becomes

even more common, I would say, as people become more senior. So

I've worked with leaders, even who are leading really large

teams, 1000s of people, where that's the thing they want to

work on. You know, I seem to have lost my confidence, or, you

know, I'm not sure who I am in this role. And so, yeah, it is

pretty ubiquitous and very common. And I think it's

important for folks at every stage of the journey to

normalize that and recognize that they really aren't alone as

far as what's happening in the room, I think that's a pretty

that's a pretty broader question. And if you mean like,

what's happening with the executive teams or the

leadership teams, that's pretty case by case, I'll say the

intensity level is really high the bigger the organization. I

think there's a lot of complexity, especially in

today's world that these teams are trying to navigate.

I think one of the challenges for folks who

have not been executives is it's easy to think of that as an easy

job. It's easy to think of it as, you know, not doing the real

work. And I think part of the if we can tie these together, part

of the imposter syndrome that I see is folks that are executives

feeling like they aren't doing real work anymore because it

looks so different. So what is it about the nature of the work

that makes imposter syndrome really start to poke its head in

such a significant way at this level?

Well, I think there's a couple of issues there

on the question of of you know, they feel like they're not doing

real work anymore. I think that is unique to a particular

transition from a stage where you are hands on doing more work

yourself, to a stage which I think you're calling the chief

executive stage in your model, where there's really other

people who are doing a lot of the work, and even could be

doing a lot of the leadership, if your organization is big

enough. And then the question arises, especially when you're

new to that, well, what am I supposed to do? Like, what's

left for me to do? And in fact, all the strategic thinking, the

long term planning, the managing of the team, the. Bringing on

new talent, like there's a whole different set of tasks, and that

is now your real job. I remember once working with a leader who

was new to management, and he said, Gosh, I feel like I'm not

doing real work anymore. And so we took a whiteboard and drew a

line across it, and on the bottom we wrote down all the

things he used to do. And then on the top, we wrote down all

the managerial tasks, you know, hiring, meetings, managing,

leading, and I said to him, Look everything on the top of that

line, that's real work like that is your job now, and it just

takes a while to grow into that. As far as the question about

what, what really provokes more imposter syndrome at these more

senior levels, I think imposter syndrome is a normal reaction to

a higher level of higher degree of challenge. So if, if any of

your listeners are experiencing self doubt right now, I would, I

would ask them, When is the last time that you felt confident?

And if you think about it, you probably are not that different

of a person now than you were then. What's changed is your

context. You're now trying to do something that's much harder for

something that you've never done before. And it's that kind of

face to face experience with challenge that brings up these

imposter feelings. Yeah, and by the way, I would just add

imposter syndrome and self doubt has been shown. There is some

MIT studies last year to actually increase performance.

So it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just uncomfortable.

Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't know that

I want to explore this, because we've got a lot of folks who are

founder, CEOs, who started this thing from their basement,

either literal or proverbial, and have grown it up. And one of

the things that I find, particularly for founders, that

contributes to this is in this CEO stage, because there's so

much of the business or nonprofit that's happening away

from your hands, right? Not only are you not doing it, but like

you said, someone else is leading the person who's doing

it, and that disconnect can start to feel like I'm not as

critical to my organization as I thought I was right. I'm not as

essential as I thought I was. And there's almost this

splitting that happens where I am not my organization anymore.

Have you seen that? Do you find that in the the founders that

you work with? And if so, how do you help them walk, walk through

it?

Yeah, I think that is a common experience. And

I can, I can think of a conversation actually, you

mentioned nonprofits with a nonprofit leader that I had not

long ago that felt just like that, because the organization

has grown to that stage where this person is really not needed

in the day to day, or even in a lot of the leadership. And this

is exactly, this is exactly some of the feeling like, maybe I'm

not that important anymore. But what I would say to those

people, and the way that I would help them work through it, is,

you don't realize how critical your role has become. It's just

that you're operating in a different sphere. So somebody

has to be thinking about the long term vision for the

organization. Where are we actually going? Where do we want

to be in three to five years, or even 10 years? What is, what is

the mission? What is the culture that we need? Who are the people

that we need on the leadership team that are really like the

best possible people, the highest quality talent to lead

each of these functions, these are all part of the remit of the

CEO, and nobody else can do that. And so I think a good way

to think about your role is, even if you're relatively new to

it, what are the things now that only I can do and no one else

can do those things? I know that's kind of a common framing,

but I think it's really helpful. If you think about it, the

people that are under you, if you're leading your

organization, probably none of them has the perspective that

you have and and you know, they could grow into your role, but

they couldn't do your role right now.

