Samantha Ragland Transcript: May 5, 2025

Rachel Jones/NPF (00:00:00):

Hello and welcome to the Evelyn Y. Davis Studio of the National Press Foundation in Washington, DC For this first session of the May, 2025, widening the pipeline virtual training, we’ll focus on strengthening our foundations as journalists. Over the past few years of widening, several fellows have named imposter syndrome as one of their key challenges. I can remember my own first big battle with imposter syndrome when I spelled the local fire chief’s name wrong in a story, and it’s also when I had my first big panic attack. In that moment, I was convinced I had no business being a journalist, and it took a lot of talks from friends and mentors to make me stay in the game. Our first speaker today will help us learn how to analyze those moments when anxiety and self-doubt can undermine our progress. Samantha Ragland is vice President of journalism programs at the American Press Institute. In that role, Ragland leads API’s efforts to promote cultural transformation and business sustainability in media by helping news organizations serve diverse readers and communities more effectively. Before API, Ragland was a faculty member at the Pointer Institute for Media Studies where she also served as director of the Leadership Academy for Women in Media. You can read her full bio on our website@nationalpress.org. Samantha, thank you so much for joining us today.

Sam Ragland/American Press Institute (00:01:40):

Awesome, thank you. Thank you for that lovely introduction. I usually speed right through that part, so thanks. Thank you, Rachel. I appreciate it. We have about 60 minutes from what I understand, which is not a lot of time. This is about a two hour workshop. I’m going to give you one really, really critical strategy for combating and defeating the voice inside of your head, and we are going to do this both through the slides that I show you and interactive slides that will be yours to take with you. I find that to be a really effective way of navigating not having time for breakouts and also that you can revisit over and over again understanding that you were not alone when you experience a lack of self-confidence. In fact, it happens all the time. I am almost, I don’t know, I’m bad at mad to have a degree in poetry, but I guess I started my journalism career in 2008 and after all of these years I still experience a little taste of imposter syndrome and my inner critic every now and again, so I use these strategies myself.

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I’m excited to share them with you and so let’s get started. The first thing and the most important thing is every time API does a session like this, we like to kind of set a baseline of expectation. It’s called our learner agreement. A couple of things that I would like for you to take with you. Number one, Chatham House rule means take the learnings, leave the attribution. So if you are noticing things and are aware that somebody is sharing this or they’re reflecting on the organization that they’re in, that is for us and for us alone, but if there is a learning that is worth taking with you, take that with you, okay? Remember to put on curiosity the way that you would a coat. The same is true with empathy. None of us is above or removed from our confidence taking hits and blows every now and again, participate as best as you can.

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It’s why I’ve created an interactive Google deck for you. It’s fully anonymous. We will be Noah’s arc in that Google deck today. It’ll be great and hopefully it gives you a level of psychological safety to be able to participate. Also, there are no empty cups in the work that we do. You are an entire person bringing your entire lived experience to this conversation. I encourage you to pour out as others are pouring out, so all of you are maintaining your fill, if you will, and then of course, small pebbles create ripples. Still, what does that mean? It means it doesn’t matter if you are learning or the thing that you share right in the slides feels so tiny, so tiny to you, it doesn’t matter. A small ripple can still create a small pebble can still create ripples for somebody else, and so please do as best as you can, be confident in the things that you share and add those things to the slide.

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As Rachel mentioned, I’m Sam Raglin. Most important part of this slide is my Calendly link. It’s the third link down. I give this to everyone that I trained to. I have had an open calendar since about 2016. The same will be true until 2036, I imagine. I find it really, really critically important that people have access to those people who can help them. These are always Chatham house conversations, and if you need me, I’m here. If you know somebody that needs somebody but that somebody isn’t you, I’m also here. Okay, so most important link on that slide. Okay, let’s get started at a 55 minutes to go. Let’s start with a white guy. It feels super appropriate, right? Because people are always like, oh, imposter syndrome put on Chad’s pants or whatever it is that they say about white guys in America. But here’s the truth of the matter.

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They get imposter syndrome too, and here’s a great example of that. This is Albert Einstein, super white guy, super brilliant, and here’s what he had to say about himself years and years and years ago. I love the language by the way. It’s like old English style. The exaggerated esteem in which my life work is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think myself an involuntary swindler. He’s like, I am pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes and it makes me feel like a dirt bag. This is Albert Einstein here who felt like an imposter, and what this validates to me is that if he can fill it, I can fill it and it is just as valid for me as it was for him. Nobel laureate, Maya Angelou also said something very similar recently. I have written 11 books, she said, but every time I think uhoh, they’re going to find me out.

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I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out. Nobody is removed from this no matter how much they say so, and what’s really interesting about rooms like this, what’s really interesting about being a professional in the margins representing women and people of color and anyone not main in the main kind of status quo is that we have these conversations all the time and we are very set up to navigate through these conversations. What I have found really interesting in stepping into this role at API is number one, how many investigative editors and reporters I coach randomly through that calendar link that I showed you, and then how many of them are white men and don’t know what to do when their confidence has taken a shot, when they are clearly experiencing work-related burnout and direct or indirect trauma? Because these aren’t conversations that they have.

