We all doubt sometimes — perhaps more so today. We doubt ourselves, other people, politics. Psychologically speaking, doubt is a mental state in which the brain holds several explanations or courses of action to be possible at once. In itself, that is unproblematic. It becomes a problem when doubt holds us back, when it limits our ability to act and to make an impact.
When Doubt Gets a Name
One example of this is the impostor phenomenon, first described by Clance and Imes in 1978. People experiencing the impostor phenomenon tend to attribute their success to external circumstances or chance rather than to their own competence. In psychology, this is called external attribution. Looking at gender differences, a study among software engineers from 26 countries found that 60.6% of participating women were affected, compared to only 48.8% of participating men. Add to this that, according to McKinsey, the share of women in technology roles in Europe is projected to reach only 21% by 2027, and the relevance of this issue for women in tech leadership becomes clear.
It’s Not Only the Person Who Has to Adapt – the Room Does Too
Research in this area mainly focuses on self-image and how we can “repair” it — among other things, through coaching aimed at increasing self-efficacy. The person works on themselves, becomes a better fit for the room they stand in. Less often does anyone ask whether the room itself still fits the people who enter it.
Bandura defines self-efficacy as a person’s belief that they can achieve a desired outcome through their own actions. The four main sources of this belief are mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological and emotional states. This means that it is not only personality traits like perfectionism, neuroticism, and experience that play a role, but also social components such as role models. And it’s precisely where tech runs into a problem. Women in leadership are underrepresented in the sector, and according to the World Economic Forum, their representation is growing faster at the top-management level than at the middle-management level. But it is exactly at the middle-management level that the next generation needs more role models.
The Architecture Is Outdated
Put bluntly, this amounts to an outdated architecture within the tech sector — built over decades for a particular type of person. It no longer keeps pace with social, global, and technological developments, and leaves existing potential unused.
From Psychological Phenomenon to Political Challenge
That turns a purely psychological perspective into a political and societal one, requiring development measures to adapt in turn. If, as a society, we invest in coaching only with the intention of making people more adaptable, we risk turning a structural problem into an individual responsibility. You don’t renovate an outdated system by training the people inside it. That doesn’t mean coaching is ineffective in this context. The key lies in how it’s used. Not “how do I better adapt myself in order to succeed,” but “how do I best activate my resources — and what do I put them toward in this room.”
Those Who Stay Change the System From Within
And that leads, starting from the individual, straight to systems theory. A person who stays despite their doubt changes the system — the room — from within. Not because they adapted, but because their mere presence shows that the room is bigger than generally assumed. Every woman who remains visible in a tech leadership role shifts, for the next woman, the boundary of what’s possible. That’s the Bannister effect, known from sport: achieving something thought impossible — and showing others that it can be done.
Coaching, then, activates not only self-efficacy but also the individual resources as fuel for structural change.
Doubt Doesn’t Need to Disappear – Just to Be Distributed More Fairly
The present is the room that still needs structural change to escape the dilemma of having to constantly prove oneself and earn one’s belonging. But what will the room of the future need, once structural change increasingly succeeds? And where will doubt still sit then? That would be the next research question — to what extent coaching can prove effective here too, perhaps increasingly at the team or system level.
Perhaps, in the end, it isn’t about abolishing doubt — but about distributing it more fairly.
Sources:
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
Blumberg, S., Krawina, M., Mäkelä, E., & Soller, H. (2023, January 24). Women in tech: The best bet to solve Europe’s talent shortage. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/women-in-tech-the-best-bet-to-solve-europes-talent-shortage
Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006
Guenes, P., Tomaz, R., Kalinowski, M., Baldassarre, M. T., & Storey, M.-A. (2024). Impostor phenomenon in software engineers. In Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (pp. 96–106). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3639475.3640114
World Economic Forum. (2025). Global gender gap report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2025/
Photo by Birgit Eckart, edited with AI (Picsart)