The chief executive of the Samaritans has opened up about the anxiety she experienced from “crippling” bouts of ‘imposter syndrome during her leadership career.

Samaritans CEO Julie Bentley has held leadership roles in charities for more than 20 years, including chief executive posts at Action for Children, Girlguiding, sexual health charity FPA and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.

However, during her career she has had to deal with anxiety from 'imposter syndrome', where someone doubts their skills and talents.

“I grew up in quite a poor, working class family,” explains Bentley around the origins of her imposter syndrome anxieties.

“We weren’t an educated family. No one had been to university. I was really rubbish at school and didn't get good exam grades.

“When I did eventually find myself in a leadership role I would often have a little voice in my head that said, ‘Julie Bentley’ what are you doing, thinking you can do this. This is not for you’.”

“I spent five years as a postie, which I loved. But the little voice used to say to me ‘you are just a postie from Essex, what do you think you are doing trying to lead this thing’.

“It was quite crippling in my early career actually. It really used to cause me huge degree of anxiety.”

“Then as the years passed as I got more experienced it didn’t go away but I learnt to keep it under control and speak back to it and say ‘you know what, back off, becasue I can do this’.

"But it took me a huge amount of learning to not listen to that little voice, to get me to a place where I could overcome that sense of anxiety."

Bentley was speaking at the Charity Times Leadership Conference during a session on authenticity and leadership with her colleague at Samaritans, executive director of income generation Sonya Trivedy.

During the session they also spoke about the importance for charity leaders of a mentor to offer support and to use personal experiences as an opportunity to learn and reflect.

Authenticity and social media

During part of the Covid-19 pandemic last year Bentley was between jobs, having left Action for Children before joining Samaritans.

Bentley, listed as one of Charity Times’ Most Influential Leaders, said that during that period she had more time to observe charity leaders’ behaviour particularly on social media and was impressed with how many opened up about their own vulnerabilities.

“Watching from outside in the last year, one of the things that really struck me, especially on social media, was the authenticity with which I was seeing leaders talking about their own vulnerability. Of feeling scared, feeling out of their depth and feeling like they did not know what to do and feeling worried," she said.

“It felt very real. I watched that and thought this is impressive, actually. If we can do this, one good thing that has come out of this is that we have become safer to be more authentic in our role, then that has to be a good thing.”

Share Story: