Pam Sherman: Author of Play You

Episode 828

On today’s episode, I welcome Pam Sherman, Author of the new book Play You: The Role of a Lifetime — Bridge the Believability Gap to Boost Confidence, Connection, and Impact. Pam is an actor, leadership consultant, and President of The ShermanEDGE who has spent her career helping leaders ignite audiences with who they truly are. A former lawyer turned professional actor — a transition profiled in People Magazine — Pam now works with Fortune 50 companies and global leadership organizations, including YPO, EO, and Vistage, guiding leaders to communicate with greater authenticity and impact.
In Play You, Pam introduces the concept of the “Believability Gap” — the space between who we are and how we show up. Drawing on techniques from the stage, she reveals how acting tools can help leaders embody their core character more fully, strengthen confidence, and connect more powerfully with teams and audiences. The book challenges the common belief that authenticity alone is enough, showing instead that believability — the ability to truly inhabit your message — is what drives influence and trust.
In this episode, Pam shares how her unconventional journey shaped her leadership philosophy, why storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have, and how small shifts in presence can dramatically change the way others experience us. We discuss overcoming self-doubt, navigating toxic cultures, breaking the “fourth wall” in everyday communication, and how teams can collaborate more effectively when individuals close their believability gap. A compelling conversation for founders, leaders, and anyone ready to step into their own role of a lifetime.
Whether you’re looking to boost confidence, reconnect with your purpose, or increase your impact, this episode offers practical tools and inspiration to help you “play you” more fully — starting now. Don’t miss it!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be, we just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show today, I’m joined by Pam Sherman, who is not only a leadership consultant, president of the Sherman edge, actor, former attorney and now author of the brand new book, Play You the role of a lifetime, bridge the believability gap to boost confidence. Connection and impact, we’ll call it, Play You. Pam’s journey is nothing but conventional, as I mentioned, a former attorney turned professional actor transition that earned her a feature in People magazine. She has spent years mastering what it means to step into a role with presence and truth, and today, she brings that same expertise to leaders around the world, helping them ignite audiences, connect more deeply and find their edge, explore, dream, grow and excite. So her book, Play You introduces a very powerful concept which I cannot wait to get into, called the believability gap, the space between who we are and how we show up. So we all need this. All need to read this book, but I am so excited to have her here today on the launch, or pretty much the launch of play. You so very excited. And Pam Sherman, thank you so much for coming on the Kara Goldin show.

Pam Sherman 2:16
Thank you so much, Kara. It’s great. It’s great to hear somebody else describe you, right? You know, it’s like, oh, wow, I really believe in that person. I love hearing about that person, and then you have to integrate it and make it all part of you. But I can’t thank you enough for describing my journey and my mission

Kara Goldin 2:35
totally well. I’m so excited. And I love, love, love the book. I was lucky enough to get a pre copy of it, so I devoured it, and absolutely love what you’re speaking about. So Play You. How do you describe the core idea behind the book? It’s so interesting

Pam Sherman 2:55
because for a long time, people kept throwing the word authenticity at me. Oh, you help people be more authentically them. And I really started thinking about it, and I realized that authenticity is really about you. It’s it has nothing to do with your audience. And I came from a background of, yes, I was a lawyer, but when I became an actor, I learned that it isn’t about you at all. It’s about the other actor, the audience, connecting to them, taking people on a journey. And if you hear great actors talk about their fellow actors, they’ll say they were a great listener. They were so generous. And I realized that what we ought to be seeking for ourselves, for our leadership, for our impact, is believability. And it came from a quote, actually by Edward R Murrow, that to be truthful, we have to be credible. And to be credible, we have to be believable. Can you imagine finding that quote when you’re going on this journey about what it is I do, and I combine that with a quote from my acting guru, Sanford Meisner, who said that acting is the ability to live truthfully in given imaginary circumstances. And isn’t that what we want from all of the people that we interact with, the ability to believe in them, that they’re truthful and that they can manage the circumstances that they’re given in a way that’s generous, has interplay and and raises the game for everyone when they’re in the room and energy of everyone in the room. So that’s how we I really started thinking about, what is it? Do I do? I’ve been doing it for over 15 years, almost 20 years now, and that leap to bridging the believability gap led to this book.

