While Joyce Roche spent decades trailblazing a path for both women and African-Americans during her rise to the top in corporate America, she said that it was another, more insidious obstacle that threatened her dreams of success: Self-doubt.
Roche's resume reads like a roster of impressive achievements. Roche is a former president and chief operating officer of Carson Products Co., and vice president of global marketing at Avon. She’s won several awards and distinctions, including “21 Women of Power and Influence in Corporate America” and one of the “40 Most Powerful Black Executives.” Most recently, she retired as president of Girls Inc., the nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire all girls to be strong, smart and bold.
Yet, despite all of this, she has been plagued by self-doubt. She focused on this condition, what she refers to as the "impostor syndrome” in her new book, “The Empress Has No Clothes: Conquering Self-Doubt to Embrace Success.”
In the book, Roche argues that this isn't an uncommon occurrence among successful people, especially for women and those from minority communities. While sharing her personal story, Roche also offers advice on how to overcome the feelings of being a fraud or undeserving of success.
Roche said she believes the first step in getting rid of self-doubt is realizing that a person isn’t alone, Secondly, she said it's important the people find ways to internally validate themselves.
She said she uses her own career as an example.
“I knew there was a great deal of press surrounding the fact that I had become Avon’s first female African-American vice president,” Roche said. “There was the external [pressures] out there, and the internal. In the sense that not only did I have to prove that I could do it, but If I failed, COMMA it would not only be a personal failure, it could potentially be failure for anyone else who looks liked me.”
It was then that the self-doubt and anxiety set in, she said.
Roche said that some simple things helped her at the time, including seeking out someone else who had been there. She said that the worst thing someone can do is suffer in silence.
She said it’s important to practice viewing others realistically -- their good and bad qualities. Making critical but forgiving assessments of peers, she said, will lead people to be less harshly judgmental of themselves.
