I used to arrive early to networking events for entirely strategic reasons. Not to make a good impression. To scope the exits, get a drink in my hand as fast as possible, and find a wall to stand near. If you’ve ever done this, you already know exactly what I mean, and you don’t need me to explain the specific misery of holding a warm glass of wine while pretending to check your phone for something urgent.
For years, my honest belief stepping into those rooms was that everyone else had been let in for a reason, and I’d somehow slipped past security. Wrong industry background, wrong accent, wrong table manners for whatever this was supposed to be. The odd one out, permanently, in every room that mattered.
The Number That Changed How I Saw the Room
Here’s what I wish someone had told me years earlier: a national study of 3000 UK adults found that 62 per cent had experienced imposter syndrome at work in the past twelve months. Not a niche affliction. A majority experience it. Among adults under thirty-five, it climbs to 86 per cent. Even in the group least affected, roughly half still describe feeling it. It’s a UK study because that’s the one I found, but imposter syndrome doesn’t check passports at the door, and I’d be surprised if a survey run anywhere else came back looking very different.
Read that again slowly, because I had to. The room I thought was full of people who belonged there, quietly judging the one person who didn’t, was actually a room mostly full of people convinced they were the one person who didn’t. We were all in the same performance for each other’s benefit, and none of us knew the others were acting too. You can see the full study breakdown here, and I’d be surprised if you don’t recognise yourself somewhere in it.
Throwing Myself In
I didn’t have a graceful arc out of this. What I had was a deadline, a business that needed relationships I didn’t yet have, and no more time to wait until I felt ready, because feeling ready was never going to arrive on its own schedule. So I started saying yes to things before I could talk myself out of them. I introduced myself first, badly, to people who clearly knew each other. I asked questions I was fairly sure were obvious, because the alternative was me standing near the wall for another year pretending the questions weren’t there.
What I found, slowly and then all at once, was that almost nobody minded. A few people looked briefly surprised. Most people looked relieved, because someone else had just done the awkward part of starting a conversation, and they didn’t have to. The wall I used to stand near turned out to be entirely optional. I’d built it myself, with an assumption about everyone else’s confidence that was, statistically, wrong for most of them too.
What I’d Say to the Version of Me Still by the Wall
You are not reading the room correctly. The people who look most at ease are frequently the ones working hardest to look that way, and the gap between how composed a room appears and how composed it actually feels is enormous. Once you know that, the odd one out stops being a category you’re stuck in and starts looking like a story you were telling yourself, alone, in a room full of people telling themselves the same story.
I still don’t love networking events. I’m not sure anyone genuinely does, whatever their profile claims. But I no longer walk in believing I’m the exception in a room of people who’ve got it figured out. I walk in assuming most of us haven’t, and that turns out to be a far easier room to stand in. The connections that came from finally throwing myself in weren’t built on my confidence. They were built on everyone else’s relief that someone went first. I’ve found the same is true anywhere people gather around a shared table, work or otherwise, which I’ve written about here: The Table Is Where the Life Actually Happens.
The Jacqueline Brand — knowledge builds confidence, confidence builds wealth. This is editorial commentary for inspiration, not financial or professional advice. Always do your own research. The Collection
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