Kara Goldin 4:38
So the believability gap when you think about how people know when they’re in it, how would you describe that to somebody

Pam Sherman 4:51
So quite simply, the definition for me is it’s the gap between who we fundamentally are and who we think we’re supposed. Supposed to be, and that makes us have an internal believability gap. We don’t believe in ourselves. And then there’s the external believability gap, which is the gap between who we fundamentally are and how we show up for other people, and then they don’t believe in us. So quite simply, you have to both believe in yourself and you have to show up as you, but you have to have other people believe in you as well. And that journey came to me personally when I started my career as a lawyer, and I like to tell the story of my ill fitting suit, which I wore, actually and metaphorically because I thought I was supposed to show up like all the lawyers I saw on TV. And I thought that being a lawyer was going to be exciting and that it was going to be, you know, marching on up the courtroom stairs and making these incredible arguments. And instead, it was soul sucking work inside of a law library, you know, looking up, you know, the best citation that you could get to make an art all important things for the client, but it wasn’t. It just didn’t feel right to me. So I would close the door to my office and in the middle of the day, literally lie on the floor and have a silent scream. And it really was going back. I decided to go back to my original dream. And I’d always wanted to be an actor, and so I decided to go back and take an acting class as while I was a lawyer, and I got back into that room, and I found my power in not the world of pretending, but in trying to be believable as a character, in doing the character work I had to do, and understanding who that character was, in telling a story in a compelling way and being part of an ensemble in a collaborative way. And I started showing up differently as a lawyer, because I started to believe in myself again. I started to bring my energy back. I knew what my power was. I had to work on my character in the same way that I did in the rehearsal room, and suddenly I was dressing better, that’s for sure. But I was most important, I was showing up in a way that I believed in myself, and then my audiences started to believe in me, to the point where I’ll never forget one client said, Wait, you’re not a partner. I’m like, no, no, I’m not yet. So it built my confidence, and it helped me be more impactful. And I think it made me, in the end, a better advocate for my client. It changed the possibilities of what I could do.

Kara Goldin 7:33
So interesting so it and obviously it’s not just about what you’re wearing, but also, you know your overall presence and really, and you know the story, right? The overall story of it. So I think it’s, it’s so, so

Pam Sherman 7:50
powerful, for sure, yeah, by the way. And then I discovered clients who had this problem. You know, a client who thought he had to be authoritative, authoritarian in the workplace. You know that his job was to tell people what to do, instead of bringing out their creativity and their collaboration. And I realized that we both had the same problem. He wasn’t showing up as truly himself, and his power was being tampered by what he thought he had to show up like and so people didn’t believe in him. I like to say he was I fell into the diminishment camp. I diminished who I was, and he exaggerated who he was. So it’s finding the balance of understanding the core of your character and doing that work that helps you bridge the believability gap and really have a generosity between you and your audience that I think creates collaboration. It leads to innovation, and ultimately leads to everyone being more powerful in the room together.

Kara Goldin 8:54
So core character, it sounds good, but what does that mean in practical terms. And I guess, how, how do you figure it out? How do you understand what your you know, what is Kara’s core character? What is Pam’s core character?

