Rising to the Challenge: Role Overload & Impostor Syndrome

Scholars have presented equivocal predictions and findings regarding the relationship between role overload and effort in the workplace. In this talk, MIT Sloan professor Basima Tewfik will explore how workplace impostor thoughts—popularly known as ‘impostor syndrome’—affect the role overload-effort relationship and discuss implications for job performance.

In three studies (a field study, a pre-registered experiment, and a pre-registered survey study), Basima Tewfik finds that when employees have more frequent workplace impostor thoughts, they exert more effort in response to role overload, benefiting performance. Yet, when employees have less frequent workplace impostor thoughts, they exert less effort in reaction to role overload, hurting performance. She does not find that the greater effort for those with more frequent workplace impostor thoughts comes with subsequent well-being costs (e.g., strain, burnout). This talk considers theoretical and practical implications given extant theory, research, and popular discourse on impostor syndrome.

This virtual seminar is part of the Women and Public Policy Program's weekly fall seminar series: Women’s Leadership in Context: Gender, Power, and Identity Dynamics.

Basima Tewfik is the Class of 1943 Career Development Professor and an Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her main stream of research examines the psychology of the social self at work. In particular, she seeks to define a new conversation around what she terms ‘workplace impostor thoughts’ (popularly known as impostor syndrome). Workplace impostor thoughts capture the belief that others overestimate one’s competence at work.

As a researcher, she has worked with a number of organizations including, but not limited to, a leadership development firm, multiple finance organizations, a major hospital, the Reserve Officer Training Corps, and an education-focused non-profit. Her work has received recognition from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the International Association for Conflict Management, INFORMS / College of Organization Science, and the Academy of Management. She was named by Poets & Quants as a “40 Under 40” Best Business School Professor in 2021 and by Thinkers50 as one of 30 “Thinkers to Watch” in 2022.

Prior to academia, she worked as a management consultant at Booz & Company, engaging with clients across a wide range of industries including financial services, healthcare, education, and aerospace and defense. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, in Psychology with a secondary degree in Economics from Harvard University.