Development and Validation of a Leader Impostorism Measure

Organizational leaders are highly trained and esteemed individuals. Yet, many leaders see themselves as impostors. This experience is not well understood conceptually or empirically. We conceptualized two dimensions of leader impostorism as (a) the individual’s perception that the leader role they occupy is beyond their capabilities (cognitive), and (b) the individual’s fear that occupying this role puts them at risk of being exposed as fraudulent (affective). We developed a new eight-item measure of leader impostorism consisting of these two dimensions. We generated an initial item pool (N=205) by means of item coding and expert ratings. We initially validated the measure in two studies among leaders in the U.S. (N1=294; N2=578) and one study with leaders in Israel (N=273) supporting its cross-cultural stability. We tested and established the predictive validity of the leader impostorism measure above and beyond two general (workplace) impostorism scales (i.e., Clance Impostor Phenomenon and Workplace Impostor Thoughts) for key constructs in the leadership domain (i.e., leader self-efficacy, leader identity, leader identity threat, and motivation to lead). We also examined differential relationships for the cognitive and affective dimensions of leader impostorism. We discuss limitations and implications for future research as well as the practical applications.