Adam Severson is the Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Baker Donelson, a leading national firm with more than 700 lawyers and 25-plus offices in the United States, primarily in the southeastern U.S. Adam’s role is unique compared to many who hold that title in that he spends a lot of his time meeting with clients and actually selling the firm’s services. Adam is a past president of the Legal Marketing Association and a Hall of Fame member. He’s also a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management.
WHAT’S COVERED IN THIS EPISODE ABOUT EXECUTIVE PRESENCE
Executive presence can seem hard to define. Many people think you either have it or you don’t. But Adam Severson frames it differently. When you walk into a room or lead a pitch meeting, others are asking themselves whether they can take you seriously and whether you instill confidence. That assessment happens fast, and it’s based on more than just what you say.
The lawyers who are best at client development aren’t necessarily the ones trying to be the smartest or most interesting person in the room. They’re the ones who show up prepared, ask thoughtful questions about what’s actually happening in a client’s business, and then follow through when they promise to find an answer. Adam calls that gap between what people say they will do and what they actually do the “say-do gap.” Closing it builds trust faster than almost anything else, and most people never even realize they’re leaving it open.
In this episode of The Lawyer’s Edge, Elise Holtzman talks with Adam Severson about what executive presence actually looks like in law firms, why imposter syndrome stops people from even trying to develop it, and how lawyers can build credibility through preparation and genuine curiosity rather than trying to have all the answers.
2:09 – How Adam defines executive presence
3:16 – The three elements of executive presence
5:26 – Executive presence vs. confidence and whether you can have one without the other
6:22 – Practical behaviors to demonstrate executive presence
8:53 – Being interested in others matters more than being interesting
10:27 – Using data to build credibility with lawyers and practice groups
15:07 – How executive presence impacts business development and client retention
15:32 – The “say-do gap” and why following through on what you promise matters
21:10 – Imposter syndrome keeps people from trying to develop executive presence
22:14 – The perfectionism problem and why you don’t need all the answers
25:07 – Lessons learned from Adam’s own career building executive presence
28:20 – Modifying the approach by showing your work instead of just stating the conclusion
30:38 – Don’t make assumptions about who you’re talking to
34:06 – Why self-awareness matters more than confidence
Mentioned in Executive Presence: How to Turn Skill into Influence
Get connected with the coaching team: hello@thelawyersedge.com
SPONSOR FOR THIS EPISODE
Today’s episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women’s Business Development Accelerator, a 9-month business development program created BY women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers AND supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession.
If you are interested in either participating in the program or sponsoring a woman in your firm to enroll, learn more about Ignite and sign up for our registration alerts by visiting www.thelawyersedge.com/ignite.
Elise Holtzman: Hi, everyone. It’s Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer’s Edge Podcast. Welcome back for another episode. We’ve all heard the term executive presence, but it can seem hard to define. What is it, and why does it matter for lawyers and other law firm professionals? In this episode, we’re going to talk about why executive presence is becoming a core leadership skill in law firms today and how cultivating it can shape client relationships, team dynamics, and strategic opportunities throughout your whole career.
Before we dive in, today’s episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women’s Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession. Registration is now open for the 2026 Ignite cohort, and early bird pricing is available. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite.
I am delighted to welcome my guest today, Adam Severson, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Baker Donelson, a leading national firm with more than 700 lawyers and 25-plus offices in the United States, primarily in the southeastern U.S. Adam’s role is unique compared to many who hold that title in that he spends a lot of his time meeting with clients and actually selling the firm’s services. Adam is a past president of the Legal Marketing Association and a Hall of Fame member, which I can tell you from experience is no small achievement. He’s also a Fellow in the College of Law Practice Management. Adam, welcome to The Lawyer’s Edge.
Adam Severson: Elise, thank you so much for having me. I’m really delighted to be here.
Elise Holtzman: I’m thrilled to have you, especially to talk about this topic. I know you’re very passionate about it. I know you’ve taught it, spoken about it, trained on it. How do you define it? Because I think that for many people, it can seem like a squishy, undefinable thing, or they feel like you either have it or you don’t. So in the context of a law firm, to you, what does executive presence mean or look like?
