You Are Great
Top musicians often feel they are not good enough — even when the audience is on its feet. The same is true of executives, only less visibly. Drawing on Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule, Ericsson's research, and Kevin Roberts's concept of *Lovemarks*, Bernhard Kerres argues that the right question for any professional is not *am I good enough* but *am I uniquely myself*.
Published 2020-12-08 by Bernhard Kerres
Musicians, especially, often have the feeling of not being good enough. I have seen the greatest stars come off stage after a tremendous concert with the house on its feet, looking worried and unhappy about their performance. They felt they were not good enough.
Today we have a name for that. The Imposter Syndrome is a psychological pattern in which a person doubts their skills, abilities, talents, and accomplishments, and lives with the fear of being found out as a fraud.
While the Imposter Syndrome is more visible in my practice with my musician clients, I see it just as often with my corporate clients. It is more hidden in executives and entrepreneurs than in musicians and scientists. It takes longer to surface and address with executives — especially male executives.
The pool of greatness
Musicians, particularly instrumentalists, have started making music in early childhood. Most have studied seriously and practiced for years before they were ten. By the time they enter music college or university, many have already accumulated more than 6,000 focused practice hours. That is close to the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, called the "magic number of greatness" — an idea derived from K. Anders Ericsson's research on expertise (Ericsson himself, it should be said, disputed that any single number captured what he actually meant).
The point stands. When musicians enroll in university, they have more focused practice hours behind them than almost anyone else starting university. Can you name an accountant, an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor who already worked full-time in their craft for four years before entering university?
So it is striking that I see facets of the Imposter Syndrome more often in my musical clients than in any other group.
The reason, I think, is what I call the pool of greatness. By their early twenties, musicians find themselves among colleagues who have all hit Gladwell's number. Other professions don't expose people to that kind of peer density until much later.
In contrast to sports, there is no objective measure of who is better in a pool of greatness — even if some musical competitions suggest otherwise. In sports, you can measure the speed of a run, the length of a jump, the number of goals. There are rank tables, leagues, championships. At any given moment, anyone can look up the world's best tennis player, the fastest Formula One driver, the athlete with the most Olympic medals.
Not so in music. Not in management. Not in most professions where the work is judgment.
Why the Imposter Syndrome lands so hard
Why is the Imposter Syndrome so prevalent among musicians and other top professionals who all sit in the pool of greatness? Probably because differentiation in that pool is so hard. A musician sees hundreds of equally outstanding colleagues around them and wonders how they could possibly compete against that.
The wrong question. The right question is what makes me unique.
When I co-wrote a career handbook for classical musicians (Be Your Own Manager), I came across Kevin Roberts's Lovemarks — the idea that a brand earns lasting loyalty not through technical superiority but through emotional connection, the kind of attachment that goes beyond reason. I wondered whether the concept applied to musicians. I now believe it is one of the strongest concepts I teach. Lovemarks asks what makes a brand — or a professional, or a leader — uniquely loved, not just uniquely skilled.
Once you have entered the pool of greatness — once your 10,000 hours are behind you — the question is no longer am I good enough? You have already qualified for the race. You have earned the seat at the table. There are no winners and no losers. There is only what makes you uniquely yourself.
The pianist focused on contemporary music, with new works being written for her, is not in competition with the pianist focused on Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn. They are doing different work. Both can be great. The musicians I have had the joy of working with — and the executives, founders, doctors, and lawyers — discover their own, deeply personal lovemarks. And in doing so, the question shifts.
It stops being am I good enough?
It becomes am I following my lovemark?
This is true for musicians. It is just as true for everyone else.
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If the work of finding your professional lovemark — what makes you uniquely valuable, not merely uniquely skilled — is something you are working on, that is the territory of much of my coaching practice. Reach me at bernhardkerres.com (https://book.bernhardkerres.com/meetings/).
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About the author
Bernhard Kerres trained as an opera singer before joining Booz Allen Hamilton as a strategy consultant, then moved into CFO and CEO roles at two listed European technology companies, and served from 2007 to 2013 as CEO and Artistic Director (Intendant) of the Wiener Konzerthaus. Today he works as a leadership coach, executive advisor, and keynote speaker. He is a PCC-certified ICF coach, holds an MBA from London Business School, and was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art. He is the founder of RolePlays.ai, an AI platform for practicing high-stakes leadership conversations.