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They should be having them and normalizing these conversations so that they are as poised as we can be to navigate our lack of confidence when it hits and it will hit at various times in our career. With that in mind, here’s our goal. We will acknowledge that imposter syndrome today, as it has always been, is a systemic hurdle, not a personal one. It feels personal. Our leaders can sometimes make it feel like it’s all us. That’s just in our head, but the truth of the matter is there are systems at play that cause us to feel less than worthy to be where we are. And number two, we will learn then how to deploy a positive psychology or how to deploy positive psychology and positive side tactics to defeat the voice in our head. And here’s the thing, you never defeat it once. You will need to defeat it over and over and over again.

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Here’s where we’re headed as quickly as we can get to defining imposter syndrome. Number one, very important. Number two, how do we defeat it? Our inner critic, how do we defeat it? There are two ways I’m hoping to get to with you today. Number one is how to defeat it with your thoughts. This will be some personal reflection that we share in the slides. And number two, how to defeat it with the team that you create around you. This is both the team that is put around you because we live and work in an assigned place in a hierarchy, but also you can create the best team for you to navigate confidence and to navigate stress. And so how are you building the right team? I’m going to give you the players that go on that team. So that imposter syndrome is always something that you can kind of bob and weave around instead of getting kind of knocked out, you know what I mean?

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And then if we have questions, you can just ask me whatever you want. I don’t mind. Those of you who know me, some of you do know that I’m pretty much an open book, so I’ll share anything that you need. Okay, so this idea that you feel inadequate despite proof of the contrary, that is imposter syndrome At its core, it is the thought that you are where you are because you got lucky, not because you worked hard, not because you’re talented, not because you made sacrifices. That is imposter syndrome and imposter fit syndrome can feel a certain kind of way, and so what I would love for you to do to start is to click on this link that I’m putting in the slides. It’s going to take you to slide number eight in your interactive deck. Again, this is for you to keep, and slide number eight is going to look a little bit like this.

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Each of those boxes has a text box in it. Here’s your question, what does imposter syndrome feel like for me? You’re anonymous. I see you in there, all 13 of you all. I can see an anonymous, I don’t even know how to say this. Happy Barra. What is that? There’s a lot of these animals that don’t even know Rhino. I can say that. Anonymous Otter. If slide eight is full, bump down to slide nine, 10 or 11 and add your thought. Add your thought quickly. This is how we’re going to hear your voice and bring it into the room. What does imposter syndrome feel like for you? Not what does it look like? We’re getting there. What does it feel like for you? Insecurity. I see you anonymous crow. That’s me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And visibility. It’s all right. If you move the text box, don’t worry. Just bump down to another slide. There’s plenty of boxes here. Panic. Yeah, keep these coming. Don’t be shy. We don’t know. You all know each other. You’ll talk about this later.

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To me, imposter syndrome feels like the fear of letting people down. Thank you. Anonymous rhino. There was a lot of pressure on our backs. Some of it we put there, some of it, quite frankly, we were born with, right? Yeah. Yes, I see you Lionel. I’m going to repost re paste the link. Here you go, sir. Imposter syndrome. It’s like, where do I go? Yeah, I don’t know who wrote this, directionless. It’s really, really interesting. Dumbo Octopus. It’s a new one for me, and I do this all the time. Yeah, this is really, really good. It’s important to know what imposter syndrome feels like to you, but it’s also important to know what it can feel like to other people. Why? One of the most important things that I learned in my career in the newsroom was not just how to manage myself through those inner doubts, but how to manage my manager through those doubts.

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Managing up is the thing that is never listed in your job description, and yet it is a requirement of the job. It is required of you to know not just what you need and the support that you need to thrive, the language that you need spoken to you to pull you out of the catastrophizing that happens when you believe you don’t belong. It is equally important for you to be able to see what’s happening in other people and pull them out of their head, and so this is how imposter syndrome can manifest in the newsroom. Overwhelming. You feel insufficient. There is a hyper awareness of your mistakes. I don’t know who added that, but wow, is it true and has it been true for me? And literally two weeks ago, it was true for me. What am I doing? I made a mistake. All of a sudden, all of the mistakes feel bigger and bigger and bigger, so it’s really, really good.

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This isn’t meant to be triggering, triggering. It’s meant to open up an awareness for you because everybody in this room has felt what we’re talking about. So now whether you pop back over to the zoom screen with me or you stick to your slides, I’m going to keep bumping down. We’re going to keep going. We want to be mindful of time and get you the information that you need. On the next slide, slide nine. You see 70%, 70% of the general population experiences, the lack of confidence that is marked or that marks our inner critic or this idea of imposter syndrome. Studies have actually found that imposter syndrome also has significant real life impacts, not just work impacts, which is important to know. It includes things like harmful associations with job. Those rippling out into other roles that you occupy because none of us are just exclusively journalists, but we’re daughters and sons and colleagues, and we’re all of these other things, right?

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People who experience imposter syndrome have a greater chance of experiencing burnout or dissatisfaction with the work. Imposter syndrome doesn’t cause burnout. That’s different, and I’m having that conversation tomorrow in a free webinar. It’s a shameless plug if you would like to join me, but anyway, because it’s mental health awareness month, so FYI, right? But here’s the thing, 70%, that’s a lot of people, and so if you’ve ever felt like it’s just you, I encourage you to stop thinking that because it is not just you that experiences this. However, defining it as imposter syndrome creates a conundrum of sorts because this idea of imposter syndrome means that it centers me as the problem. The term centers, my anxiety, my depression, my trauma, and suggests that what we’re talking about has nothing to with the newsroom, has nothing to do with my direct manager, has nothing to do with my colleagues, but instead it has everything to do with me, and studies have found that that’s just not true. It’s why talking about this in rooms like this is critical because many people of color have felt this in the workplace because they have been told either directly or indirectly through people’s actions that they or their work is not good enough. But you are not an imposter. You are not an imposter. There are systems set up against you, so when you’re feeling inadequate despite your success, you might feel like an imposter.

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It may feel like a personal flaw that you can never navigate, and for those of you who wear perfectionism as a badge of honor, I’m begging you to back away from that back away. It affects high achievers constantly, high achievers constantly, but it’s fueled by systemic bias and that systemic bias can be overcome by understanding when the imposter syndrome is striking you and taking that thought captive by seeking support from people who really want you to succeed, and by building confidence through routine actions and interactions. One of the things that I coach people on all the time is when was the last time you heard yourself say that? When was the last time that you heard yourself in a position of authority and power? Share the opinion that you have. The more times that you do that, the more times that you speak up and share your thoughts in the editorial meeting, the more confident you will come.

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You’ll become to do that, and their told me is kind of low stakes, right? So then when the fire is raging in your belly and the breaking news is happening and you are worried about the way that this person of color is going to be portrayed because you have heard your voice in confidence in a low stakes situation, you have grown your confidence to be able to use it in a high stakes situation. Every interaction in the newsroom across the course of your career will either catalyze you through your sense of imposter or it will hold you down. It will put you in a bondage that is incredibly hard to break. It’s why it is important to be an active participant in the life that you live every single time, every single time, okay? Now, as I mentioned, imposter syndrome disproportionately affects high achieving people.

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This is specifically high achieving people who are women and people of color who have not had their work, specifically their work and their experience, recognized, validated, honored as often as their white male counterparts. This is why when I say it’s a systemic issue, this is what I’m talking about. Systemic racism and bias toward white men as leaders puts a sharp focus on you as an imposter if you are not one of them. We see their leadership style, their communication style as where we need to get to, and if we’re different, then different is always deemed as bad. Different is seen as being a deficit, taking away from versus adding value to the newsroom because I compliment because I see things differently than this status quo of leadership from the white male gaze. Here’s what this looks like specifically for women. This is researched by an organizational behavior psychologist, Dr. Diana Bella Moura, and what she found is that this is what it looks like when women lead, and what I have found is in sharing this word cloud with folks, that this is true by and large for anyone who is leading from the margins of their organization. So take a look at this.

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Advocacy is a high mark and a clear trait of women in leadership. Not that everybody is going to have these, but most collaborative, empowering, sharing information, inquisitive. I’d love for you to chat waterfall me really quickly. When you think about yourself as a leader and you being your most authentic and true self, which of these characteristics do you see yourself embodying and occupying? Take a moment and as soon as you get it, pop it in the chat. I want to see these come through the chat. Which trait is true for you? When you are embodying this trait, you are your most confident, most authentic self.

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Don’t be shy. There we go. Empowered, collaborative. I see Monique an advocate. Yeah, advocate makes me feel like I got wings, like there’s no kryptonite. Motivational. Thank you, Elisha. An advocate can. Advocacy really interesting, creative, creative, caring, and creative. A convener, thank you, Rachel. Bringing the people together encourages you. It gives you a level of power, right? Because you can bring people together and they don’t want to be there, but when you bring people together because you want to empower them because you want to create and co-create with them, see, now what you’re talking about is community, and you’re saying, I can lead through community. I don’t have to lead over community, and knowing who you are as an authentic leader will allow you to hold onto that. Even when your voice shakes, even when you feel unsure, you have to know who you are. You have to know who you are, and you have to be okay being who you are, even when it hurts, even when it’s scary. I promise you it is the one thing in my career I have not regretted. Thank you, Bria. I see this mission-focused collaborative. Take a look through this. This is good guys.

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You guys are very aligned in where you feel your most confident self in these leadership traits. How do you continue to speak life and power into one another because of this? How do you provide a checks and balances because you’re not all in the same newsroom when some of these traits come under fire or feel like they don’t belong in certain spaces, you come back to one another. That’s what the cohort is for. The cohort lives beyond the foundation. Let’s keep going. We got to get into our pai SI tactics, so in a Harvard Business Review article, which is in your slides, that was called Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. I love this article. Please do read it. It nails the point that I’m trying to make far better than I ever could, and so I’ll read this to you and then we’ll move on. The answer to overcoming imposter syndrome, honestly, whether you’re a male or a female, is to create an environment that fosters different leadership styles and where diversity of racial, ethnic, and gender identities are viewed as just as professional as the current model. What this suggests then is that without equity and inclusion of different people across our news organizations, any one of us at any given time could feel that we don’t belong there.

