How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit

Have you ever doubted your abilities, feared you were going to be discovered as a "fraud"? That's called "impostor syndrome," and you're definitely not alone in feeling it, says entrepreneur and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes. In this funny, relatable talk, he shares how his own experiences of impostor syndrome helped pave the way to his success -- and shows how you can use it to your advantage, too.

So I've experienced
a lot of success in my life.

Over a decade ago,

I started a business straight out of uni
with my mate, Scott.

Now, having no prior business experience

and not really any grand plan --

in fact, our goals when we started were
not to have to get a real job

(Laughter)

and to not have to wear
a suit to work every day.

Check and check.

(Laughter)

Today, we have thousands
of amazing employees,

and millions of people use
our software around the planet.

And technically, even outside the planet,

if you count those that are currently
on their way to Mars.

So you'd think that I know
what I'm doing every day

when I go to work.

Well, let me let you in on something:

most days, I still feel like
I often don't know what I'm doing.

I've felt that way for 15 years,

and I've since learned that feeling
is called "impostor syndrome."

Have you ever felt out of your depth,

like a fraud,

and just kind of guessed/bullshitted
your way through the situation --

(Laughter)

petrified that anytime,

someone was going to call you on it?

Well, I can think of many examples
where I felt like this.

Interviewing our first HR manager,

having never worked in a company
that had an HR department --

(Laughter)

terrified as I walked into the interview,

thinking, "What am I going
to ask this person?"

Or attending board meetings
in a T-shirt surrounded by suits,

and acronyms are flying around,

feeling like a five-year-old

as I surreptitiously write
them down in my notebook,

so I can look them up on Wikipedia
when I get home later.

(Laughter)

Or, in the early days,

when people would call up
and ask for accounts payable,

I would freeze and think, "Wait,
are they asking for money

or giving it to us?"

(Laughter)

And I would cover the phone,

cover the mouthpiece of the phone,

and say, "Scott, you're in accounts,"

and pass it across.

(Laughter)

We both did a lot of jobs back then.

So for me, impostor syndrome is a feeling
of being well, well out of your depth,

yet already entrenched in the situation.

Internally, you know you're not
skilled enough, experienced enough

or qualified enough
to justify being there,

yet you are there,

and you have to figure a way out,

because you can't just get out.

It's not a fear of failure,

and it's not a fear
of being unable to do it.

It's more a sensation
of getting away with something,

a fear of being discovered,

that at any time, someone
is going to figure this out.

And if they did figure it out,

you'd honestly think, "Well,
that's fair enough, actually."

(Laughter)

One of my favorite writers,
Neil Gaiman, put it so beautifully

in a commencement address he gave
at a university, called "Make Good Art."

I want to make sure
I get his quote correct.

"I was convinced that there would be
a knock on the door,

and a man with a clipboard would be there
to tell me that it was all over,

that they'd caught up with me,

and that I would now have to go
and get a real job."

Now, when there's a knock on my door,

I still feel like some sort of dark-suited
clipboard man is going to be there

to tell me that my time is kind of up.

And being a crap cook,

I'm quite relieved when it's just
someone with a pizza for the kids.

(Laughter)

But it's important to note
that it's not all bad.

There's a lot of goodness,
I think, in those feelings.

And this isn't some sort of
motivational-poster type talk,

a "Begin it now."

It's more of an introspection into
my own experiences of impostor syndrome,

and how I've tried
to learn to harness them

and turn them into some sort
of a force for good.

And a great example of those experiences

is in the early days
of Atlassian's history.

We were about four years old,
and we had about 70 employees.

And at the advice of our auditors --

most good stories start
with advice from an auditor --

(Laughter)

we entered the New South Wales
Entrepreneur of the Year competition.

Now, we were surprised when we won

the New South Wales
Entrepreneur of the Year

in the young category
for entrepreneurs under 40.

There were eight categories.

And so surprised, in fact,

having looked at the list of people
we were up against,

I didn't even turn up
to the awards ceremony.

