A person holds a card with a smiley face over their mouth, faking it against a purple background.

What do top psychologists say about faking it in business & why it contributes to burnout.

“I’m just going to fake it until I make it.” “It’s ok, I’ll fake my way through it.” “I’m going to feel the fear and do it anyway.” “I just need to suck it up.” All of these are variations I’ve heard over the years from small business owners who believed that faking it would get them through their fears. What’s worse is that it’s promoted by the hustle culture and various other business coaches who sweep the importance of mindset (also integrity, honesty, & impact) aside for growth. The business owners eventually fall foul, fall back into the behaviours they use to hide from fear, or even burn out.

There are so many ways we can handle fear in business, many will work in the short term. You know, when it’s a moment where you have to take action, NOW! I have a whole toolkit I use to move me into action, the thing is, they don’t deal with the underlying cause of the fear (or imposter syndrome as the case of my toolkit).

Faking it and the real reason behind the fear in business

That’s the first issue that I have with faking it. It doesn’t deal with the core of the issue, what you’re afraid of and why. It’s as if pretending it doesn’t exist time and again actually stops it from existing. If only that worked. We can’t ignore our problems away. (No, you can’t)

There are a few things that happen when you don’t treat the underlying cause. Firstly, as I just mentioned, it doesn’t stop existing. Look I’ve tried and clients have tried, and time doesn’t heal this one. The fear is still there, it’s probably just buried or shoved down deeper, bubbling under the surface until something triggers an eruption.

Secondly, faking it and ignoring the root cause of the fear can lead to other issues. I have seen ignored fears manifest in many ways:
– ignoring important calls, emails, or other correspondence (including bills)
– lack of boundaries
– not quoting or following up on leads
discounting/devaluing your product or service.
That’s if they haven’t already commenced.

Yes, I understand how long, confronting, painful, and relentless addressing the underlying fear can be. I also understand what happens when my clients or I haven’t and when we have.

I firmly believe that dealing with the underlying issue is the best solution, but what does faking it through fear do to business owners and their businesses?

What is faking it and why does that make it bad business advice?

Faking it is what psychologists call surface acting. Surface acting is where you show an emotion that isn’t how you truly feel. How does this look in business? “No, I’m fine. There’s no problem.”, when the reality is that they’re suppressing their fear. “I’ll grin and bear it”, the squeaky voice might even come out with this one. What happens is that you have a mismatch between how you feel, think, and/or your values and how you are behaving, this is what psychologists call dissonance. In this instance, it is emotional dissonance.

Going through the research on surface acting, faking, & the workplace, there were 3 main ways that businesses were impacted:

  • Negative impacts on business owner health and wellbeing
  • Negative impacts on relationships
  • Negative impacts on business.

Faking it through fear & business owner health & wellbeing

Ironically, fear impacts our health and well-being through increasing stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts & actions, and even psychosis. Then, there’s the research that shows that surface acting or faking it to hopefully trick ourselves into behaving and even believing we are over fear impacts our health and wellbeing.

Faking it has been shown to impact health and wellbeing (Sciotto, G & Pace, F (2022)) through emotional exhaustion & lack of feeling in control.

Faking it through fear & emotional exhaustionA person with glasses and a thoughtful expression sits against a blue background. Text reads: "Online business success is about showing up authentically, being 100% yourself, and adding value to your audience.

Sciotto & Pace (2022) summarised previous research and showed that faking it (surface acting) is linked to emotional exhaustion.

What is emotional exhaustion?

Let’s start with emotional exhaustion being a symptom of burnout. Emotional exhaustion is feeling emotionally drained and overextended. It can lead us to feel hopeless and powerless.

How does emotional exhaustion show up in business owners?

Physically, faking it can show up as fatigue, headaches, nausea, poor sleep, muscle pain, & low energy before bedtime.

Business-wise, emotional exhaustion can result in difficulty completing tasks, failure to meet deadlines, avoidance, less commitment, and slower performance.

So, faking it through fear can lead to emotional exhaustion & burnout.

Faking it and not feeling in control

People fake it through fear believing that it is a way to control their emotions & behaviour and their outcome. What is also happening is that business owners are looking outside of themselves to how they believe they should be behaving and using this external ‘locus of control’ to decide how they should behave. So, if they see others saying that they should “fake it until I make it.”; “fake my way through it.”; “to feel the fear and do it anyway.”; “need to suck it up.”;  then they will believe that this is how they should behave.

What happens next is the dissonance I mentioned earlier, and they feel like they’ve not only lost control of how they feel but also how they behave.

Faking it through fear & inability to relax

Sciotto & Pace (2022) also discussed how surface acting reduces our ability to relax during our leisure time. Relaxation & rest are important in restoring our energy. The inability to properly relax impacts the likelihood of developing burnout. Considering that many of us work to be able to indulge in our hobbies, now consider that your faking it means that you’re not relaxing or enjoying this time as much as you could be. Not to mention that with all the time we spend working, our downtime is often time with those we care deeply about and can therefore impact our relationships.

How faking it through fear impacts relationships

Now you know how trying to fake it through fear is impacting your well-being and that can carry through into your relationships, let’s look at how it’s directly impacting your relationships.

Faking it & activities outside of work

Sciotto & Pace (2022) wrote about how surface acting impacted our well-being and reduced our ability to engage in activities outside of business including family. It’s no wonder that people who are faking it are being worn out, unable to relax, emotionally exhausted, & even more stressed that they wouldn’t feel like participating in activities outside of work – they have nothing more to give.