Adam Severson: It’s a complex topic, I think, in some respects, because, like you said, it can be a little squishy. A couple of questions that I ask myself related to executive presence are, does the recipient of your message think to themselves, “Can I take you seriously?” And then from that, they’re asking themselves, “Do you instill confidence?” And so that typically carries out in a host of different ways. Sometimes it could be a short interaction at the water cooler or coffee at a coffee break. In other instances, it could be when you’re presenting at a partners’ meeting or a practice group meeting.
I think some of the fundamentals, if you look at key elements of executive presence—and if you Google it, there’s actually a lot of beautiful Gantt charts and things like that. Every leadership book on the planet has ways to categorize that. But they essentially say gravitas, communication, and appearance would be the three big bucket categories.
Gravitas, to me, is what’s the impression that you bring? Are you confident? Are you decisive? Are you authentic? To me, authenticity is a really key element of executive presence. Do you have emotional intelligence? Are you resilient? All those sort of building blocks, like what is the impression that that person has on you?
Communication, or then expression as compared to impression. How clear are you when you speak? Do you use persuasive language? Are you an active listener? Do you have adaptability in your style? So you might communicate one way in a one-on-one with a client. You might communicate a different way when you’re in front of a boardroom. Understanding then, too, like who you are in a digital sense. What’s your presence there? Like, what do you look like, if you will, on your bio and on LinkedIn? So people can get a sense of what’s this guy or gal all about.
Then last is sort of, again, subjective, but it’s appearance, right? Like what is your presentation? Are you a professional? What is your style, your body language? Some things, I think, inadvertently can take away from somebody’s appearance, and they may not be thinking about that all the time.
So a lot of what we work on with my team, as I talk about executive presence—and that would be marketing and business development professionals—is very similar to what I share with our lawyers about executive presence, which is that you fundamentally want to instill confidence when you enter a room, you join a call, you step up to the podium, you lead a pitch meeting, you’re asked to contribute to a podcast like this one. How are you trying to instill confidence and having people think, “This guy knows this stuff,” and you really want to listen more?
Elise Holtzman: I’m curious what you think about this. I tend to think of executive presence and confidence as two slightly different things, that confidence is how you feel and executive presence is the outward manifestation of how you feel. Do you think that people can have executive presence, demonstrate executive presence, if they don’t feel the internal confidence?
Adam Severson: I would say that admittedly would be hard. There’s a phrase that I loathe called “fake it till you make it.” I believe that there’s a little bit of room for that. But if you think about the work that we’re in, Elise, we’re dealing with complex problems, mostly for large organizations. So, like, faking it really isn’t a bar that I would recommend.
So I do believe, though, that you have to have some confidence and that over time you can gain confidence. I believe in some respects, like confidence is a muscle, and you can incrementally grow that through a series of different interactions and different opportunities to flex that muscle so that you can inherently grow that over time.
Elise Holtzman: What are some of the practical behaviors that you think lawyers and legal marketers can adopt to demonstrate executive presence? You know, if you think to yourself, “Well, I feel like I know my stuff and I’m pretty happy with the work I do, but I don’t think that I show up in a way that demonstrates that to clients and people around me.” What are some of the things you can start doing to develop it?
Adam Severson: Sure. Well, one of the things that I recommend most for really anybody is to do your homework and lead with data. So depending upon the chair that you sit in, you can lead with data in a whole host of ways.
So let’s say you’re going to have a cup of coffee with a client. Showing up to that cup of coffee, having done your homework, and then seeding into that conversation some elements that you’ve done your homework is a really good way to demonstrate executive presence, knowledge, and know-how.
A lot of times, lawyers might read the competitive intelligence brief they get from their marketing team, but they don’t necessarily articulate that in the questions that they might ask a client. Let me give you an example. So let’s say I’m having breakfast with the chief litigation officer of an OEM automotive manufacturer. I might say, aside from, like, “How are you dealing with today’s issues?” you might say, “In reading a lot about how tariffs are impacting manufacturers, recognizing that 30% of your production occurs in Mexico, how are you balancing that issue? And are you altering either your supply chain or your manufacturing patterns when you’re dealing with the profit loss that you might experience from tariffs?”
