Imposter Syndrome Outlasts the Promotion: What 9 Leaders on Record Did About It

The promotion went out on Monday, and by Wednesday you are in your first leadership meeting waiting for someone to spot the mistake. Leaders who have described the feeling on record show how to overcome imposter syndrome in a new role. They prepared harder, checked the feeling against evidence and took the job on anyway.

Our newsroom read what CEOs, founders and senior leaders have said about feeling like a fraud, in published interviews, podcasts, speeches and their own columns, and counted the 9 who used impostor or fraud language about themselves. For each one we recorded when the feeling hit and what, in their own words, helped. Every row in the table below links to its source.

What We Found

Of 9 CEOs, founders and senior leaders who described feeling like an impostor or a fraud in their own words, 5 said it was still with them years on, and 5 of the 6 who said what helped named preparation.

Four of the 9 place the feeling at the start of their careers or their companies. Two tied it to a new role. Two describe it as a constant companion that no single event set off, and one felt it while scaling a company after a large raise.

Six of the 9 say what helped them. Five of those six name some form of preparation: research, learning the job quickly, building the skills the role demands. Two describe checking the feeling against facts, and two say it eased when they learned that people they respected felt the same way.

Read together, the accounts look less like cures and more like working routines for doing the job while the feeling is still there.

What Is Imposter Syndrome?

Imposter syndrome is the sense that your success is undeserved and that others will find you out. Psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes named it the impostor phenomenon in 1978, describing “an internal experience of intellectual phoniness” among high achieving women. The original paper treats it as a pattern of experience rather than a diagnosis.

Their paper, published in Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, drew on work with “over 150 highly successful women”, and it states that the women who showed the pattern “do not fall into any one diagnostic category”. Clance and Imes first saw it as mainly a women’s experience. Later research found men can feel it too, a point CBS News made when Michelle Obama spoke about the feeling at a London school in 2018.

We use the everyday term in this article, and we make no clinical claim about anyone in our sample. The leaders below describe a feeling in their own words. That is all we counted.

Who Said It, and When

The table lists all 9, with the shortest exact quote we could find and the moment each person ties the feeling to. “Not stated” means the source does not say what helped.

Leader	Role	In their words	When it hit	What helped	Source
Mike Cannon-Brookes	Co-founder and co-CEO, Atlassian	“most days, I still feel like I often don’t know what I’m doing.”	Founding the company; boards and awards	Learning others felt it; trying “to learn”	TEDxSydney transcript, 2017
Mandela S.H. Dixon	Founder, Founder Gym	“That awareness fueled my impostor syndrome”	Early on as a founder	Not stated	CNBC, 2020
Scott Galloway	NYU Stern professor, serial entrepreneur	“I fooled them getting a job at Morgan Stanley.”	Early career	Not stated	Fortune, 2025
Sheryl Sandberg	COO, Facebook (at the time)	“There are still days I wake up feeling like a fraud”	Ongoing	Not stated	Forbes, 2014
Jason Cohen	Founder, Smart Bear	“I felt like a fraud every day.”	Founding the company	Checking the evidence	A Smart Bear, 2010
Jacinda Ardern	Former Prime Minister of New Zealand	“I will never lose it. It doesn’t go away.”	Taking on something new	Preparation, research, experts	Forbes Australia, 2026
Mark Arian	CEO, Korn Ferry Consulting	“I have felt like an imposter in that regard early in my tenure.”	New role	Building the skills the job needs	Korn Ferry podcast, 2024
Jason Saltzman	Co-founder and CEO, Relief	“I feel like a total and complete fraud. A hack. An imposter.”	Ongoing	Learning what he lacks, fast	Inc., 2019
David Politis	Led BetterCloud, by his own account	“Am I equipped to run this kind of company?”	Scaling after a large raise	Meeting 100 customers; public speaking training	Not Another CEO, 2026

Cannon-Brookes appears under two moments. He tied it both to founding Atlassian straight out of university and to board meetings and awards, which is why the “when” counts add up to 10 rather than 9.

Why Does Imposter Syndrome Hit After a Promotion?

A promotion puts you in rooms where you are the least experienced person and the stakes are public. In a KPMG survey of senior women executives at Fortune 1000 companies, 57 percent said they experienced imposter syndrome when they took on a new leadership role or rose to the executive level.

The same KPMG report found that as much as 75 percent of the female executives it surveyed had personally experienced imposter syndrome at some point. Men at the top report it too. Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2024 analysis found that 71 percent of US CEOs say they feel like imposters, and that 65 percent of senior executives report the feeling against 33 percent of early-stage professionals.

On Korn Ferry’s figures, the feeling is about twice as common at the senior end as at the junior end, so a promotion moves you into the group where it is most often reported.