Faking it through fear & authenticity

Cox (2016) discussed how faking it is inauthentic behaviour. Most small business owners rely on the relationships they have with clients and staff. In addition, it is commonly believed that the key to successful marketing, especially with personal branding, is authenticity. Unfortunately, it is on social media (or to show our faces there) when business owners will fake it through their fear and this is actually impacting their authenticity (and the trust and perception of their business but more on that later).

Faking out fear & sincerity, honesty, & trustA quote on authenticity by Gary Vaynerchuk peers through a sunset with silhouetted trees, reminding us that in business, fear of faking it dissolves when we embrace our true selves.

The well-known maxim of “people do business with people that they know, like, and trust” never came with a caveat of not faking it. Again, Cox (2016) discussed that faking it with emotions, like fear, may communicate a lack of sincerity, honesty, & trust. If this is the vibe you are putting across or how faking it is interpreted and remember you can not control how others interpret your behaviour, then you are negatively impacting relationships (friends, family, & business).

Now you know how faking it is impacting your health & wellbeing, your relationships with others (including staff & clients), let’s look at the direct impacts it has on your business.

How faking it through fear impacts business

Faking it through fear & job stress

So, you’re faking it through your fear so that you will be able to get on with what you need to do only to find yourself feeling stressed out and unable to do as much.

The reason why you can feel stressed is because of the energy faking it takes out of you. When you have less mental energy to give, you can feel like you have fewer resources in general and more demand. This lower energy, combined with the resultant feeling like you have to do more with less leads to stress. (Choi et al., 2019)

Faking it through fear & job satisfaction

It’s long understood that when we have our needs met, especially psychological, we are more satisfied in our work. This was reinforced in the 2017 research of Huyghebaert et al. It was also shown to be linked to how engaged we are in our work.

It is believed that when we are faking it that we aren’t doing it of our own will (we feel forced to), we don’t feel good about our abilities, & we don’t feel connected to those we work with (authenticity); this impacts our job satisfaction & then our desire to invest in our work.

As a business owner, faking it through the fear confronting you and your business can lead you to hate your business, how you show up in it, doubt your abilities, & feel disconnected from the business you set up. Sad state of affairs if you’ve started a business to follow your purpose & do something you love. Worse still if you work with your partner.

Faking it through fear & employees

Huyghebaert et al. (2017) looked at managers in France. Their paper discussed how surface acting had a negative effect on their employees. They wrote that this faking it had a flow on effects to their optimal functioning, attitude to work, well-being, & performance. Ironic when employees will look to owners to set the culture and tone of the workplace.

Faking it through fear & outcomes

By now it probably seems logical that if you are emotionally spent, don’t trust yourself, don’t enjoy your work/business, doubt your abilities, and don’t want to invest in the business the outcomes just won’t be there.

I believe that this is where the danger comes in around ‘sucking it up’, ‘white knuckling’, ‘grinding’, & ‘until you make it’ part of the culture of faking it really comes into its own. The hustle culture that dominates a lot of business beliefs leads business owners to push past the point of breaking. Forcing them further into dissonance between what they deep down feel about what they want to and can deliver and the expectation to push through at all cost.

Faking it through fear & client perception of poor quality

By this time a business owner already is performing poorly, feels negatively towards their business, & questioning their ability; staff are feeling the same & clients look at this and question if the business is any good. (Cox, 2016) Any wonder?

Try as you might to fake it as hard as you can, you already know that this is not authentic and your clients know this too.

How being a business owner makes the impact of faking it through fear worse

I’m going to go straight to the heart of this one. If you are not normally client-facing, the impact of faking it is increased. (Sciotto & Pace, 2022) It comes down to practice. You’re just not good at it. Now that doesn’t mean you need to do more of it, well you could if you wanted to ignore all the negative impacts I’ve written. It seems you can’t even fake “faking it”.

What to do rather than faking it through fear in business

I hope by now you have some understanding of how faking it through fear is bad business advice. That it harms your well-being, your relationships, and your business. I started this blog by saying that the best way is to address the underlying cause & it still is, but there are times when you need to get on with things, immediately.

It may seem contradictory but you can fake it through fear, just to get you doing a task. Telling yourself you can do it, acting as if, or JFDI are forms of faking it through fear that will get you moving.

The 5-second rule. Counting backwards from 5 to 1 and then immediately taking action is another way to get through fear.

I remind myself that fear and excitement feel the same in our body and I reframe my thoughts to being excited rather than fearful.

I have a number of other tools in my toolkit that work for overcoming fear and imposter syndrome. They are all tested & all backed by science.

Finally, I’d like you to join me in stamping out the idea that you can ‘fake it until you make it”. It’s contributing to burnout & damaging business.

 

Choi, H. M., Mohammad, A. A., and Kim, W. G. (2019). Understanding hotel frontline employees’ emotional intelligence, emotional labor, job stress, coping strategies and burnout. Int. J. Hospital. Manage. 82, 199–208.

Cox, James Luverne, “Emotional Labor: Surface Acting a Better Emotional Regulation Strategy for Dealers?” (2016). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2835.

Huyghebaert, T., Gillet, N., Fernet, C., Lahiani, F., Chevalier, S., & Fouquereau, E. (2017). Investigating the Longitudinal Effects of Surface Acting on Managers’ Functioning Through Psychological Needs. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 23, 207–222.

Sciotto G, Pace F. The Role of Surface Acting in the Relationship between Job Stressors, General Health and Need for Recovery Based on the Frequency of Interactions at Work. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Apr 15;19(8):4800. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19084800. PMID: 35457670; PMCID: PMC9024759.

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