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It is hard to change newsroom culture and it will not happen in an hour webinar on a Monday afternoon, which is why we are not here to navigate that right now. We are here to be okay with being who we are and we are here to focus on ourselves. So what does that look like? Perhaps you have heard your inner critic chirping in your ear and maybe this resonates for you. Your inner critic can make you wait for others to give their opinion in a meeting before you speak up about something you’re working on. I don’t know how many of you all is true, number two, but number two is true for me. Your inner critic can make you not negotiate your salary because you’re just grateful to have a job or an offer in the first place. That is not just true for me and for many of us, and it’s not just our personal inner critic, but it is historical and cultural. Right? When I left academia to go into news, one of the first things my parents said to me was, are you sure? Journalism seems so unstable right now.

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Our inner critic is coming from us and it’s coming from the people who came before us, and so when you are navigating confidence in a professional setting, you are navigating three different entities. You are navigating the organization and the systems put in place. You are navigating yourself and your own ideas. You are also navigating the ideas and identities that were given to you from your past, from the people who came before you. Your inner critic may encourage you to play it safe and not take risks, like asking about taking on a passion project or creating a role all for yourself, like a new role that’s never existed in your newsroom before. Our inner critics can even, I mean, they can really hurt us, right? They can put up hurdles that are hard to navigate because we can’t ask for support that we need because we don’t want to look incompetent, right?

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When you don’t know how layoffs are happening and how decisions are being made, asking for help can feel like a risk, but that really is your inner critic in your mind saying, if you ask for help, they’re going to see that you don’t know what you’re doing, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, then maybe you don’t really belong here, and all of that is a lie. None of us are in the position that we’re in because we know everything. All of us got here because somebody poured into us to give us what we needed to get us where we are today, and that is a career cycle. My friends always, I was offered a job recently and I said, I don’t want to leave Michael Bolton. That’s our CEO. I was like, Uhuh, ain’t no way. The way this man is pouring into me grow me up teaching me up. I’m not leaving this man. I got too much more to go to learn under him, but see, he’s pouring into me. There are things that I don’t know, but I’m not allowing those knowledge gaps to convince me that I don’t belong where I’m at. He hired me. I belong where I’m at. You belong where you are, so let’s do this. We’re going to give ourselves headlines. I want you for a moment to think of a time when you experienced and overcame your inner critic.

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Think of a time. Get it in your mind. Who were the players? What was the situation? How did you get to the other side of your critic telling you you’re not enough, you’re not worthy? What happened when you get it in your mind? Hop back over to our interactive slides. We’re on slide 21, 21 to 24. It looks like this. I want you to give a headline. These are our imposter syndrome headlines. So fun. So fun, Leah, don’t worry. Nobody knows which one is yours. Give your imposter syndrome moment a headline. Now, this isn’t when you crumbled. I asked you specifically for a time when you felt like a fraud, but then overcame that thought to move forward. These are headlines of triumph. These are headlines of awareness. These are receipts that if you can triumph ones, you can overcome it again and again. What are your headlines? Type those in.

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These are good. Keep ’em coming. Keep ’em coming. Don’t be shy. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I’m an editor, but I’m not editing you today. Can be a little tongue in cheek, whatever you want. Whatever feels right. It could be a haiku. A lot of y’all are creative story reporter cried for hour, a cried over for hours, gets editor’s pick spot on. Homepage story reporter cried over for hours. I got you. Yes, yes, yes. Very good. Had to get over myself to advocate for a source. Yeah. I always think about living with myself. I think about this pastor these years ago who said in a sermon once, wherever you go, that’s where you are, and I was like, oh my gosh, he’s right. I have to live with myself. I have to live with the decisions that I make. I have to live with the voice that I share, the voice that I withhold. This is good. This is good. Keep these coming.

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Yeah. I don’t know who wrote this in the orange box, but applies despite feeling underqualified. So good, so good. I applied for my first newsroom job, oh gosh, six or seven years after grad school with no newsroom experience and no Twitter account. Important because it was a social production job and I was going to have to learn how to post on Twitter. This is good Kipi coming area journalist makes mistake, decides to learn from it instead of self-flagellating. Yeah. Early career journalist sobs in toilet finishes with community oriented story, unlike other reports, I don’t know who decided to pass on this misinformation that there is no crying in the newsroom. We are human people who will feel things and honestly our community is better when we can tap into that.

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I cannot tell you how many times I have cried in the newsroom. This is very, very good reporter concerned after year long investigative project receives praise from subject matter experts nationwide. Yeah, your concern in your gut. What did you miss? What did you not get right? Who am I to share this story? I’m no expert. I’m I’m just a journalist, right? Praise from subject matter experts nationwide. I want you to remember these moments. Some of you need to do this exact exercise for every single time you have felt like a fraud. You need to do it in an email and you need to email yourself all of those headlines and save them. Put ’em in a special folder. I have one. My folder has been called Yay me. It has gone with me for the last 10 years of jobs, multiple email handles and such, and I keep forwarding it to the next job. Why? Because as much as I know about myself and how to navigate my own thoughts, there are days when I cannot do it by myself. I just can’t. My kid is sick, right? My dad fell. God forbid, right? But there are all of these things that happen external to the work that can contribute to how we can show up for the work, and so there are days when I just added an email to my yay folder last week after an event that we hosted in Nashville.

