Work & Finance

Are You An Imposter?

Why do some successful men self-destruct when they reach the top? Are they phony, hypomanic, or just plain scared?

Eliot Spitzer knows all about it. So does Bill Clinton...not to mention Clinton's former "damage control" specialist, Dick Morris. So does Hugh Grant. So does disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. Each is an example of a man who at the height of his power and influence executed a stupefying display of self-destruction.

And while each of these men has endured a memorable public embarrassment, perhaps nobody is as familiar with career suicide as an otherwise successful football coach named Mike Price. It was April 16, 2003, and Price-a steady, 57-year-old husband and father of three-decided to cut loose. He'd worked hard, and he was being rewarded for it. After a career as head football coach at Washington State University, he'd been handed the ultimate career bonus: the head coaching job at the University of Alabama, home of one of America's most legendary collegiate-sports programs, with a salary of more than $1 million a year.

But on this April afternoon, Price wasn't working. Instead, he was in Pensacola, Florida, for a pro-am golf tournament when he happened into a topless club there called Arety's Angels. Before his little field trip was over, the tumblers of career destruction would be set into motion, abetted by the Internet and its silent assassin's chatter.

Within weeks, Price—and by extension the entire Crimson Tide football program—was in national disgrace. There were rumors that he fondled and propositioned women at the joint, that two women from Arety's later met Price at his hotel room, that Price lost his Visa card while he was in the company of these visitors, that almost $1,000 in room service was ordered, and that during an "aggressive threesome"-in an especially theatrical touch-the women chanted "Roll Tide" to arouse the coach.

Then, after a fleeting 5-month tenure as Alabama's head coach, Mike Price was fired, having never enjoyed a Tuscaloosa game day.

At the root of the fall
Career self-sabotage used to be thought of as a problem almost exclusively affecting high-achieving women who believed much of their success was attributable to luck, fate, or trickery, not to skill or intelligence. Now it is recognized more among men, especially men who've attained their life goals. And it doesn't happen only to big-time coaches, movie stars, and political leaders. It can also happen to that guy who works down the hall in corporate sales. Remember Charlie? He was top salesman 8 years in a row, gobbled up all those incentive trips to Hawaii, had the great wife and kids, and was promoted to VP. Then he endured a bad couple of quarters, and his world began to fall apart: There was suddenly something about sexual harassment, overstating sales figures, kickbacks-and then he was gone. A career suicide.

"It crosses into every profession," says Gerri King, Ph.D., a social psychologist and expert on the subject. "And it's often laid at the feet of something called the impostor syndrome. Basically, it stems from two things: The first is low self-esteem, and the second is the idea that positive change is as stressful as negative change, because with every gain, there is also a loss."