So Scott collected the gong by himself.

And then we traveled off
to the national awards.

I thought I should probably
turn up to those.

So we rented some suits,

I invited a girl that I had just met --

we'll get to her in a second --

(Laughter)

and off we went to the big black-tie gala.

Now, our surprise turned to shock

in the first award of the night,
the young category,

when we beat all of the other states

and won the Australian
Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

When the shock had worn off,

we got a lot of champagne to the table
and the party began,

and the night was surely over.

We were having a royally great time.

Fast-forward to the last
award of the night,

and our shock turned
into everybody's shock

when we won the Australian
Entrepreneur of the Year

against all of the other categories.

Now, so shocked was
everybody else, in fact,

that the announcer,
the CEO of Ernst and Young,

opened the envelope,

and the first words out of his mouth
were, "Oh my God."

(Laughter)

And then he reset himself
and announced that we had won.

(Laughter)

So we knew we were in way too deep.

And from there,
the water got a lot deeper,

because we jetted off to Monte Carlo

to represent Australia
in the World Entrepreneur of the Year

against 40 other different countries.

Now, in another rented suit,
I was at one of the dinners

and sitting next to a lovely man
called Belmiro de Azevedo,

who was the winner from Portugal.

Total champion.

At 65, he had been running
his business for 40 years.

He had 30,000 employees.

Don't forget, at the time, we had 70.

And he had four billion euro in turnover.

And after a couple of wines,

I remember admitting to him that I felt
that we did not deserve to be there,

that we were well out of our depth,

and at some time, someone
was going to figure this out

and send us home to Australia.

And he, I remember,
just paused and looked at me

and said that he felt exactly the same way

and that he suspected all the winners
were feeling that way,

and that despite not knowing Scott or I
or really anything about technology,

he said that we were obviously
doing something right

and should probably just keep going.

(Laughter)

Now, this was a pretty big
light bulb moment for me for two reasons.

One, I realized that
other people felt this as well.

And two, I realized it doesn't go away
with any form of success.

I had assumed that successful people
didn't feel like frauds,

and I now know that the opposite
is more likely to be true.

And this isn't just a feeling
that I have at work.

It happens in my personal life, too.

In the early days,

I was flying back and forth
to San Francisco every week for Atlassian,

and I racked up a lot
of frequent flyer points

and got access to
the Qantas business lounge.

Now, if there's ever a place
that I don't belong ...

(Laughter)

It doesn't help when I walk in and they
generally look at me in shorts and jeans,

or jeans and a T-shirt, and say,
"Can I help you, son? Are you lost?"

But anyway, sometimes life
happens in the Qantas lounge

when you'd least expect it.

One morning, over a decade ago,

I was sitting there on
my regularly weekly commute,

and a beautiful woman
from way out of my league

walked into the Qantas lounge
and continued walking straight up to me

in a case of mistaken identity.

She thought I was someone else,

so in this case, I actually
was an impostor.

(Laughter)

But rather than freeze
as I would have historically done

or chivalrously maybe
informed her of her error,

I just tried to keep
the conversation going.

(Laughter)

And classic Australian bullshit
became some sort of forward movement

and a phone number.

And I took that girl to the awards
ceremony a couple of months later.

And more than a decade later,

I'm incredibly happy
that she is now my wife,

and we have four amazing
children together.

(Applause)

But you'd think that when
I wake up every morning,

I wouldn't roll over and look at her
and think, "She's going to say,

'Who are you, and who gave you
that side of the bed?'

(Laughter)

'Get out of here.'"

But she doesn't.

And I think she sometimes
feels the same way.

And apparently, that's one of the reasons

that we'll likely have
a successful marriage.

You see, in researching this talk,

I learned that one of the attributes
of the most successful relationships

is when both partners
feel out of their league.

They feel that their partner
is out of their league.

They feel like impostors.

And if they don't freeze,
and they're thankful,

and they work harder and they stretch
to be the best partner they can,

it's likely to be a very
successful relationship.