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This is very, very good. Thank you for participating and for sharing your voice. Let’s keep going. So the one thing that I wanted to make sure that I gave you today besides just a little bit of background, a little bit of help is this, how do you take your inner critic’s thoughts captive and pivot them towards something that is more productive? How do we do that? There’s a tactic that I love to share from Dr. Karen Tch and the incredible work happening at the University of Pennsylvania and their resiliency work. It’s called Real time resilience. Again, you have these slides. You don’t have to take massive notes. You can just focus real time. Resilience is this idea, the strategy that challenges counterproductive thinking with actionable in the moment. Resilience, actionable in the moment, resilience, okay?

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It is trained into what are called resiliency coaches in the military, for example, which is really interesting. How do I take the thing that is about to weigh me down and pivot it into something that is more true? So let’s go back to our chat real quick. I want to say trigger warning here, but I want another chat waterfall from you. It can be simple. What is something that you have heard from your inner critic this year? This year? Put it in the chat. Put in the chat. We’re going to come back to these. Thank you, Leah. You should have known that. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Gabriel. Whatever you do, don’t say something stupid in this editor’s meeting. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there. Your work isn’t award-winning enough. Thank you, Monique, I see you, Lionel. You weren’t ready. Anyway, yeah, keep these coming. Not working hard enough to make change.

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Thank you, Chloe. I see you. What have you heard your inner critic say? When you have been out on the scene, what has your inner critic told you? Thank you, Elisha or Alicia, I’m sorry if I’m you, let me know how to pronounce your name. Maybe I’m a DEI hire as this administration would likely say you’re underappreciated. You’re a token, not an expert. Thank you, mark. You are behind your peers. These are hard, man. These are hard. They’re also lies, but it’s important to know I’m going to teach you how to take something like this. I see you. You should be doing more. You’ll never get sent back out on assignment. When I was in the newsroom, I used to always hear, how could they ever trust you again? How could they ever trust you? Now, I used to hear you, but that was when I used to like most of us, say I am my own worst critic, which is so dumb.

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Who taught us to say that that’s ridiculous. We should be our own best cheerleader critic. Why do we own that? What kind of safety mechanism is that? How do we unlearn that? You know how hard I had to work to unlearn such a terrible thing. You can’t say anything to me because I will say it worse. I will be more harsh, more critical, and I got to live with myself. I got to look at myself in the mirror and see, no, unlearn it. Unlearn it. It is setting you up for failure. How do you want to grow? That’s my question to you. How do you want to grow? Because your legacy is not in your reporting. Your legacy is in the people who are touched by your reporting. Your legacy is in the people you touch through the reporting within your newsroom. How do you grow?

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How do you leave a legacy with the people that you are connected to because of the gift of being, the honor of being, the privilege of being a journalist? How do you cheer lead? Start with cheerleading. Let me talk you through how to navigate these thoughts. Now, real-time resilience is really, it’s a really great strategy and the reason why is because we have kind of over fluffed optimism to be as least specific as it possibly can, but real-time resilience challenges you and teaches you to use in the moment this internal dialogue whose goal is accuracy and in order to be accurate, you got to be specific and it happens the moment these thoughts come into your mind and you grab it, you grab it and you pivot the thinking through an internal dialogue, internal dialogue. There are three ways that you can do this. Again, you have this information and your slides.

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Number one is evidence. You need to create a string of evidence that proves the thought contrary to the truth or you use this reframing tactic to weaponize, quite frankly, optimism for your benefit because we think that optimism is being nice, but it’s not. Optimism is the very unique way of looking at the world and seeing adversity as a challenge to be navigated as opposed to a wall to get stuck. How do you reframe for optimism or there’s this idea of planning, understanding when you feel the most like a fraud and how you plan your way around that strategically so you know how you want to move next. All of this happens through what Dr. Karen Tch calls sentence starters, sentence starters, and so I want you to get this because we’re going to head down into your next interactive slide where you will take a thought captive and create a real-time resilience response across these three strategies, so pay attention. Number one, evidence.

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That’s not true because when you get this thought, you are behind your peers instead of laundry listing yourself because you’re your own worst critic. All of the ways that you’re behind your peers, you take the thought captive and your very next thought is that’s not true because why is that not true? How can you prove that out with evidence? I have to do this almost every single time I speak in public. People still don’t believe me. I don’t have stage fright, but I get nervous. I get nervous. My hands are so clammy right now. I’m not even in the same room with y’all, right? So what do I got to do? I got to say, Sam, you are not going to take this presentation. That is not true because how many times have you given this presentation? How much feedback have you received? How often have you changed the presentation for the feedback for the receiver, right?