Wow, that’s a pretty insightful question, more so than, like, “Whoa, tariffs are crazy. How are you dealing with that?” And so I think that you can do some due diligence, or even if you were to go to the press section or the news section of a company’s website to say, “Oh, I saw last week that you just added this new line of business or this new geography to your platform,” or “You took on, like, seven more franchises,” whatever the case might be, to fold in some of those comments.
Or to say, “Oh, I saw you posted this on LinkedIn that you’re involved with the Association of Corporate Counsel. Tell me a little bit more about your role with that.” Like, you demonstrating that you’re interested shows EQ and also allows you to demonstrate executive presence.
Elise Holtzman: I’m going to pause you there for one second, Adam, because I think it’s really interesting what you just said. You said you’re demonstrating that you’re interested. I was just about to say the same thing, because I often say that people are so worried when they go into meetings like that that they’re not going to be interesting enough. But it’s not about being interesting. Right. It’s about being interested.
You’re demonstrating so many different elements of executive presence. To your point, preparation, being interested in the client, knowing what’s going on in the industry, that you cared enough to take the time, right? That you have that emotional intelligence, that you’re asking questions that are meaningful and matter to them.
I think that that will build your confidence just going, even if you don’t wind up having some of those conversations. I like that idea because all of that preparation is going to give you the confidence that you know what’s going on and you’re not going to get something thrown at you that you’re unfamiliar with.
Adam Severson: I totally agree. One of the tricks, though, because our lawyers are trained to have the answer and to be the smartest person in the room. So a lot of the focus in law school and otherwise is really built on being interesting. Those individuals that are best at client development and those that are considered to be trusted advisors of their clients focus more on being interested than being interesting. We all have two ears and one mouth, and we should use those proportionally.
Elise Holtzman: Yeah. So preparation is an important element of developing executive presence. What else do you think people can do?
Adam Severson: Yeah. So data, again, a different slice of data. But one of the things that I talk about with my team, for example, is we have a lot of data that we can reference in the work that we do, and whether that’s fast facts about the firm and understanding elements of our financial performance, or if it is even understanding elements of the salient benefits or differentiators of our firm.
So we might go into a meeting for a practice group meeting, let’s say, and we might talk about thought leadership as a topic and to say that we all know to build market awareness for the overall brand of the firm and for each of our lawyers individually is really important. Nobody’s going to question that.
But if you were to follow that up to say some of the lawyers that are the most successful practitioners in the firm have a dedicated presence online. They write three times more articles than the lawyers that don’t author articles. They have five times as many connections on LinkedIn as the individuals that don’t, and they communicate more frequently with their clients, and that results in a 12% increase in their book of business. So that’s using data, but it’s also proof points to that conversation.
As you know, as a former practicing lawyer, you’re a linear thinker and data resonates with you. So it’s not so much, believe me because I said so, but it’s more so, believe me because of A, B, and C, and maybe even 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Elise Holtzman: Yeah. So people are really paying attention now because they’re hearing something real and concrete for them.
Adam Severson: Yeah. Then they’re also reacting to say, "Okay, that sounds like something I might be able to do. I’m going to lean in and listen to Meg and take the ideas of what she has to say and how she’s supporting my group because the people that she’s working with in my practice group might even be more successful than me."
They might not say that part out loud. They certainly recognize it. Typically, if you look around our firm, for example, some of our most successful lawyers are the people that work with my team every single week.
Elise Holtzman: That doesn’t surprise me at all. This is a soapbox issue for me, which is that for those lawyers that have people in their firms who are marketing and business development and professional development professionals, there’s so much opportunity there. This is one of those things where I feel like I am trying to promote the marketing teams inside of law firms and always saying to my client, "What kind of relationship do you have with those folks? Are you talking to them? Do they know what’s going on with you?" And I think that having those conversations can also just help you grow your own executive presence because you feel like you know what’s going on.