The two people in our sample who tied it to a new role describe the same mechanism. Mark Arian, CEO of Korn Ferry Consulting, told the firm’s podcast he had felt like an imposter “early in my tenure”, when the task was getting up to speed on a large consulting business.

Jacinda Ardern linked the feeling to moments when she was stretching herself and to being asked to take on something new. Two leaders outside our count, who described the doubt without the label, tell the same story. Tricia Sciortino wrote in Inc. that stepping into a CEO role brought the old voice back: “Same fear, bigger title, higher stakes.” Sophie Attwood, founder of SA Communications, described her first leadership role as “sitting in the board meetings constantly second guessing myself”.

Each of them describes the same gap, between the job they now held and the experience they felt they had for it.

Korn Ferry’s Kevin Cashman told the firm that a little of the feeling is no bad sign: “You want leaders to be both confident and humble.”

How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome in a New Role

The methods below are how to overcome imposter syndrome according to the six leaders in our count who said what helped, with a few habits from leaders outside it. They are in the order of how often they were named, and each one is something you can start this week.

Prepare more than feels necessary. This is the most common answer in the data, from five of the six. Ardern told Forbes Australia that the feeling “drove a useful set of behaviours” and described them: “I would prepare. I’d do my research. I would talk to experts and advisors.” At Yale in 2025 she told graduates, according to Newstalk ZB, that the doubt “drives you to seek information, to listen to experts who can teach you”.

Jason Saltzman’s version is blunter. When he meets something he does not know, his rule is “I’m sure as hell gonna know it by the end of the week.” David Politis, writing about running BetterCloud, said the doubt about his public speaking “forced me to get much better at public speaking.”

For a new manager, preparation usually means the vocabulary of the role. Our guides to leadership theories and transactional leadership cover the frameworks your new peers will assume you know. An AI assistant can brief you on an unfamiliar market in an evening, and our comparison of the best ChatGPT alternative tools covers which ones to try. If the gap is a formal qualification, our guide to online universities for working adults compares the accredited options.

Check the feeling against the evidence. Two of the six describe some version of this. Jason Cohen, who founded Smart Bear, wrote that he “felt like a fraud every day” in the company’s early years. Looking back, he concluded: “Objectively, and with hindsight, my feelings were misplaced.” His customers had told him the tool saved them time.

Politis did the same thing on purpose. Feeling out of touch, he set out to “meet with 100 customers in 100 days”, and later found his team had not been doubting him at all: “it was the imposter syndrome talking.” Sciortino, outside our count, turns it into a rule: “I’ve just stopped treating its opinion as fact.”

A written record makes this easier. Kevin Cokley of UT Austin told CBS News he suggests keeping “a journal where you keep track of your accomplishments”. When the feeling says you have achieved nothing, the record answers it. Our review of The Art of Thinking Clearly covers the wider habit of catching a judgement your mind has made before the facts were in.

Find out who else feels it. Two of the six say the feeling eased when they learned that people they respected had it too. Dynamic Business reported that at the 2006 World Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, another winner told Mike Cannon-Brookes he felt the same and suspected all the winners did. Cannon-Brookes called it a lightbulb moment.

Ardern first heard the term from a teacher she admired. Learning that someone she respected felt the same led her to think, as she told 1News in 2020, “maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about feeling like that.” In practice, this means asking one senior person you trust how their first year in the role went. With 71 percent of US CEOs reporting the feeling in Korn Ferry’s data, the odds of a useful answer are good.

Say yes, then speak up. Two leaders outside our count describe acting before the feeling settles. Sciortino said yes to responsibility she did not feel ready for. Inga Beale, the first female CEO of Lloyd’s of London, told ESCP Business School that walking into a large industry event can still make her think “what am I doing here?” Her answer has been to encourage herself “to have the courage to speak up”, ask questions and take part.

Build the team around the gaps. Barbara Corcoran, also outside our count, partners with people whose skills balance her weaknesses, and she pictured the person she wanted to become, which she told CNBC gave her “a roadmap”. In a new role, that means hiring and handing work to people who are better than you at the parts you are unsure of. Our guide on how to delegate covers how to hand work over without hovering.

Does Imposter Syndrome Ever Go Away?

For most of the leaders we counted, it has not. Five of the 9 described the feeling in the present tense, years into senior careers. Mike Cannon-Brookes said in 2017 that he had felt that way for 15 years. Jacinda Ardern said in 2026, “I will never lose it.” What changed for them was how much say the feeling got.

