All right, thanks everyone.
So as Katie said I'm David Whittaker and I spent about half my career teaching math,
which is something that made me think about confidence quite a bit and the other half
writing software and right now I work at Qualcomm and I'm a program manager and developer and
work on Node, Xpress, JS, that kind of stuff.
So let's talk about what we're going to cover today.
So I want to cover three main points.
First, you are not an imposter.
Second, feelings are not facts.
And third, I want to get over and break out of that self-doubt infinite loop.
So let's talk about some ways to do that.
Over four years ago, I was thinking about these thoughts, wondering what's happening
in my field, and where I fit in, and why I felt this way and so I made this really crude
diagram and it's not even aligned properly, but I just did it to help me understand my
own thoughts and it got a lot of traction and when Wil Wheaton retweeted it, I thought
I'd made it in the world.
I'm done.
So I kind of want to unpack this a little bit more, especially in the tech world, because
as we learn what's out there and the frameworks that are available and the new technology,
we know that the things that we don't know starts to get larger and larger.
And what I hope you'll leave with is it's the intersections of the things that you do
know and don't know, your inner perspective that brings you value.
Researchers tell us that about 70% of folks feel this way and I'd venture to guess that
in the tech world it's probably a lot more, because we're surrounded by smart people and
we are constantly bombarded with new thoughts and new ideas.
So let's look a little bit differently.
I like to think of confidence as on a spectrum and any given day we'll move back and forth
on this spectrum, depending on where we are in our lives and in our career.
So on the left here we have the, you know, very low confidence, my work's never good
enough.
Everyone knows more than I do.
I don't belong.
And on the right, we have the really high, maybe overly confident person, who's always
perfect and thinks they're smarter than everyone, and they should be the one in charge.
Now I want to talk about what reality is.
So the real competence, so if we have a mismatch here between the way -- the way you feel about
the world, your confidence in your work, and your actual competence, then there's a danger
here of what we're calling Imposter Syndrome.
Of course there could be a mismatch in the other connection, which is the Dunning Kruger
effect, where you're really highly confident but not really highly competent.
So today we're going to talk about this particular mismatch, where you have a low confidence
going into something, but really you are very competent, which I venture to guess most of
you are.
So some signs that we see here, you know, downplaying accomplishments, you're feeling
that everything you're doing that is successful is luck, you're not sure if you're good enough
to work here, everyone seems really smarter than me, this could all lead to some negative
impacts.
Your work suffers, you may even suffer physical things, like ulcers, back pain, migraines,
anxiety, relationship issues, all because of this fear and anxiety.
In 2011 Dr. Valerie Young, talked about five confidence types which I like to call personas
that kind of embody the different ways that Imposter Syndrome can manifest itself.
The first way we see here is this perfectionist.
Someone who sets extremely high expectations for themselves impossible to reach, and every
time they make a small mistake, they question their own competence.
The expert, someone who feels like they have to know everything complete all the details
before they'll even start a project, apply for a job or do anything, they're afraid to
ask questions, even, because asking questions might reveal a bit of their own incompetence.
The natural genius when they grow up, things came easy, so when things don't come easy,
feel like they are a failure, the soloist must do everything on their own and if I have
to ask for help, I'm not confident and finally the super human who feels like I really have
to compensate for my incompetence by working really hard around the clock.
So which one of these do you most relate to?
This is me.
At least at some point and I kind of move back and forth between these things.
So I want to talk a little bit about bias.
And bias is a lot like a colored lens that changes the inputs that we get from the real
world, and stores them in our brain in a different way than we actually received them.
But we don't know this happens.
And you see that red dot, the congruent belief, is something that is already consistent with
our current belief system, our current feelings.
That is fast-tracked right to the right, right into the brain, yes, I knew that was correct,
goes right over there.
The other ones take a little bit more time and when we get a congruent belief that makes
our belief system even bigger, even stronger.
This is called confirmation bias.
We'll even look for things that are consistent with our current beliefs.
And the confirmation bias will also take contradictory beliefs and just reject them completely.
We won't even bring them in as a proper input.
So I like this cartoon, it says, I love your work: Oh, they're family, they're supposed
to say that, oh, they're friends they have to say that, they're strangers, they have
to say that.
And when I saw this tweet, I like to read the comments and one person said, oh, you
missed a frame and so they created this frame.
This is confirmation bias, both sides of it, and really like their response.
So to compensate for this, what I want you to do is create a positive feedback board.
So any time you get some positive feedback, I know it may not register correctly, write
it down.
Put it on your wall, and just save it there for later.
You shouldn't expect other people to write these notes for you, but write them for yourself.
Just write your note, you did a great job on that project.
It doesn't how you feel about it on that point, just write it on your wall.
The next time you need a boost of confidence, look at your positive feedback board.
Next I want to talk about self-doubt.
Now, if you've ever seen the awkward Yeti, you'll note that all of their cartoons have
a brain and a heart.
So the brain is saying to the heart the feelings: Maybe it would be easier if we put this down.
