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TED - How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit | Mike Cannon-Brookes

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Author: TED
Categories: Psychology Education Business
Tags: psychology, education, business
Views: 3 · Last viewed: 2026-10-13 10:55 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Don't freeze when you feel out of your depth; stay in the conversation, learn as fast as you can, and turn the discomfort into motivation to improve. Mike Cannon-Brookes argues that impostor syndrome never fully goes away, even with success, and that being aware of it can drive better work and better decisions rather than paralysis.

Key Points

  • Impostor syndrome, as Cannon-Brookes defines it, is feeling well out of your depth yet already entrenched in a situation, knowing you lack the skill or qualifications to be there but unable to simply leave. He frames it as a fear of being discovered rather than a fear of failure.
  • Successful people are not free of the feeling; a 65-year-old Portuguese entrepreneur with 30,000 employees told him he felt the same way and suspected all the winners did too.
  • Cannon-Brookes's own examples include interviewing a first HR manager, sitting through board meetings full of acronyms, and winning national entrepreneur awards while feeling undeserving.
  • The feeling can be useful: when he faced a public challenge to Tesla over South Australia's power crisis, he chose to learn intensively about industrial batteries, grids, and renewables rather than retreat.
  • He also argues that people who question their own ideas and seek advice, rather than assuming they know everything, are typically the most successful.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions: When you feel out of your depth, don't freeze; keep the conversation going and learn as much as you can about the situation. Question your own ideas and knowledge regularly, and ask for advice rather than treating it as a weakness. Harness the discomfort as motivation rather than becoming paralyzed, and stay aware of the feeling without trying to fully conquer it. Cannon-Brookes also suggests that being out of your depth is acceptable so long as you are not paralyzed by it.
  • In the Tesla episode, he spent a week researching industrial-scale batteries, the electricity grid, renewables, and project economics, and consulted the CSIRO's chief scientist, several ministers and premiers, and the Prime Minister's office via tweets.
  • The outcome: South Australia issued a battery tender that drew more than 90 applications, and the national conversation shifted toward which battery chemistry was best for large-scale renewable storage.
  • His awards story: Atlassian was about four years old with roughly 70 employees when it won the New South Wales Entrepreneur of the Year (young category), then the Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the overall Australian Entrepreneur of the Year, before representing Australia at the World Entrepreneur of the Year in Monte Carlo against 40 other countries.
  • He notes that in successful relationships both partners often feel out of their league, and that staying in the conversation rather than freezing led to his marriage to a woman he met in a lounge.

Bottom Line

Feeling like an impostor is not a sign you should quit; it is a signal to learn, ask questions, and stay engaged, since the most capable people tend to feel it too.