Sheryl Sandberg, then chief operating officer of Facebook, told Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, authors of The Confidence Code, as Forbes reported in 2014: “There are still days I wake up feeling like a fraud, not sure I should be where I am.” Two leaders outside our count say something similar. ESCP described Beale as “still challenged with on occasion” despite decades of experience. Corcoran still wonders whether the 2001 sale of her firm for $66 million was “a fluke, a lucky break”.

Several leaders treat the feeling as fuel. Corcoran told CNBC that people who feel like impostors work twice as hard, calling it “the great upside to feeling like you’re an impostor.” Ardern told the Yale graduates that imposter syndrome is “also your curiosity and your humility.” Sciortino wrote that the doubt “still shows up before hard calls”, and that it no longer decides them.

So when you think about how to overcome imposter syndrome, a realistic goal for your first year is a feeling that turns up and gets overruled, rather than one that disappears. Sleep and exercise are worth protecting in that first year, and our guides to whether women need more sleep than men, a morning exercise routine and the morning routines of successful people cover the hours around the job. Our piece on stress tolerance covers how people build the capacity to carry pressure without being run by it.

What to Do in Your First Month in the Job

Turn the data into a plan. In week one, write down the three parts of the role you feel least ready for, and book time to learn each one. That is the preparation habit named by five of the six leaders in our count who said what helped.

In week two, start a plain record of decisions you made and how they turned out. Read it back at the end of the month, the way Cohen and Politis checked their feelings against what customers said.

In week three, ask one person who has held a similar role how their first year went. Then say yes to one thing that scares you, and ask one question in a room where you feel out of place. Beale’s courage to speak up is a behaviour you can practise.

Use the month to settle the direction of your team as well. A clear purpose gives you something to measure your decisions against other than your nerves, and our guide to writing a business mission statement works for a department as well as a company. If you prepare by reading, our list of Elon Musk books is one reading list for a leader teaching themselves a new field.

A promotion also brings paperwork that has nothing to do with confidence: a higher salary, perhaps a new retirement plan and a bonus to place. Get it done early so it stops taking up attention. Our guides to IRA vs 401k and Roth vs traditional IRA cover where the extra money can go. Four people in our sample felt it most while starting out or starting a company. If founding is your next step, our guide to sole proprietorship vs LLC covers the first legal decision.

Three Leaders Who Refuse the Label

Our search also turned up three leaders who reject the term outright, and we left them out of the count of 9. Sallie Krawcheck, founder and CEO of Ellevest, told Fortune: “My rule is I do not do impostor syndrome.” She added that she has her “most fun when I’m a little bit out over my skis.”

Emma Grede, co-founder and CEO of Good American, told the Nice Talk podcast, as reported by Marie Claire: “I don’t believe in imposter syndrome.” Steven Bartlett, speaking about joining Dragons’ Den at 28, told BusinessCloud that the phrase “can lead you to a conclusion that you’re not worthy of holding that seat.”

Bartlett still described himself as “wildly inexperienced”, and said he looks for “the reason why I’m sat there”. For a new leader who spends a lot of energy managing how others see her, our piece on how to stop being a people pleaser covers a related habit worth breaking.

How We Did This

On 31 October 2026 our newsroom compiled 9 CEOs, founders and senior leaders who have described feeling like an impostor or a fraud in published interviews, podcast transcripts, speeches and their own columns and newsletters. We counted a person only when a page we fetched carried their own words applying impostor, imposter or fraud language, or the idea of having fooled people, to themselves. For each, we coded when it hit and what they said helped, allowing more than one category, and recorded “not stated” where the source was silent. We excluded actors, athletes and writers, three leaders who reject the label, leaders whose quotes described self-doubt without that language or whose impostor label came only from the writer (six of them are quoted elsewhere in this article), and pages that would not load or were blocked, including New York Times interviews with Howard Schultz and Sonia Sotomayor. The sample is small and self-selected, since these are people willing to talk about it. The full dataset is available on request.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is imposter syndrome a mental illness?

Clance and Imes described the impostor phenomenon as an internal experience, and wrote that the women they studied did not fall into any one diagnostic category. We make no clinical claim about it. If the feeling is affecting your sleep, health or work, talk to a doctor or a licensed psychologist.

How common is imposter syndrome among CEOs?

Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2024 analysis found that 71 percent of US CEOs say they feel like imposters. KPMG found that as much as 75 percent of the female executives it surveyed had experienced it, and 57 percent felt it on taking a new leadership role or reaching the executive level.

How long does imposter syndrome last after a promotion?

None of our sources gives a timeline. Five of the 9 leaders we counted described the feeling in the present tense years into their careers. What they describe changing is their response: more preparation, checking the feeling against facts, and learning that people they respect feel it too.

Prepare for the new role, keep a record of what you get right, and say yes to the next stretch before you feel ready for it.