I think a lot of times we don’t feel that we have executive presence because we’re afraid that there’s something we’re missing. So all of this focus on data and being prepared and having the linear thought process. Listen, as you said, I’m a former practicing lawyer. So that really resonates with me.
What about people who aren’t so into the data? You know, people who are maybe more bigger-picture thinkers.
Adam Severson: One of the things that we struggle with sometimes is the why. I think the more you can focus on context and the elements of maybe it’s a decision or a factor that might be occurring in the marketplace, if you can learn what the why is behind something, and sometimes that’s simply human behavior, sometimes that might be related to decision-making. If you can start to, one of the things that I like to say is the people that are the best, have the best executive presence are the people that see the forest for the trees. They see the branches and the leaves and they see the ladybug on the leaf.
So to be able to take maybe like a telescope and understand that big-picture view, but then be able to drill into something that is really, really specific is another great way for you to both demonstrate that you’re a strategic thinker, but it also gives you the sense that like, okay, he knows what he’s talking about because not only did he say that going to visit your clients is important, but he also said that as a lead indicator in the legal space, visiting your clients is one of the only ways that we can point a direct line to revenue generation.
Elise Holtzman: Looking at this a little bigger picture, I mentioned earlier that you meet with clients and pitch the firm services, which not everyone in your role does, or not everyone in your role does frequently. Based on your very deep experience, how does executive presence in general impact business development? And that’s not just bringing in new clients, right? But that’s retaining the clients you have. So it’s client confidence.
Adam Severson: It is. I think one of the things that I’ve been really fascinated by in talking with clients now for more than two decades is the universe has a pretty significant say-do gap. I talk a lot about say-do gap with my team. So in the client development context, Elise, like the way that plays out is in asking lots of questions of a lawyer or of a client. They might tell us, I have a need for labor and employment.
Let’s say they’re going to make a change in a policy for their employee handbook. Then continued employment sometimes can be a consideration that you don’t need to sign a form. Just the fact that you accepted your paycheck means that you accept this new provision. You’re required to send an email out about it, right? So let’s say they make that passing comment in a client meeting saying, because I’ll ask an open-ended question, something like, “Tell me what’s on your desk right now.” Let’s say they give you that example.
Well, I can be like, "Oh, that’s interesting," then move on with my life or move on with the conversation and ask them what they think about the football game this weekend or the college football playoff or whatever it is, or their kids and what they want for Christmas, you know, all those things.
So instead, you might say, "Well, tell me more about how you’re looking to solve that issue." They might say, "Well, boy, we really don’t know how to do that." Then I might start to take a few notes and say, like, "Okay, continued employment as an—" So then, in this very specific instance, I go back to my colleagues. I call one of my labor employment friends to learn a little bit more about that. It turns out that many employers are wrestling with this issue.
There are pros and cons to both. It turns out to be, in many ways, much more of a cultural implementation issue than it does otherwise. It was actually, to me, fascinating. I’m thirsty for knowledge and, again, like understanding the why. So within 48 hours, I went back to that client and said, "Hey, I touched base with my colleagues. They said that this is very much an issue. One of my lawyers indicated that we recently did a 50-state survey on continued employment being a consideration. I’ve gotten three times from her to have a quick off-the-clock call with you to brainstorm this issue."
The client was ecstatic. We ultimately got selected for that project. In talking with that client before, he said that he’s raised that issue with five different law firms. I was the only person to actually put a bow on it and close the loop from that comment. So when I say say-do gap, when you’re actively listening and then following up on action items, and sometimes, in some instances, some people may not even consider that an action item.
So one of the things that my lawyers tell me, the reason they like to bring me along sometimes is like, I ask questions differently and I listen differently. They listen in a much different and more amazing way for the way their brains work. So that’s why I do think doing that together really makes for a lot of terrific teamwork.
Elise Holtzman: You think that the say-do, that filling that say-do gap contributes to executive presence? You think that they’re looking at you differently?
Adam Severson: I think they’re looking at you differently. I mean, I think some people might say that that is the say-do gap and closing that gap is more equated to trust, you know, if you were to talk about like a leadership attribute, for example. But if you don’t trust somebody, how could you possibly say they have executive presence?
