If Tubi CEO Anjali Sud could tell her younger self one thing, it would be that “nobody’s got it figured out,” she said in a CNBC Changemakers interview that aired on May 1.
“I would always look up at people and be like, ‘They have all the answers and I don’t,'” Sud, 42, said. “Now, I just realize everybody’s trying their best based on the information they have, and nobody’s perfect and everybody has impostor syndrome.”
Sud learned to navigate that discomfort to achieve success, she said. A former Amazon and Vimeo executive, she took the helm of Fox Corp’s Tubi in 2023. The no-cost streaming app has since grown to more than 100 million monthly active users, according to the company.
Despite her accomplishments, Sud still feels impostor syndrome — the fear that people are overestimating your abilities — daily, she said. She’s far from alone: Nearly three-quarters of U.S. CEOs say they experience impostor syndrome, according to a Korn Ferry survey of about 400 executives, published in June 2024.
Feeling like a fraud can lead to crippling, unproductive self-doubt, some experts say — but in measured doses, impostor syndrome can be an asset to your success and a sign you’re destined for greatness, according to organizational psychologist Adam Grant.
“Impostor syndrome isn’t a disease. It’s a normal response to internalizing impossibly high standards” Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, posted on X in Sept. 2022. “Doubting yourself doesn’t mean you’re going to fail. It usually means you’re facing a new challenge and you’re going to learn.”
“Feeling uncertainty is a precursor to growth,” he added.
Other entrepreneurs have even dubbed impostor syndrome as an asset to their personal and their employees’ successes. Investor Barbara Corcoran seeks out people who can balance good ideas with self-doubt, because that insecurity pushes them to work harder and fill any gaps in their knowledge,
“The more successful someone is, the more self-doubt they have, because that’s what drives them,” Corcoran, 74, said at Fiverr’s Bridge the Gap webinar in March 2023. “I’ve never met a secure person who was a stellar star.”
Feeling like a fraud, in some ways, has worked to Sud’s advantage, too, she said in the CNBC Changemakers interview.
“I don’t think you can get over impostor syndrome,” she said. “I think the key is how do you take that piece of you that’s like, ‘This is hard, it’s challenging, it’s scary,’ and build a fearlessness around it and embrace that feeling and use it to push yourself forward.”
“Bet on yourself,” she added. You have just as much as a chance as anybody else to be able to make an impact.
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