That's so good. I want to one of the

things that I noticed as I was getting ready for this episode,

something that I think is true of the folks that you work with

and of our audience in general, is that being an authentic

leader, like showing up as the whole version of themselves as

something that's really important for folks that are

listening today. One of the things, and I don't remember

where I read it, and forgive me if I'm butchering it, but one of

the things that caught my eye as I was getting ready for the

episode is this idea of being both fully authentic and being

fully strategic. And so I'm wondering, what does that look

like for someone who's not trying to become a politician

but just wants to lead well.

Yeah, this is one of my more favorite topics,

because it is kind of a nuanced one. I think being fully

authentic means that you're not putting on a mask, you're not

putting on a show your personality. Reality as it shows

up with people that you're close to and that you know, know you

well, is similar to the personality that shows up at

work, but when I say also fully strategic, I think that really

sophisticated, high level communicators are aware that in

any situation, they need to be mindful of who their audience is

that they're communicating with, and what's the purpose of this

individual communication that they're having, and to really

think through okay, given that what, what is the messaging, or

what is the approach that's going to help me achieve my

goals here? So you can do that while retaining who you are. You

can do that while retaining your personality, I think, at a at a

lower, less sophisticated level, somebody could come off as

plastic or fake because they're just trying to get what they

want, you know, and they're faking something. Or, you know,

people see will see through that, and they won't respond

well to that. But if your intentions are positive for you

and for whoever you're talking to, whether it's one person or

your whole organization, then I think you have the freedom to do

both, to both be your authentic self and to think strategically

about the communication at hand.

Yeah, I love breaking it down that way,

especially around the idea of being strategic in

communication. One of the phrases I use a lot with, with

the folks I'm working with, is to learn to speak the language

of your audience. And at the CEO stage, this is so important,

like, I don't know a lick of Spanish. And so if I were, you

know, overseas in South America, some beautiful place, trying to

teach anybody anything, it wouldn't go real well unless

they knew English. But it could go a lot better if I could have

that interpreted, or, even better yet, if I could speak it.

So recognizing that that doesn't change who I am, it changes the

effectiveness of my communication. So I love how you

differentiated that and and at this stage, maybe you can speak

to this it becomes so important, because you are speaking so many

languages, right? You have to be able to connect with frontline

employees still as their leader. You have to be able to connect

with executives. You have to be able to connect with outside

stakeholders. And so if you don't, if you can't separate it,

it feels like you are having like split personality

disorders. So how do you help folks to recognize these

different languages and speak to those without losing themselves.

Yeah, I love all of that. I love the foreign

language analogy. I think that is so spot on to what we're

talking about. The way that I think of communication is it's

it's like you have a communication toolbox, and we're

all born with a certain set of tools, our natural personality,

our natural communication style. To use your analogy, like I grow

speaking English, so that would be in my communication toolbox.

And I think what happens as you become more senior and more

sophisticated and you're leading more people, it's not that you

ever need to remove any of your tools from your toolbox. So

let's say your communication style is you're really direct,

you're blunt, you're a straight shooter, you're super candid.

Maybe that's one of the big tools you've got a hammer in

your toolbox. But as you grow you may need to add some other

tools. You may need to learn to be more indirect in some

situations. You may need to learn to be a better listener in

some situations, or more nuanced in what you're saying, or adapt

what you're saying for the particular person you're talking

to. These are all additional tools. So it's not to say that

what what you have and what's natural to you is bad. They're

all good in different situations. But you need to add

more. I think we all need to keep adding more of these

communication tools to our toolbox.

I love it. I hear one of the things I hear

like here, as you're saying that, is there's a difference

between I am direct and I can be direct totally. Yeah. I love

that. That's really powerful. There's a question Eric that ask

all my guests, and I'm very interested to see what you'd

have to say about it. But the question is this, what would you

say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn't a secret at all.

What's that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening

today knew?

Everybody has imposter syndrome, that that

would be it and and I would add, just to unpack that, imposter

syndrome is a voice, not a truth. So when you're feeling

imposter syndrome, it's uncomfortable, but don't believe

what it's telling you, because, in fact, it may just be

motivating you to perform even better.

Wow, that's such a cool take on it, one that

I hadn't considered before. I love that, Eric, there's some

folks listening that would love help with this. They're

struggling with imposter syndrome themself, or maybe even

an executive on their team is dealing with it. Where can they

reach out to you? Where can they find more out about the work

that you do?

They can look me up on their favorite AI, or

Google my name, or they can check my website at

sierraleadership.com

Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Eric, thank.

You for being on the show. It was a privilege, and having you

here with us today, for those of you watching and listening, you

know that your time and attention mean the world to us,

I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I

did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.