For a long time, my work centered on impostor syndrome: that familiar experience of high achievers who feel, despite all evidence, like frauds.
I understand why. The problem is real. The pain is real. And for many people, just having a name for it brings relief.
But a name is not a solution.
And after years of working with engineers, executives, scientists, and leaders across industries, I’ve come to a clear conclusion: we have been misdiagnosing this thing from the beginning.
Impostor syndrome isn’t a confidence problem. It isn’t a mindset issue. It isn’t something you fix by thinking differently, although that does help.
It’s a performance problem, one that shows up at exactly the moment where it does the most damage.
The real villain isn’t doubt. It’s not Impostor Syndrome. It’s what Impostor Syndrome causes: Refusal.
Refusal is the split-second decision not to speak, not to act, not to step forward, even when you are fully capable of doing so. It looks like hesitation. It looks like over-preparation. It looks like staying quiet in the meeting when you have something important to say.
And over time, in organizations full of talented, qualified people, it looks like a leadership gap.
This is the problem I’ve spent years building a system to solve.
Now, I’m expanding my body of work under a new umbrella: The Propulsion Principle™.
The name comes from my background as a propulsion researcher at NASA. In aircraft and rocket propulsion, massive thrust isn’t created by massive effort. It’s created by small, precise inputs, applied at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right direction, using exactly the right fuel.
The same is true for human performance.
You don’t need a breakthrough. You don’t need a transformation. You need a nudge, a deliberate, well-timed action that tests whether the limit in front of you is even real.
Because most limits aren’t.
Limits are often just disguises for the real villain of Refusal.
- Refusing to believe data that says you’re qualified.
- Refusing to ask for help or advice.
- Refusing to start a challenge without 100% guarantee of success.
- Refusal to start a challenge without 100% elimination of all risks. Even preposterous ones.
- Refusal to finish a project because activity feels safer (and is less likely to be judged) than finality.
- Refusal to try something new because you fear it will change you. Or your relationships. Or your reputation. Or your comfort zone.
- Refusal to sit with the reality that there’s a chance you really don’t know everything. (Spoiler alert: nobody knows everything.)
- Refusal to believe that YOUR skills and abilities are unique and valuable.
- Refusal to acknowledge that you earned your success, and it’s not solely due to luck or timing or other circumstances out of your control.
The Propulsion Principle™ is not a motivational framework. It’s not a confidence-building program. It is an execution system, one that gives high performers a repeatable way to act under pressure, without waiting to feel ready.
Everything I create, including keynotes, workshops, virtual masterclasses, executive sessions, and assessments, now lives under this system. It is designed to produce one thing: measurable (even dramatic) change in how people perform at the moments that matter most.
If you’ve followed my work on impostor syndrome, you haven’t lost anything. You’ve gained a frame that’s more powerful, more precise, and more honest about what’s actually going on.
We were never solving a confidence problem.
We were always solving a performance problem.
But it starts with solving the decision problem.
Now we have the system to do it.