(00:40:14):

How many times have you done that? What has been the net positive benefit of that, right? I need to be as specific and detailed as possible to call to remembrance why I have evidence to prove an inner critic thought a lie. That’s not true because sentence starter number two is the reframe. A more helpful or likely way of seeing this is when you get a chance to use strategic optimism, which includes using humor in the moment. It includes identifying the challenge. It includes knowing specifically who to flag for help. A really great example of this specific type of sentence starter in strategic optimism is you might remember the pursuit of happiness with Will Smith when he finally lands the job interview, but he gets arrested, right? I think unpaid parking tickets or whatever, and so when he runs and he finally gets to the place he was painting his new apartment, he’s got on painted slacks, he’s got on a wife beater, his hair’s not combed.

(00:41:18):

He’s so disheveled, and that five minute scene when he’s on the elevator and then he gets into the interview shows you why strategic optimism is different than being nice to yourself. Watch it again with this frame of reference. A more helpful way of seeing this is what, and number three, your contingency plan. You’re going in to ask for a raise. For example, you’re going into ask for more time on a story, okay? If X happens, I will y that’s the contingency. I love contingency in advance of feeling like a fraud because for me in the newsroom, I came into the newsroom late, right? There were no jobs. Then I came in on a digital side. The newsroom was clearly split between digital and legacy operators. I was on the digital side, so every time I got called into meetings with investigative reporters and editors, I felt about this big.

(00:42:22):

I didn’t know how the newspaper was put together. I didn’t know why I was there. They certainly didn’t respect me. Question what my job even was. This was the situation I was in. Contingency planning for your imposter is really awesome when you know when and where you feel this the most and you can start planning contingencies before you ever get back to that environment. If X happens, I will y if X happens, I will Y Here’s what I want for you. Number one, I want you to think of a situation that matters to you in the newsroom in the field, but where you often fall into these counterproductive thoughts that you just put into the chat. Think of a situation that matters. Do you have it?

(00:43:21):

You got it? I’m watching you guys in my sidebar. I’m hoping that you have your situation. We all have a situation and I want you to make a list really quickly to yourself. What do you hear from your inner critic when you were in that situation? What do you hear? Make a list really quickly. We’re not yet on the slide. We’re going to get there, but we need to focus. We need to focus you, so you need your situation. Number one, you need three quick things that your inner critic lies to you about when you were in that situation. What are they? Write those down.

(00:44:07):

I want you to look at one thought, choose one thought based on that situation and bump over to the slides. I’ve just added some more slides based on the folks who are in the room. You can copy more, but we’re working on slides 31 to about 41 person per slide, one person per slide, so jump all the way down, get you a slide, get you a slide anonymous. It’s anonymous and you’re starting at the top of the slide. I want you to write the thought that you have when you’re in this situation that you just noted. Write the thought that you have.

(00:44:51):

Everybody should have a slide. Does everybody have a slide? Are we good? Making sure we’re good. Adding some more slides just in case this is reflection. What have you learned today? Nearly 70% of the population experiences these feelings of being a fraud. You have seen comments and headlines that show that everybody in this room has felt it. You have heard from me who has significant tenure over you who felt it just last week, two weeks ago. We’ve normalized imposter syndrome. It is a part of career growth that you want to do your job well and when you learn new things, it can be uncomfortable, but discomfort does not have to equate to lack of confidence.

(00:45:42):

Now, you’ve learned three mental strategies, positive psychology strategies that even active duty military use on the front lines to get through the mission. I want you to use those strategies to write for yourself a real time resilience response. What is the thought and then what is your evidence? What is your reframe and what is your contingency plan? Take about five minutes to do this. I don’t want you to overthink it because you can come back to the slides. Take about five minutes. I’m going to time you if you want to go off camera so I don’t see your thinking face. That’s fine.

Rachel Jones/NPF (00:46:30):

Samantha, I have to tell you, I’m sitting here thinking how different my career and life would’ve been Had you, I’ve seen this presentation 40 years ago. One of the most powerful things you said to me or said today was when the norm in the newsroom is leadership style of a white male, historic, whatever. What it can make us as journalists of color specifically feel is that we’ll never attained the skill or the expertise to be a leader, and until this very moment, I guess I didn’t really realize how much that fueled early anxiety in my early sense of somebody’s going to find out or somebody’s going to kick me out or I don’t belong here. That’s right.

Sam Ragland/American Press Institute (00:47:32):

Yeah. For me, Rachel, it has even fueled missed opportunity, so for example, being offered several rounds of promotion through Cox Media Group who owned the Palm Beach Post at the time that I was there, several times I declined and I declined because while there were a couple of black women, black men in leadership, what I found in being with them was that none of them felt authentic to me, and so I thought, you want Sam, but you don’t really want ’em, right? Because I’m, I’m going to wear my hair big. I’m going to laugh loud. I’m not going to wear the classic female power suit. I’m coming in some ripped jeans and some Nikes and a blazer and I’m just like, you don’t actually, I don’t see me represented at the top and so let me decline this promotion and then another promotion comes. Let me decline this promotion, right? Because at that point I understood that I added value because I was me and what am I going to just lessen that because I need to not be me in this other role. Yeah. It’s fascinating how we maintain the status quo even when we don’t realize it.