Pam Sherman 9:12
It’s so interesting because I think this is really important to entrepreneurs, especially, right? You often think of the core of your product, what problem you’re trying to solve? What are the core beliefs about your product? But we never think to do that for ourselves, and so I think you have to start with you. It’s really a journey of self awareness, and it’s, I call it your power words. You have to discover that your power isn’t in your title. Isn’t in the role you play. It lies within you. And it’s a pretty simple exercise. There’s there’s two aspects to it. The Power Word is both your core defining word. It’s Who are you at the core, if you had to think of one word, it’s a truly reductive exercise. Kara one word. Describes who you are. I always say it can’t be situational, like, late, tired, hungry, you know, those things and it really there’s got to be an ounce of self awareness, because there’s always someone in the room who says, I’m inspirational, and everyone’s like, yeah, that’s not the word I would use about you. So it’s fascinating, that word is fundamental and it doesn’t change my word. Do you like to know what my word is? And, yeah, you know, that’s the dirty secret is. It took me a really long time to figure it out like I could not. I kept thinking I knew what it was, and it finally was given to me by somebody who said, at the end, I was in Morocco, doing a big event, and I it was a four hour facilitated event, life changing for some people, sharing stories, working on this kind of work. And at the end, someone came up to me and said, Thank you for sharing your energy with us. And I just struck me. I said, Wait, that’s my word. It’s energy. And when I’m not showing up in accordance with my core defining word meaning, I’m not caring for myself, I’m not bringing my energy to the game. I’m not raising the energy in the room for others. I’m not being true to myself. And then the second part of the Power Word construct is your character beliefs. And every time I would work on a script as an actor, the first thing I would do is figure out, what does my character believe in? What are the core values that drive this character? And every character has one. We all know what core values are. They’re the things that make us choose our behavior. But I call them true character beliefs, because they’re going to be part of what drives you, what leads you to bridge that believability gap for yourself. And you know, there are all sorts of you can find them online lists of character beliefs. I don’t like to lay that on people, because we all know what’s important to us, right? Like, it’s not what you’re good at, it’s what’s important to you. And again, for me, I had to find those and those power words are what drive the core of my character. Help me and when I show up and I pay attention to them, and they’re not just words on a page, but I live them both in my physicality, in my intent, in my communication. Well that’s when suddenly I can start believing in myself as me, and I can start helping my audience believe in Me too.

Kara Goldin 12:35
So is it possible to define yourself one way, and then shift into that, that aspirational term that you wish you were energy, but you’re not. So that, that, I think, is what a lot of people also and, and I think sometimes it’s because they’re in the wrong career. They’re, you know, not able to really play themselves. But I’d love to hear your perspective on that.

Pam Sherman 13:11
So interesting. You say, say that because a lot of my clients, some of the work I’m doing is helping them figure out, are you really in the right place? Because, you know, there’s all these studies, and I talk about it in the book, that people who don’t feel that they can be themselves in the workplace are more likely to leave, but those who actually do this work on themselves and they come to more purposeful connection to their work are more likely to stay, which I think is really interesting. So no, I don’t think you should be your core defining. Where I had one client who said I would like my word to be orderly. I’m like, Well, are you so what are you just setting yourself up for failure? I mean, I can understand it might be aspirational character, belief that you want to work on. Save it for working on it. But don’t make that who you are at the core. It is. The whole mission of this is that you should be who you are, wherever you are, and then this is important in order to ignite your audience. Because you aren’t you in a vacuum. You’re you, are you for those you wish to impact lead or serve. So I think in toxic work cultures, it can happen where somebody feels they have to tamp themselves down. And guess what happens? Creativity is lower, innovation is lower, collaboration is lower, and they feel uncomfortable for a reason. But this can even happen where you’re not the right fit in a well, you know, and a well received culture of an organization, but doing this work sometimes, I will often tell the leaders who hire me for for their team, I may be their parting gift. Are you willing for that to happen? Right? Because they might discover something about themselves that makes them realize I’m not in the right place for who I want to be in the world.

Kara Goldin 14:57
Yeah, definitely. So you found. Focus heavily on storytelling. So why is storytelling such a powerful tool for leadership, as well as just for life?

