too many badges for my own good?

Anyone who's seen the opening page of my impact report this year, will have been overwhelmed by the number of logos of bodies that I'm a signatory to/accredited by (and this doesn't include the even longer list of professional memberships I have!).

There's a story behind each one as to why I specifically made the effort to be able to show it off next to my name (in time, cost, and energy) - but none of which are to do with it helping me to win work (my feedback from clients is that they've never been interested in this type of thing when it comes to deciding who to commission to support them).

And I'm wondering if there's therefore a parallel here with the various accreditations, honours, and recognitions that I have in the form of the tins of 'alphabet soup' that I can arrange either side of my name - they've similarly never impacted on the work I've won, and if anything, most of the groups, communities, and people I work with find them a turn-off...

But I'm proud of these recognitions from different bodies as to how I conduct my business, and the impacts it creates (otherwise they wouldn't have accepted my applications to them), so don't want to completely hide them away... which leaves me wondering what the right balance is in shouting about them: both for the value of what they represented, and that they've endorsed me as being 'alright' by their standards.

If you're curious about any of these 'badges', etc, see below for the links to each: 

Organisation of Responsible Business

Charter for Inclusive Entrepreneurship

Prompt Payment Code

Good Business Charter

Fair Tax pledge

Armed Forces Covenant

Co-operativesUK

Social Value UK

Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE)

Voluntary Sector Studies Network (VSSN)

UK Society for Co-operative Studies

Locality

Better Business Network (BBN)

Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)

Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, manufactures, and commerce (RSA)

Shakespeare, Einstein, and now me - how imposter syndrome has been understood and managed through the centuries

After I accidentally wrote and self-published my book about imposter syndrome, I found that people started to want to invite me to guest on their podcasts to talk about it - and rather than see this as an opportunity for some additional promo (although that never hurts, right?), I saw it as an opportunity to reflect on my research and ideas afresh, from new critical perspectives.

Recently, this saw me conversing with fellow RSA Fellow Dr Nia Thomas, on her Knowing Self, Knowing Others series - you can 'listen again' to the whole episode here: 

https://podcast.knowingselfknowingothers.co.uk/2031015/15446370-73-unraveling-impostor-syndrome-self-doubt-and-personal-growth-with-adrian-ashton

And she's also taken out some snippets about how to rob banks, the risks of lemon juice, etc that came up during our conversation on her TikTok channel here:

https://www.tiktok.com/@knowingselfknowingothers 

But for those who would rather have the main headlines from it - my listening back highlighted how 'imposter syndrome':

• can act as a form of protection - both for ourselves, and others;
• is sometimes weaponised against us by others for their own agendas and aims;
• has emerged as a social construct, and as such can usually be more limiting than helpful;
• is linked to a wider conspiracy theories;
• and is a truth illusion: not only with reference to its own origin story, but also in how this 'illusion' is subsequently being perpetuated...

I also found myself referencing Shakespeare (for his guidance on how we balance our understanding of our own self, with not becoming paralysed with what we start to recognise and realise), and Einstein (for how he managed his own feelings of imposterism) - which shows that these feelings aren't new and were otherwise waiting to be discovered by Clance and Innes in their 1970s paper, but that we've perhaps simply started to get better at having the vocabulary to talk about more, and to recognise how they interconnect with our wider selves and others.

If you're interested to see how Nia's own reflections on our conversation pulled out different themes and prompts, you can check out her blog post on it here: 

https://knowingselfknowingothers.substack.com/p/top-takeaways-tuesday-unraveling 

I also talked about why it is I sometimes feel uncomfortable walking into a room full of women, but you'll have to listen to the podcast for the answer to that tease...