So if you have this feeling, don't freeze.

Try to keep the conversation going,

even if she thinks that you're
somebody that you're not.

Now, feeling like, or people
thinking I'm someone I'm not

actually happens quite frequently.

A great example from my more recent past,

a few months ago, I was up
late at night with one of my kids,

and I saw something on Twitter

about Tesla saying that they could solve

South Australia's rolling
series of power crises

with one of their large
industrial batteries.

Without thinking,
I fired off a bunch of tweets,

challenging them and saying
were they really serious about this.

And in doing so, I managed
to kick a very small rock

off a very big hill

that turned into an avalanche that I
found myself tumbling in the middle of.

Because you see, a few hours later,
Elon tweeted me back and said

that they were deadly serious,

that within a hundred days
of contract signing,

they could install
a 100-megawatt-hour facility,

which is a giant battery
of a world-class size,

one of the biggest
ever made on the planet.

And that's when all hell
really broke loose.

Within 24 hours, I had
every major media outlet

texting and emailing and trying
to get in contact with me

to get opinion as some sort of
"expert" in energy.

(Laughter)

Now, at the time, I couldn't really
have told you the difference

between a one-and-a-half-volt AA battery
that goes in my kids' toys

and a 100-megawatt-hour
industrial-scale battery facility

that goes in South Australia

that could potentially
solve their power crisis.

I was now feeling a chronic case
of impostor syndrome,

(Laughter)

and it got truly bizarre.

And I remember thinking to myself,

"Shit. I've kind of started something here
and I can't really get out.

If I abandon the situation,

I'm going to sort of set back
renewables in Australia

and maybe just look like a complete idiot

because of my idiocy on Twitter."

So I thought the only thing I could do

was to try not to freeze
and to try to learn.

So I spent a week

trying to learn everything I could
about industrial-scale batteries

and the electricity grid and renewables
and the economics of all of this

and whether this was even
a feasible proposal.

I talked to the chief scientist,
I talked to the CSIRO,

had multiple ministers and premiers
trying to give me their side of the story

from both sides of the aisle.

I managed to exchange
tweets with the prime minister.

I even managed to pull off
a passing impression, let's say,

of an energy expert on ABC Lateline.

(Laughter)

But as a result of all this,

South Australia did put out
a battery tender,

and they had more than 90 applications
for that battery tender.

And the national conversation
over a period of a few months

moved from the sort of theatrical
lumps of coal in the parliament

to discussing kind of which
industrial-scale battery chemistry

was the best for building
large-scale renewable batteries.

So I think that the important lesson
is by that time in my life,

I knew well that I was an impostor.

I knew I was miles out of my depth.

But instead of freezing,
I tried to learn as much as I could,

motivated by my fear
of generally looking like an idiot,

and tried to turn that
into some sort of a force for good.

So one of the things I've learned

is that people think successful people
don't feel like frauds.

But I think, especially
knowing a lot of entrepreneurs,

the opposite is more likely to be true.

But the most successful people I know
don't question themselves,

but they do heavily question,
regularly question, their ideas

and their knowledge.

They know when the water is way too deep,

and they're not afraid to ask for advice.

They don't see that as a bad thing.

And they use that advice
to hone those ideas, to improve them

and to learn.

And it's OK to be
out of your depth sometimes.

I'm frequently out of my depth.

It's OK to be out of your depth.

It's OK to be in a situation where
you just can't push the eject button,

so long as you don't freeze,

so long as you harness the situation,
don't be paralyzed

and try to turn it into
some sort of a force for good.

And it's important
that I say "harness" here,

because this isn't sort of
pop-psychology BS

about conquering impostor syndrome for me.

It's merely about being aware of it.

In fact, I'm extremely aware
of feeling like an impostor right now,

as I'm up here, some sort of pseudo-expert

on a feeling that I couldn't even
put a name to a few months ago,

when I agreed to do this talk.

Which, if you think about it,
is kind of the point, isn't it?

(Laughter)

Thank you.

(Applause)