Pam Sherman 15:12
Well, first of all, there’s aspects of storytelling that I think are important. One is the vision story. There’s no question that you will believe more in yourself when you come up with a vision for yourself, for your team, for your company, because there’s a great quote that I love. It’s not what vision is, it’s what vision does. Vision takes people on a journey, and I have a whole chapter on the vision story and how important that is. But I also think the stories of our past illuminate the path to our future, and we have to develop our through line of stories of success, stories of challenge, stories that have make us who we are, because we can’t grow our believability if we don’t really understand what’s my through line, what? What are stories that help me understand who I am, but more important, will help me connect more deeply to my audience and be able to use them to you know, grow our team, grow our company, grow our product in the world, and look, stories are just more interesting than facts. Let’s just, let’s just say that it’s the emotion, it’s the emotional journey that we’re going on. And as an actor, every actor will tell you, that’s our job. We’re just storytellers, you know, helping the audience go on a journey of, not of disbelief. I mean, the best stories, the best books, the best creative endeavors. Don’t you just want to live in that world totally so that, to me, is the power of storytelling. It takes you on a journey. It elevates your energy, and it helps your audience really connect with you more deeply. And I can’t tell you how many times I work with marketers or entrepreneurs and they’ll show me their 150 slides, and they’ll say, How do you like my story? And I’m like, tell me where it is. I’m trying to find it. A story doesn’t have to be long, Kara, it can be brief, but it has to really engage the audience. I always tell the story my kids, who would ask me, tell me about the day I was born. I’m like, it’s the best story. It was rainy and it hurt. That’s the story. That’s it.

Kara Goldin 17:28
That is, that’s so funny. So you describe the idea of breaking the fourth wall. What does that mean in everyday communication?

Pam Sherman 17:38
So often, I’ll I work virtually with clients all the time, and they think, Well, you know, I stay off screen. They’re in team meetings there, and I’m like, that’s your opportunity to practice making a connection. There is this concept you probably know, the office and every other television show that followed talking directly to the camera. You know, are you talking to me? I find that ability to break through the wall and take fourth wall is is the most powerful tool that we can use to help people believe in us, because we want everybody wants to feel like you’re talking to them. So I tell the story in the book of a client who was going to give a speech, and it was going to, you know, an animal. He was a creative and he’s like, how do I get people to understand the experience of what I do? And we actually started this speech by having him throw beach balls into the audience, and the fear and the stress, and to make it experiential, and coffee is spilling, and the balls have to stay up in the air, and he’s like, that’s what our work is all about. We never know what’s going to happen. So if you could create those breakthrough moments, even small moments, in conversation with somebody, or it doesn’t always have to be on a big stage, think about how that will make a deeper connection with who you are and who your audience is.

Kara Goldin 19:03
Yeah, definitely whenever you can find some some connection, some something that’s familiar to the other side, that I think just does break the ice and also allows you to sort of know who you’re talking to, right? Who is, who, what is their role in the story? So I think that that’s really important and and I think so often you and I were talking before we hit record, people don’t necessarily. Maybe they think I need to be more confident. I need to show up, but I think being able to read the other side of the table and understand what they want you to do or and can you do that right? Can you be that individual?

Pam Sherman 19:56
I think people don’t take enough time to truly under. Stand their audiences. There’s two concepts I want to talk to you about that. One is, as I said, as an actor, I learned it’s not about me, so I have a lot of clients who, you know, they might get nervous, or they’re, you know, they’re they’re scared. And I said, You know what you’re thinking about when you’re scared, you’re thinking about you. You’re not thinking about, how do I make a difference for this person? What’s important to this person, and when they get off of thinking about themselves, and it’s very hard to tell a lovely introvert that they’re really being selfish. Yeah, not that I’m saying that very glibly, but what I mean is, if you aren’t thinking about yourself and you’re thinking with generosity about, how do I move my audience, what’s important to them? How do I meet their needs and wants? Suddenly, doesn’t that change the conversation? Then you’re not thinking about yourself. You’re really thinking about, you know, what is important to you, and how can I help you get there? The other part of that is in teams walking in each other’s shoes. You know, it might be called empathy and an aspect of emotional intelligence, but the person that you’re having the hardest time with at work or in life is somebody who’s going through something, and when you stop and you really want to understand what’s going on with them, when you actively listen. You stop talking, and you, you know, I do an exercise, and I’ve done this with teams where everybody has to write out what they’re working on in the next 90 days. And this is I’ve done this with leadership teams. It’s brilliant. I’m so proud of this exercise. And then I make them hand the card to the right, and the person next to them has to present as their colleague, and they suddenly see how they’re seen by others. Their colleagues have to be a little bit more generous because they’re being that person. And I it’s amazing how it changes a team dynamic when instead of thinking about my team and what I’m doing, instead, we suddenly come together, and we realize we are all walking on the same path together. It creates a much better ensemble as a team when you can understand each other deeply.