So what I want to kind of talk about is that this self-doubt becomes this coping mechanism
that helps us deal with the fact that we may not be able to live up to this high standard
that we've set for ourselves.
And let's go through what happens with someone that has maybe a lower confidence.
First they're going to have some uneasy feeling.
They'll start to question themselves.
You know, I don't know what I'm doing here.
I don't know what I'm doing.
Do I belong?
I'm really not as smart as everyone else.
And that leads to this negative internal talk.
I'm not -- I'm an imposter, I'm probably going to fail at this.
I'm not good enough, I shouldn't even start, because I can't even do it right.
And even if the event leads to success, the success is discounted as luck.
And if there's failure, well, then the loop starts over again.
But let's look at someone with higher confidence, yes, they have self-doubt, yes they have uneasy
feelings and yes, they question themselves.
But here's how the difference happens: How they respond to this self-questioning.
This self-questioning is the key.
It means wait, I need to pay attention here.
It means something is wrong.
What can I do about it and what I do is I see this as an opportunity to learn.
I have a growth mind set.
I view this as a challenge, something that I can take on, I'm going to start researching,
gather evidence, ask questions.
I'm going to look at maybe there's a bias here and I'm going to try to break that bias,
I'm going to try to create some goals thinking maybe there's something I can do better here
and try to do it better next time.
They're OK with failure.
If you think about 0 us in the software world we always talk about fail fast.
They know if they fail fast, they'll learn from that opportunity and iterate and do it
better next time.
And if they do have success, they take it on, they accept it, they own it, they know
that this is something I did and they allow themselves to increase their own self-esteem
and their confidence will grow.
So very similar concepts.
A couple weeks ago, I was talking to a sky diver and there's no way I could ever do this.
If I ever saw land like that, there's no way, way too scared.
Falling is -- afraid of heights, afraid of falling, there's no way I could do this.
And what he said in response to that really stuck with me.
It's not that I no longer have fear, I just know how to manage it better.
That's the same with highly confident folks.
They still have fear, they just know how to manage it better.
So what I've done to help us move from maybe a lower confidence to a higher confidence,
is to create a growth mind set worksheet.
This is just some of the questions that you'll see on the worksheet.
This will help you journal and write about your thoughts and feelings.
Questions about what do you think is going to go well?
What do you think will go well?
How have you prepared yourself for this?
And there's a before something happens and an after something happens part of this journal.
You know, we used to say when we were a kid, I can draw, I can draw, give me a piece of
paper and then as we start learning about masterpieces and the complexity of art and
brushes and things like that, we start to say, well, I can't draw.
I can't draw.
But it's not that we can't draw.
You can draw if you want to.
It's just you need to practice, right?
So the right answer is, I can't draw well right now.
But I could if I wanted to.
And hopefully as you work through these things, you'll be more confident to deal with whatever
comes your way.
Tim Doherty this morning said concrete failure is better than just some unknown sense of
failure and I think that's what this worksheet does.
His talk was TDD.
That I know what the tests are, they're failing, I know what I need to fix.
Same here.
We have this unknown sense of failure, I don't know why, but I need to feel comfortable here.
This helps you understand your thoughts and really understand why you feel this way.
If you're an imposter.
No you're not, if you're an individual contributor, tell your imposter story.
This doesn't have to be on the channel here, but we do have a Slack channel during the
conference, tell somebody you're familiar with, tell them you're working through this
worksheet and you need their help.
Make sure you understand where your bias is, where your confirmation bias may be.
And of course, having a growth mind set is important, understanding that you can fail,
that's OK.
You can iterate.
And ask questions.
You know, not everyone is good at communicating knowledge.
And so it's important that you ask questions, asking questions is an important way to learn.
I mean think about little kids.
That's all they do is ask questions.
Understanding that you have to embrace this feeling of not knowing, and see it as an opportunity
to grow.
As we mentioned, keeping that positive feedback board, and own your successes.
These are yours.
I think it's important to also compliment other people.
When you see people that do know something more than you do, tell them I really admire
how much you know about that.
Can I learn from you?
And I think it's important for you to mentor others.
I've been a big brother in the Big Brother/Big Sister system, and I think that's extremely
valuable.
And then finally, as I kind of mentioned back when we did the tweet, define your unique
perspective, what is it about you, about your background, the things you know, your unique
combination of things that gives you value.
And if there are any leaders in this room I want to just mention a couple more points.
Tell your imposter story, especially to your directs, bounce credit back, don't take it
from your direct reports, make sure that you tell them that you appreciate their work.
And from time to time tell them exactly what it is that you appreciate that they bring
to the team.
Their expertise, ability to follow through, their motivation, or organization skills,
whatever it is, make sure you tell them because they're probably going to write it down on
a post-it note and put it on their board.
So let's see what we covered, you are not an imposter.
Feelings are not facts, and break out of this self-doubt loop.
And I have some resources here for you if you're interested in getting the slides later.
Thank you.
[applause]