And so to me, it’s part and parcel. It could be if you were doing concentric circles and where trust falls within completion of a task or doing what you’re saying you’re going to do, it’s hard to lay that out. But I do believe that the lawyers and clients that I work with, part of what they have shared with me, the reason they even want to continue to talk to me is that I help them find answers.
They’re coming to me, something hits their desk, they don’t know how to deal with it. Sometimes it’s like, “Do you have a guy that does...?” Or, “Do you have somebody in your firm that could help me with...?” And so lawyers sometimes can be a little myopic in their views. So if you’re a class action litigator and you’re talking to a client and they don’t have a class action case, that today you’re not listening as intently for potential cues that might be coming out in that conversation. So it’s a little bit not on executive presence, but I do think that that’s important as far as making sure that you have a wider view of the way you listen.
Elise Holtzman: Yeah. Look, law firms, we’re supposed to be problem solvers. We’re supposed to help clients achieve their goals and solve their problems. That’s what you did in the example that you gave. You didn’t just let it go and have them sit there and think, “Well, Adam probably could have helped me with this, but he just blew right past it.” Then you would have fallen into the same category as everybody else.
What do you see people struggle with when it comes to executive presence? Do you think that there are particular things that lawyers do or don’t do that they could be shifting?
Adam Severson: I think one of the biggest challenges is imposter syndrome. Simply that they don’t think they can do it or that they don’t have it. So then they don’t try. I found in my conversations with our lawyers and even my team members over and over again, trust your gut. Trust your instincts. You’re a smart person.
In some instances, it could be around the edges. It could be around communication and maybe tone of voice, how they present themselves. If they don’t make eye contact, there are certainly polishing points that you can have in a presentation, or you use your hands too much, you don’t have good visuals. But I think sometimes it’s literally trust your gut and believe in yourself so that when you walk in the room, you know you can do it. You don’t need to be pompous or arrogant about it.
Like you were saying earlier, Elise, sometimes confidence can be misconstrued for arrogance. You certainly don’t want to go over that line. But I think that’s where the biggest challenges that people face are, they just don’t necessarily think they can do it. Honestly, that shows.
Elise Holtzman: I also think there’s a perfectionism problem. I think that lawyers have this whole perfectionism issue. I think that because of the ways in which people are socialized, it’s magnified for some women as well. But this idea that if I don’t get it exactly right, that’s somehow going to be a commentary on my credibility and who I am. Yes, you have to know your stuff. Yes, you have to be standing in service for the client. But if somebody asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to, I get that a lot. Like, “Well, I don’t want to be on that panel because what if somebody asks me a question I don’t know the answer to?”
Well, if I’m on a panel and somebody says, “Hey, what about this?” and I say, “Well, you know, that’s a really good question, actually. That hasn’t come up for me a lot. I suspect it might turn out this way. But you know what? If you’re interested, why don’t you come up after? Let’s exchange information. I’ll see if I can get that answer for you.”
People are fairly forgiving. They don’t expect you to have all the answers. I think that plays into the imposter syndrome. Like somehow if I’m not perfect and I don’t know absolutely everything, I have to wait another 30 years to have all this experience under my belt to be credible. That’s not the way it works.
Adam Severson: Yeah, totally agree with you. I do think people are forgiving. I say a lot of times, give yourself grace and give others grace. I do think that you can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I will say a lot of clients really appreciate it when you say you don’t know the answer and that you better go check and find out. Because that means they know that they can rely on you for a particular subset of answers and things, but that you’re willing and that you acknowledge that you’re not the expert in everything.
Because sometimes that false confidence can get people in trouble, providing advice that, like in some of our practices, some of our lawyers might be like, “Oh, we don’t want any dabblers in that,” because they couldn’t possibly know the nuances of a particular statute or the implications that that might have. I do think that if you acknowledge to say, “Let me get back to you when I can be more grounded in my response, and while I might not have the answer for you, I will find it,” then Elise, like I was saying a minute ago, you need to go find it and then close that loop. Because that, I think, is one of the things that really builds credibility and people feeling like you could be a go-to resource.