Kara Goldin 22:13
Yeah, totally. And also, if the if the leader of that entire organization isn’t, isn’t articulating that, or doesn’t Play You play themselves. You talk about that. It’s, it’s not just personal, but it’s also affects the entire organization, which to your absolutely, yeah, I think is, is so, so key. So you obviously talked to a lot of people as you’re writing this book, and you’re dealing with a lot of people and in your life and in your practice and leadership coaching. But what surprised you most while writing Play You.

Pam Sherman 23:03
Oh, that is a great question. I think, honestly, believing in myself, Kara, Isn’t that ironic? A lot of the time I thought, is this going to resonate? Are people going to understand? Are they going to do the work? Because I to me, the book is also about the exercises in the book. I wanted this book to reach people who I don’t get the opportunity to coach. I wanted to be a real tool kit. You know, there are, there were dark nights of the soul, moments like, you know, should I include that story? We actually fictionalized all the clients, because I feel it was, yeah, I love when people and I’ve been writing for a long time in other ways, and people say that’s me. I’m like, Well, no, no, it’s a whole bunch of people, because that gave us some freedom. There are a couple of clients who we told their stories by name, so they’re they’re clearly delineated. But you know, if I’m going to write about the bad guy, I had to definitely make sure it was a compendium of all of the bad guys that I’d worked with. Those are the archetypes that hold us back. But you know, for me, it was believing in myself enough that I could take what I do and capture that lightning that comes in a moment of coaching or on a stage and put it on paper, and that is a big leap of faith to hope that it would resonate with my readers. So I’m going to be vulnerable here and say I was my hardest critic. I was writing this while I was also traveling around the country acting. I hadn’t been on stage in many, many years because of my leadership practice, and I decided to go back on stage in a one woman show. So I’m between, you know, getting my sea legs back as an actor, doing eight shows a week, and then during the day, writing the book. It was, it was probably one of the things I’m. Proud of in my life, of having achieved it. So I my believability will grow enormously. If it resonates with others, that’s going to mean a lot to me.

Kara Goldin 25:12
I love it well, and when you’re if someone’s reading this book and they could make one mindset shift, what would you hope that is,

Pam Sherman 25:22
I think the most important thing is to acting. Isn’t pretending. I’m not asking people to pretend. I’m asking you to be more generous with yourself and be more generous with others, because that’s how we’re going to get through the chaos of the world. I don’t think the biggest threat we have is technology and AI, it’s forgetting what makes us most human is this ability to connect, to understand ourselves and to understand our audiences, and to try and find a way to to really make a difference for each other. Ai, can’t prevent that from happening. From happening. The chaos in the world can’t prevent that from happening. We have to stop, pay attention, listen, be fully present and tap into our own power and help people release their power. That’s how possibilities are created. That’s how success is achieved. So to me, that’s the biggest takeaway I want people to get from this.

Kara Goldin 26:24
I love it well. Pam, thank you so much for joining today. Congratulations on the book launch. Play You is awesome. Everyone needs to pick up a copy of this, and we’ll have all the info in the show notes, but the work is such a powerful reminder that confidence isn’t about becoming someone else, so it’s about fully embodying who you already are. It’s just figuring out who you are if you don’t know who you are. So for everyone listening, definitely check out the play available for I guess it’s out now, or by the time everyone’s going to be hearing this, we’ll also definitely follow Pam on on social platforms too. And thank you again. Pam, thank you everyone for listening. Thank you Kara. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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