I was asked to invite Dame Joanna Lumley and decline for breakfast Lady Antonia Fraser once.

My executive shared a private assistant with Harold Pinter and Gore Vidal. One of my tasks was to set up business breakfasts for clients and VIP guests. Gore Vidal agreed to do it, provided he could bring his partner. Harold Pinter turned it down, but Lady Antonia Fraser offered to step in instead. I was tasked with turning her down.

There wasn’t time to feel like an imposter. There wasn’t space to wonder if I belonged in this conversation. I simply had to represent my executive’s interests while somehow not offending one of Britain’s most respected authors and historians.

This is the unspoken reality of being an executive assistant. From day one, you’re expected to interact with people who intimidate you, manage situations you couldn’t possibly have been prepared for, and represent someone else’s authority with perfect confidence—regardless of how you actually feel inside.

The peculiar theatre of power

When I first came to the UK in 1995, a recruitment agency approached me about a job for very high-profile clients, running their private and business calendar. After several interviews, they finally disclosed that the job was for Sir Conrad Black, then owner of the Daily Telegraph. I was of particular interest because they wanted me to ghostwrite columns for his wife, the journalist and author Barbara Amiel.

I have a friend who moved to New York and slept on friends’ sofas until someone suggested a job she could do. She became Madonna’s personal chef until the first world tour. Unemployed once again, a friend suggested a “light writing job,” and she became Orson Welles’s last private secretary, a job she adored.

Another friend worked at the Pulitzer Hotel in Amsterdam, where she looked after celebrities. One day, she was briefed that a Middle-Eastern businessman was staying who was the owner of the hotel and had to be addressed as “Your Royal Highness.” In the next suite was a popular European pop star.

Our friend instantly mixed up HRH The Aga Khan (in a business suit) and Demis Roussos (in an exotic kaftan). Neither in the least objected to her confusion, addressing Demis as “royal highness” and the Aga Khan as “Sir.”

Our German-Greek friend Miron runs an IT support company that specialises in very high-profile and wealthy clients, including Oscar winners. I’ve sat at lunch parties in his rent-controlled ground floor flat on East 82nd Street in New York, casually eating sandwiches next to faces I’d previously only seen on cinema screens.

Many of his clients are elderly, famous, and simply in need of someone with extraordinary patience to help them with everyday technology problems. There’s something both surreal and humanising about these encounters, watching celebrated actors and Oscar-winning directors struggle with the same password issues and software updates that frustrate the rest of us.

These stories reveal something important about our profession that most literature on imposter syndrome entirely misses: the often arbitrary nature of access to power, and the sudden immersion in situations for which no one could reasonably have prepared you.

Beyond “fake it till you make it”

Most advice about imposter syndrome is woefully inadequate for executive assistants. “Just believe in yourself!” “Remember your achievements!” “Practice positive affirmations!”

This advice fundamentally misunderstands what it’s like to be thrust into situations where you’re representing someone important, and failure simply isn’t an option. You don’t have time to work through your feelings about meeting a celebrity or royal. You are there as the physical embodiment of your executive’s professional standards. End of story.

I had roles in which I was dealing with celebrities and royalty daily. From day one I was there to represent my boss, a high-profile executive with a very extensive network of connections. I was there to look the part, to be as polished and professional as befitted his position. There was no space for self-doubt.

The reality is that imposter syndrome in our profession isn’t just an internal psychological struggle. It’s often a practical reality created by the situations we’re thrust into. We’re frequently operating beyond our formal qualifications, social backgrounds or previous experience.

The question isn’t whether we feel like imposters; it’s how we navigate those feelings while still getting the job done impeccably.

The invisible emotional labour

This is the invisible emotional labour of our role that nobody prepares you for. You don’t learn how to decline Lady Antonia Fraser in EA training courses. There’s no handbook for managing the awkwardness of rejecting cultural icons while representing someone else’s interests.