(00:48:50):

Keep these coming. I love the work that you all are doing. Yeah. This is so, so good, so, so important. You all, I work on templates and equations like this regularly. When I give critical feedback, for example, when I’m heading into this role at API has made me have to revisit being the only one in the room, and when I’m in the room with all these funders, with all this money, I can feel very small and so I have to come back to this type of thing and I have to work through my evidence that I deserve to be there and this is me now at an executive leadership level, so what does that mean for you? It means that the inner critic, the things that you will hear your inner critic say will evolve as you grow in your career.

(00:49:48):

I look at that as a win, I think too, right? Because it shows that I’m evolving and that I’m growing and this is so good. Keep these coming. I’m being mindful of time. We’ve got about nine minutes. Yeah, this is good. I love this planning. I don’t know who wrote this. I don’t know enough. I should let someone smarter than me do this story and this contingency plan. If I am overwhelmed, good naming of the feeling, I will ask my mentors for advice and keep open communication with my editors. Yeah, if then that, yes, this is very, very good. Very good, very good. Good, good, good. I hope that you are finding this helpful. Many of you. Yeah. We need a bit more evidence. Keep this in mind. Evidence is data and if you want to activate the evidence that proves your inner critic as a liar, you need critical data, structured data.

(00:50:59):

How many times has it happened? What was the feedback? How much feedback did you get? Right? I was coaching them an audience editor once and she really took to this and her thought about she wasn’t fit for the job and in her evidence she actually ran a data report of audience data across platform from when she took over the position and prior to, so she did a year to year comparison and found the incredible uptick, which is a clear result of her strategic vision and she used the actual data. She framed it and put it in her office. Good. This is good. This is good. Keep this coming. You can revisit this. These are your slides. These are your slides for you to revisit. I want to make sure that you have this team, but we probably won’t get to the interaction. Okay, but let’s keep going.

(00:52:04):

These are also are also in your slides, but I mentioned to you earlier that there are times when you can’t overcome imposter syndrome on your own, which is why defeating it with your thoughts is a part of the process, but also building a team around. You pointed to the yay me folder earlier, so who are the people in the team? Let me tell you who they are. People in your mind should be popping up for you. Here’s what I have learned though in delivering this training now for umpteen years, whatever, eight years or whatever it’s been that most people have the team in place but don’t use them when their imposter syndrome strikes, so everybody, people pop to mind and then it’s like, oh, I guess I just never thought that I should let them know that this is happening. Okay? Number one, you need supporters on your team.

(00:52:49):

These supporters can be inside the industry. They can also be outside of it. These are people who can take an undeveloped idea from you and encourage you to pursue it more. They appreciate your work and the things that you contribute. They know how to ask questions without getting under your skin. They are an encourager for you to keep working even if they don’t understand your job. These are your biggest fans for a lot of us. This is our mamas and our daddies and our spouses, right? That’s great and if that is the person that popped to mind for you, awesome, right? Who else get two supporters, your page. Two supporters. Two supporters. That’s what you need. We’re building a team that you can use when your inner critic starts to act up. Number two, you need some haters on your team. It sounds crazy, but I’m not lying.

(00:53:39):

These are your naysayers also known as your wet blankets. These are the people that drive you completely crazy because they are the one who always finds something wrong with anything that you bring them. These are the people who rarely offer feedback. They just tell you that something isn’t going to work or they tell you we’ve already done it and it didn’t work, right? These are the people rarely support you or cheer you on from the finish line. I like to call ’em haters because I’m just like, why they so mad? Can they see this? But here’s the thing about your naysayers. When you use them at the beginning of a process, when you are feeling the most like a fraud, they will be unhelpful. If you can navigate the beginning of feeling like a fraud and at least get to a point where you’re a little more confident, you got a few more answers, you got a little clarity, you did your real-time resilience response and then you go to a naysayer, you go to a hater or a what blanket and you talk to them from that perspective.

(00:54:38):

What I have found to be true for me is that naysayers are not ill-intentioned. It is just they default to clarity, which means their questions can feel like jabs to your stomach, but they’re actually opportunities to fill a hole in your thought process to make the thing that you’re working on better. When I started working with my biggest hater in the newsroom, his name is Cedric, and Cedric used to just hate on me so hard and I could never bring anything. I was the because I was new to the newsroom, I missed all the layoffs and I just was like I had all this hope and Cedric was the worst when I started going to Cedric after I had given some things, some thought, but before that thing landed on the desk of my digital director, our managing editor or our publisher, what I found is that Cedric, I talked to him about this to this day, I can tell you how many things he has no idea got greenlit because he poked holes in it, but he didn’t poke holes in it at the beginning when it was a new baby bean sprout of an idea that was so vulnerable and could break in any minute, no, he poked holes toward the end.

(00:55:50):

He made me better at the end, and we typically, because some of us are the naysayer ourselves, quite frankly, we go to these people too soon, but when we’re talking about strategically building a village of support for you, which means everyone plays a role and everyone has a season to which their role is best occupied, are you with me? Who are your haters? Your curmudgeons, your naysayers? Who are they? You need at least two. If you don’t have one that comes to mind, but you know somebody who’s like this, write their name down, write their name down. Why? Because you need to be building relationships across your newsroom, across your organization.