Elise Holtzman: Yeah, it’s the trust thing. Because if you say, “I don’t know the answer to this, but I’m going to go find it,” and then you say something else where you say, “Oh, I do know the answer to this,” they can trust that, hey, he wouldn’t say he knew the answer if he didn’t, because I’ve already seen that when he doesn’t know the answer, he’s honest with me and then goes to try to figure it out. So yeah, it all goes into the trust piece and the credibility piece that you have been talking about.
Adam, you talk about executive presence a lot. As I said, you’re passionate about this issue and teaching others and getting others to feel more comfortable in their roles. What about you? What lessons have you learned in your own career about cultivating executive presence? And how does that impact the advice that you give to other people?
Adam Severson: One of the things that I was, in many ways, extraordinarily fortunate by is that I achieved a good bit of success early in my career. I mentioned doing homework. When I was in my early 20s, I’d moved to Los Angeles to be a salesperson for what’s now Thomson Reuters. But I would literally be turning doorknobs before you had GPS at law firms to try to sell Westlaw, convincing lawyers that the internet was going to be a thing and that they could move away from books to CD-ROMs and then ultimately online legal research. Honestly, that built a ton of resilience because they were not super forgiving. We talked about grace. I was not given a lot of grace early in my career.
When I took my first in-house job at a law firm, I had been meeting with practice group chairs and chief marketing officers and managing partners. I went to do my first presentation to a group of, I don’t know, maybe 30 attorneys, sort of cast as like a lunch-and-learn program.
The presentations that I had given to a number of executive leaders were very bullet-point focused. I had concentrated a lot on my audience at that point in time. So I had gone into this room, and these were not firm leaders. I don’t say normal partners, that sounds more condescending than I’d like, but these were not firm leaders. I went through a presentation and I had like eight slides, and I had honed the punchline of those eight slides for a good bit. It was all around being client-focused in your approach. I had some of the things that we just talked about, making sure that we ask thoughtful questions.
I was 28 years old, and I’ve been told I have a young-looking face. So back then it was even younger-looking. I was seen at my prior job as an authoritative source coming from Thomson Reuters who meets with managing partners and meets with clients and all that business. When I was at the place that we were all on the same team, theoretically, it was received like, “Who does this kid think he is? I’ve been a lawyer for 30 years, longer than he’s been alive,” is one thing that I was told.
What I didn’t take into account, Elise, was my audience. So I had consolidated and honed a presentation to 10 slides because I was trying to be super efficient with everybody’s time. So all that data that I talked about that would build to like one slide, I had anywhere between three to 15 pages of data and supporting documentation for each of those.
So I had to reset. I could have gotten mad and taken my toys and gone home. But instead, I said, “Okay, Adam, I hadn’t considered my audience well enough. They’re receiving me relatively cold as a young person.” So what I needed to do was demonstrate that I had done my homework and show my work.
So what I did then for the next presentation was I built a binder that was about two inches thick. So I had that one slide that I had, and I had a few more slides after it. I said, “Let’s turn to page seven in the materials so we can talk through more specifically why I would make this assertion.”
So then we would talk through it, and it was more like a working session. We were paging through that linear thinking thing that I was talking about before, Elise, I was coaching people through that and guiding them through the workbook more so than them wondering, “Who the heck is this guy? And does he really know what he’s talking about?”
And so I modified my approach to make sure that I was more in tune with my audience so that at the end of that presentation, it was incredibly well received. But I took some pretty tough darts, if you will, and it didn’t feel great.
Instead of getting angry, I was a little frustrated, I’m not going to lie. But it was also really helpful for me because now every time I enter a room, big or small, I want to make sure that I’m understanding, like, who am I talking to? How are they receiving me at the outset? What do they even know about my credentials or my background?
Sometimes they know nothing and you’re just being plopped in front of them. You want to even say, like in one instance, just a month ago, I was talking with the managing partner of another firm and I said, “What do you know about Baker Donelson?” And they knew nothing. So that then allowed me to really quickly shift how I approached that conversation. In other instances, they know lots about Baker Donelson. They wanted to know about a really specific thing, if we had a trial lawyer that could help them with this catastrophic injury case.