Consider what’s actually happening in these moments: you’re being asked to exercise authority you haven’t earned personally, in contexts where you often lack the background knowledge that everyone else in the room takes for granted, while maintaining the appearance that this is all perfectly normal for you.

I once had to tell chef Gordon Ramsay at the last moment that my executive couldn’t attend his lunch booking because another commitment had taken priority. The truth was my executive just didn’t want to go. I had to make the rejection sound both regretful and final while preserving the relationship. I was sweating bullets through the entire phone call. And yes, chef Ramsay does personally come on the phone when you try to cancel a much-in-demand table.

This emotional pressure is often enormous and largely unacknowledged.

The absurdity as liberation

There’s something profoundly liberating about acknowledging this reality. The pressure to appear perfectly competent in these situations isn’t just coming from within us. It’s baked into the expectations of our role. We’re not failing at being naturally confident; we’re succeeding at managing an impossible transition with no preparation time.

What I’ve noticed throughout my career is how quickly these extraordinary encounters become normalised.

The first time you meet someone whose name appears in lights, it feels momentous. By the tenth time, it’s just Tuesday. This psychological adjustment – the ability to treat powerful people normally while still understanding the consequenceas of their power – is a peculiar cognitive skill that management support professionals develop without ever being taught. We learn to normalise the extraordinary while still respecting its significance.

Perhaps this is why so many executive assistants develop a certain resilience and adaptability that serves them well throughout their careers. When you’ve had to navigate these high-stakes encounters without warning, you develop a capacity to function effectively in the gap between feeling completely out of your depth and performing as though you belong.

I have several friends who have deliberately applied for jobs they knew would stretch them precisely because they’ve developed this capacity. One is now running a large operation on the New York Stock Exchange. The other is my flatmate, who has already achieved incredible heights in his career and is eager to go further all the time.

What they understood instinctively is that experiencing imposter syndrome isn’t always evidence that you don’t belong. Sometimes it’s simply the unavoidable consequence of growth and challenge.

Beyond the comfort zone

I understand why many management support professionals resist challenging roles. For decades, many of us have derived professional satisfaction and security from being the reliable person who takes immaculate notes, manages flawless documentation, and executes processes with perfect precision.

The thought of deliberately placing yourself in situations where you’ll feel out of your depth can feel like voluntarily surrendering your professional identity. I felt that resistance myself when I first moved into roles that required me to interact regularly with senior leaders and public figures.

But I’ve learned something crucial over my career: our value has never actually come from the tasks we execute with perfect confidence. It’s come from our understanding of how organisations really work: the informal connections, unwritten rules and human dynamics that no algorithm can fully grasp.

When I look back at my own career, my most valuable contributions weren’t the perfectly formatted documents or meticulously organised events. They were the moments when I saw patterns nobody else noticed, when I redesigned processes to make them more human and effective, and when I helped bridge gaps between formal systems and messy reality.

The way forward

If you’re a management support professional who recognises this tension between internal doubt and external demands for confidence, here are some thoughts that might help:

Recognise that the discomfort of imposter syndrome is often the feeling of growth. If you’re perfectly comfortable, you’re probably not stretching yourself enough.

Understand that most people in positions of power and influence are far less intimidating up close than they appear from a distance. Remember my friend who confused Demis Roussos and the Aga Khan and lived to tell the tale.

Appreciate that your role gives you a unique perspective on organisational dynamics that even the most senior leaders often lack. Your insights about how things actually work (versus how they’re supposed to work) are invaluable.

Remember that representing someone else’s authority effectively is a skill in itself, not a deception or pretence. You’re not claiming the authority is yours; you’re simply acting as its effective channel.

Most importantly, know that you’re not alone in this experience. Every executive assistant I know has had moments of feeling completely out of their depth while having to project perfect competence.

The gap between how we feel and how we must appear is part of what makes our profession both challenging and valuable. We don’t just support our executives and organisations. We allow them to function effectively in complex human systems that would otherwise break down.

That’s not imposter syndrome. That’s expertise.