Are you faking it in the workplace?

Michael Kiln was quite creative at destroying his hard-won successful career.

The Oxford graduate was on the cusp of promotion to senior management at a leading telecommunications company when he began to have reckless extra-marital affairs.

At work he found it difficult to concentrate and became distracted. He developed a drinking problem then had a car accident. Convinced he was about to be pushed, he quit his job and took a junior position with a larger company.

Despite his appointment as head of one of that organisation's important divisions, Kiln soon left to accept a job at another company. He began to rise through the ranks again but, given his employment history, management had suspicions about his ability to survive at the top.

Kiln, it emerged, harboured a debilitating fear. He felt like an impostor who, if he made it to the top, would be spectacularly exposed as a fake.

It is a condition leadership development coach and psychoanalyst Manfred Kets de Vries has come to call "neurotic imposture".

The impostor phenomenon was first identified in 1978 among successful women who attributed their success to luck, timing or contacts, instead of their talents.

Kets de Vries says a variant is also found among first-born children who develop into type-A personalities. Seemingly normal, their pathology often becomes apparent when they are on track for senior management positions.

"Neurotic imposture," he says, "begins when a child comes home with his report card with an A- and his parents say, 'Who got an A?' or, 'Why didn't you get an A?'. It is a family in which only results count and if you don't have results you aren't going to be loved."

As adults, these people become addicted to the appearance of success but have never resolved the feeling they aren't good enough.

Externally they might be perfectionists or workaholics and at first they are rewarded by an organisation that is unaware of the psychological burden they are carrying.

"They fear discovery of their 'fraudulence' and undertake too much work to compensate for their lack of self-esteem and identity," Kets de Vries says.

Senior executives with these tendencies tend to be hard on others.

This can translate into high employee turnover, absenteeism and a poisonous work environment that can affect the bottom line.

"In short, despite their initial promise, they can have a toxic effect on an organisation," he says.

In 15 years' coaching chief executives, most recently as the chaired professor of leadership development at France's Insead Business School, Kets de Vries has seen five New Zealanders who fit this profile.

Executive coaches spoken to by The Business agree that many senior business people have issues around "authenticity", although the smaller and less pressurised corporate environment in New Zealand - compared to head offices in New York or London - often doesn't produce the extreme symptoms of "neurotic imposture".

The manager of The Resilience Institute, Sven Hansen, says executives who suffer crises in this country tend to fall into two categories.

The first are successful, self-starting entrepreneurs who become over-confident, take too many risks and go out in a blaze. He sees three or four of these leaders each year.

More common among CEOs is a mild depression that, if unchecked, can start what is known as "the death spiral".

It begins with an alert, successful executive whose multi-tasking overloads their memory until they start losing information.

"The next level is disengagement. They are so busy thinking about that next email or meeting they disengage from conversations they are having. That leads to a few errors. People start to feel a little withdrawn and nervous."

According to Hansen, these feelings are very common.

"I would argue that up to half of New Zealand executives and professionals spend time there. It can be part of a cycle - it's normal."

Business coaches say the common factor between "the death spiral" and conditions like "neurotic imposture" is that people are in isolated roles and nurture unrealistic expectations.

At The Resilience Institute, which has offices in Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne, they teach executives to do a reality check; to generate calm; then to ask for support.

The Impostor Phenomenon

* First identified among successful women who attributed their success to luck, timing or their contacts instead of their own talents.

* It's a psychological condition of people who crave the appearance of success but inside feel they are not good enough.

* The results on a business can be devastating if a person reaches the top levels.

* But don't jump to the conclusion you have it. Psychologists say most businesspeople have doubts at some time. It's how you deal with them that counts.