It’s a very different conversation. So maybe this is a longer, wheeling story than you probably wanted for this podcast, but I think maybe that lesson then is, don’t make assumptions on who you’re talking to.
Elise Holtzman: I think it’s really important for people to hear that. First of all, I think that this idea of cold calling and showing up at law firms and getting doors slammed in your face, I mean, that is like trial by fire. That’s not for the faint of heart. Then this idea of being 28 years old and walking into a room full of senior partners, that can be daunting. I like this idea of using data and using a little bit of credentialing, letting them know who you are and where you come from.
I think that that is part of developing your own confidence, talking about what you’re capable of doing, and then getting the confidence from them, which I think is part of executive presence. I do something similar because I do a lot of speaking for groups, and I’ve walked in front of rooms full of lawyers and the introduction goes something like this: “Okay, everyone, we’re going to have our speaker now. Her name is Elise Holtzman. Take it away, Elise.”
I learned a long time ago that I’ve got to make it very clear how they introduce me. I mean, I’m not crazy about it, but I give them a little bit of information. I’ve also learned that if something like that happens, I will roll into something like, “Hey, before we get started,” I always think when I’m sitting in the room, who is this woman up here? Why is she talking to me? And I get a laugh out of the crowd and I’m able to tell them a little bit about my background before I get started. But I think that that, as you say, comes with some experience and time learning how to roll with it and being prepared for when that confidence isn’t in the room.
Adam Severson: That’s right. That’s right. Sometimes I do a workshop here at the firm called the Client Conversations Workshop. One of the things that I say at the outset, I’m like, "Some of you have been with the firm for three months and you might have heard my name, but you don’t know anything about me. You should know that this workshop is based on hundreds of client conversations, from meeting with chief legal officers, CEOs, to operations directors, deputy general counsels, and the like. This is not like Adam read a book on marketing and now I’m going to tell you what to do. This is me getting yelled at by the general counsel of a company and helping him or her solve their problems. So today we’re going to talk about..." So I do think you’re right that you need to have a few benchmarks.
Elise Holtzman: I want to connect what you just said with this idea of confidence, right? So for people who don’t necessarily feel super confident, I do think it can be helpful sometimes to look back at what you have accomplished. I’m not necessarily suggesting sharing that with everybody, but to look back at what you accomplished and remember when that imposter syndrome starts to strike that there is a reason you’re in the room, right?
And so sometimes the credibility, you have to have the credibility with yourself. So doing that deep dive, remembering some of the things that you’ve done, that you’ve accomplished, ways that you can be helpful to the—it’s not about being arrogant. It’s about how you’re capable of helping other people in the room achieve their goals or solve their challenges. So I like that idea of making it clear, whether it’s to yourself or other people, why you’re there and how you can be helpful.
As we wrap up our time here together, there’s a question I want to ask you that I ask all of my guests at the end of the show. There’s a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge, where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to developing executive presence, what’s a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you, but is important for people to hear?
Adam Severson: You know, I almost wonder in some respects, I think self-awareness is really important. So sometimes people walk in so confident and arrogant that it just makes them loud and wrong. So I think as you think about executive presence in many ways, that’s earned.
Some of the smartest people I know are not the people that are the loudest. They’re the people that are deliberative in their commentary. They’re thoughtful. They ask questions. But I think if self-awareness is something that you’re keenly intentional about, and even ask questions and make sure that you try to set intentions to improve those weaker areas, I think that’s really important.
Elise Holtzman: Yeah, it’s not about being the bright, shiny object in the room, especially in the business that we’re in. It is about asking the questions and making sure that you are serving the client in front of you.
Adam Severson: I think that’s right. I think that’s right.
Elise Holtzman: Yeah. Great advice, Adam. Thank you so much. So I just want to thank you for being here. It’s been a pleasure having you.
Adam Severson: Yeah, absolutely. This was fun. Thanks for having me. I hope the folks that listened in found it helpful.
Elise Holtzman: I’m also going to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you’ve enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We’ll see you next time.




