What is imposter syndrome in executives?

It's the ongoing sense that you've fooled people about your competence and could be exposed at any moment, despite clear evidence of your ability. In senior leaders it's common and often intensifies with seniority, as the work gets more ambiguous and honest feedback becomes rarer at the top.

Why does imposter syndrome get worse at senior levels?

Because the markers that reassured you earlier fall away. Competence becomes harder to measure, few people are positioned to validate your work, and the higher visibility and stakes give self-doubt more room. Many leaders also hide the feeling from their peers, so each assumes they're the only one experiencing it.

Can executive coaching help with imposter syndrome?

Yes. Coaching that combines work with the internal parts driving the feeling and somatic regulation tends to help more than talking yourself out of it, because imposter feelings sit in the nervous system as much as in your thinking. The aim is to stop the feeling dictating how you lead, so it becomes manageable even when it shows up.

What is resilience for an executive?

The capacity to work hard and then come back down. Resilience is often taught as the ability to keep going, which describes endurance. The useful version is range, meaning your system can go up under demand and return to baseline afterwards without being pushed.

Why hasn't resilience training worked for me?

Most resilience training is delivered as mindset and framing, and the problem it's aimed at is physiological. If your system has been in emergency mode for two years, a reframe won't reach it. What reaches it is training the return, repeatedly, in small amounts.

Is burnout a medical diagnosis?

The World Health Organization classifies burn-out in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition. That distinction matters. If you're experiencing something that feels more like depression or a health problem, that warrants a GP or psychologist, and coaching can sit alongside that.

How long does it take to rebuild recovery?

Most leaders notice their sleep or their evenings shifting within the first month of consistent daily practice. Getting to the point where recovery happens on its own again typically takes the length of a full engagement, three to six months.

Executive coaching · Melbourne & online worldwide

Resilience for executives

Resilience is the capacity to work hard and then come back down. Most of what gets taught under that name is endurance, which is a different thing and eventually a costly one.

Executives who arrive here have usually been described as resilient for years, often by people who meant it as praise. What they're describing is someone who absorbs load without visible complaint. That's a useful reputation and it obscures the actual question, which is whether the system doing the absorbing ever gets to reset.

This page sits under leading under pressure, and the mechanism it relies on is described in somatic executive coaching.

Grinding and grit

The two look identical from the outside and run on different physiology. Grinding is a system operating on fumes, always on and quietly proud of how tired it is. Grit has recovery built into it, which is precisely what lets it push hard and return afterwards.

Range is the better word for what you want. A system with range can go high under demand and come back to baseline when the demand passes. A system without it stays elevated, and every new demand starts from a higher floor than the last one.

Why resilience training keeps missing

Corporate resilience programmes are generally built around mindset, framing and cognitive strategy. Those have value, and they're aimed at a level above where the problem lives.

If your system has been in emergency mode for two years, a reframe won't reach it. The elevation isn't a belief you hold, and it doesn't respond to being argued with. It's a physiological setting, established through repetition, and it changes the same way it was established.

That's the honest reason a two-day resilience workshop produces a fortnight of good intentions. Nothing was wrong with the content.

Signals that recovery has stopped working

The weekend ends and you're still tired, and holidays take four days to have any effect
You're sleeping, and waking at 4 or 5 with your mind already running
Downtime feels uncomfortable rather than restful, so you fill it
Your tolerance for small friction has dropped, and you notice it most with people you like
Exercise, which used to leave you better, now leaves you flat
You're relying on something to come down at night and something else to get going in the morning

Any one of these is unremarkable. Several together usually means the return has stopped happening on its own.

Burnout, and what it isn't

The World Health Organization classifies burn-out in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition. Worth knowing, because the word gets used loosely and the distinction changes what's useful.

Leaders burn out when their systems have been in emergency mode too long with no real chance to settle. Weakness has nothing to do with it, and the people it happens to are frequently the ones with the highest tolerance, because a high tolerance lets you go further past the point where you should have stopped.

If what you're carrying feels closer to depression, or there's a health signal in it, that warrants a GP or a psychologist. Coaching can sit alongside proper care.

What rebuilding actually involves

Recovery gets treated as time off, and time off is a container rather than a mechanism. What matters is whether your system knows how to come down inside that time.

The work is small and frequent. Short daily practices that train the return, done in the ordinary conditions of your week instead of on a retreat. Between sessions, that's most of what you'll be doing, and it feels trivial for the first fortnight.

Repetition does the building. Roughly 30 repetitions creates familiarity and 300 creates muscle memory, with embodiment arriving around 3,000. The arithmetic is why this takes months and why it holds afterwards.

Alongside that, we look at what keeps the system elevated. Sometimes it's genuinely the workload. More often there's something structural underneath, a standard that can't be met or a piece of work that can't be handed over, and that belongs to the inner game of leadership.

"My firm provided the coaching, but I kept coming back because it was genuinely useful. Rudi helped me stay calm through significant leadership change, build daily practices that stuck, and communicate more confidently. I came for stress management and left with a different sense of myself as a leader."

Anuja · Client

How the work runs

A free 30-minute call first, then fortnightly sessions over three to six months with short daily practices between them and an honest review at the midpoint. Online across Australia and internationally, or in person in Melbourne. Fees are $550 a session plus GST self-funded and $750 plus GST organisation-sponsored, with the detail on the cost page. What to expect walks through the mechanics.

Start with a conversation. A free 30-minute call, no pitch, no pressure.

Book a free call

A note on scope

This is coaching. It works on leadership performance and self-regulation for capable people under pressure, and it stays outside the territory of diagnosis and treatment. If you're dealing with significant distress or a mental health concern, that deserves proper psychological or medical care. No outcome is guaranteed.

Common questions

What is resilience for an executive?: The capacity to work hard and then come back down. Resilience is often taught as the ability to keep going, which describes endurance. The useful version is range, meaning your system can go up under demand and return to baseline afterwards without being pushed.
Why hasn't resilience training worked for me?: Most resilience training is delivered as mindset and framing, and the problem it's aimed at is physiological. If your system has been in emergency mode for two years, a reframe won't reach it. What reaches it is training the return, repeatedly, in small amounts.
Is burnout a medical diagnosis?: The World Health Organization classifies burn-out in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition. That distinction matters. If you're experiencing something that feels more like depression or a health problem, that warrants a GP or psychologist, and coaching can sit alongside that.
How long does it take to rebuild recovery?: Most leaders notice their sleep or their evenings shifting within the first month of consistent daily practice. Getting to the point where recovery happens on its own again typically takes the length of a full engagement, three to six months.

Rudi Doku · Executive Coach (ICF PCC) · Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) · Melbourne, Australia · Coaching online worldwide