(00:56:39):

For a minute, said, wasn’t even on my team. He was just the person I had to go to because he was the mobile editor. Who are your naysayers? If you don’t have one who in the newsroom? Who in the newsroom would help you shore up your confidence by being the person that sees holes like Neo saw the matrix, right? Who’s that person? Who is that for you? Number three. This is the last type of person you need on your team. You need a mastermind. You need a mastermind. Now, masterminds are really fascinating people. These are people who intentionally give you constructive feedback. Thank you, Nicole. Take care. These are the people who ask questions and want answers thoughtfully, like they’re not asking questions in rapid fire without giving you a chance to think. For example, they share advice with you, but more than that, a mastermind is somebody whose role you also contribute to.

(00:57:49):

These are your most valuable players. They can be a supporter, they can be a naysayer, they can be a thought partner because they understand the work and they understand the job. Who is this person for me? This was this guy in my new room called John B and Johnny BI used to message him randomly at any point in the day to say, Hey, I’m going to need to holler at you after three o’clock. Keep your calendar open at four, and we would go into his office and we would go so big and I contributed to his growth and he contributed to mine. The idea of a mastermind suggests that when I bring my whole self, my authentic leadership style, my whole self, and if you bring your whole self with your whole mind, the two minds together create a third better mind called the Mastermind.

(00:58:47):

This is some old school stuff right from Napoleon Hills. Really, really good. Think or grow rich. You need these people on your team. Who are they? Who are they? If you have a chance and you want to continue down these slides, I realize I’m out of time. That is fine. The question that you would want to consider is this, how do I cultivate masterminds in my life? Most of us don’t have them. Where do you get ’em? How do you let them know? Because what I’m not talking about a mentor, it’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about somebody who serves as a critical thought partner, who can see your vision, who wants you to grow, who wants the best, and also is vulnerable enough that your best can make them better. That’s who I’m talking about. Take care, Lionel. Who is that? How do you get ’em? Find them. They have to be a part of your team. They have to be a part of your team.

(00:59:44):

Your slides are still here, as I mentioned. You have them. You’ll find on slides, I don’t know, 58, 59 and 60 that I’ve listed some of the biggest confidence killers that I think you would be grateful to know, like playing the comparison game, obsessing over perfection, trying to do everything for everybody. I appreciate all of you and I’ll leave you with this quote, which I love from Arlan Hamilton who’s an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. She wrote, it’s about damn time, this book about turning your greatest, what you underestimated to your greatest strength, and she said, you have to be yourself so that people looking for you can find you. We all have something to give to the newsroom. We all have something to contribute to the community, to our families, and we can get off track and we can lose sight of our greatest strengths, and what Arlan here is saying is that we are all needed by someone, but if you are faking the funk and trying to put on the garb of somebody else’s style, then when you are really needed, people will look past you, so be you.

(01:01:00):

It will get easier, I promise. I thank you all so much for your time. 60 minutes I know is not a lot, but again, I’m grateful for you. Thank you for participating in the interactive slides. They are yours to keep and as mentioned, if you need me, I am here and the Calendly link is open. You don’t have to email me or anything. There’s a little slot on the Calendly that you can tell me exactly what you need and then I will see you in a space just like this. Thank you, Chloe. Thanks Nixon. I appreciate you guys. I’ll stop sharing my slides and hand it back over to Rachel.

Rachel Jones/NPF (01:01:30):

Samantha. This without a doubt in our year has been the most impactful virtual training that we have had over the past three years. Good. Well, that’s an awesome, not only because frankly you got me together this morning and something you said earlier was very powerful. There is no sort of necessarily quick fix for this issue and it can happen even at my seasoned age. We can have our moments of doubt or insecurity, but we’ve run out of time. I want to invite you back. I would love for the journalists to think about some of the things that they would ask you. Maybe we’ll have a q and a.

Sam Ragland/American Press Institute (01:02:19):

Sure. I’d be glad to come back for a short a MA. Yep,

Rachel Jones/NPF (01:02:22):

We will do

Sam Ragland/American Press Institute (01:02:22):

That. Monique, I love you girl,

Rachel Jones/NPF (01:02:24):

But if there is, I will eat into some of our time. If you can hang on for a minute, if there’s one sort of burning question that someone has, I will throw open that opportunity. I don’t see any zoom hands going once.

Sam Ragland/American Press Institute (01:02:42):

It’s a lot of information,

Rachel Jones/NPF (01:02:43):

A lot of information, so why don’t we just let them process it and let me have this opportunity right now to just extend tremendous gratitude to you for this presentation. Thank you so much, Samantha.

Sam Ragland/American Press Institute (01:02:57):

You are so welcome. Thank you all so much. I appreciate you. You can do it. There’s so many people rooting for you. Okay. Take care and yeah, we can always come back and have more conversations or if you need anything off the record, come to silence. You have my calendar. You guys have you soon. Great rest of this week. Thanks, Tam Mia. Bye. Y’all.

Rachel Jones/NPF (01:03:15):

Take care.