Unlocking Charismatic Leadership With Richard Reid

Richard Reid (00:00.463)
It’s called the Charisma Ridge.

Skot Waldron (00:03.918)
Charisma Edge.

Richard Reid (00:05.197)
Yeah, charisma edge.

Skot Waldron (00:11.392)
Awesome. All right, cool. All right, you ready?

Richard Reid (00:15.439)
Let’s do it.

Skot Waldron (00:16.674)
do it.

Richard, thanks for joining me from the other hemisphere. appreciate it.

Richard Reid (00:25.601)
Really good to be here. Thanks Skot.

Skot Waldron (00:28.15)
Yeah, it’s a, you seem like a very charismatic person. Is that because you study this all the time?

Richard Reid (00:34.027)
It is. So it’s one of the big things that I do. So I work with serious mental health issues all the way through to sort of performance, high performance. And charisma is one of the big areas that I look at. And it’s one of those things where people either buy into it or they don’t buy into it. But ultimately it’s really about how do you bring the best version of yourself out in lots of situations. We all have meetings where we think, I’ve done that so much better in the past that I’m not sure why I didn’t quite go the way that it’s gone other times. And so it’s all about teaching people how to manage their internal world so they can start to influence their external world and really be in the moment so you can adapt how you communicate according to the audience that you’re with. And that’s important for personal relationships, business, you name it.

Skot Waldron (01:15.598)
Okay. But, why charisma, man? Because seriously out of the hundreds of interviews I have done at this point, there, I haven’t talked about charisma at all. Like none. So like why charisma?

Richard Reid (01:27.939)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I guess it was, was a handy way of bundling a whole thing, range of things together that I’ve seen in a number of different people that I’ve worked with. And that can range from people’s confidence through to communication, interactions with others. And it was just a handy way of bundling it all together. And it really sort of caught on in the UK press and it got a lot of attention. And it just works. You know, it’s just a catchy way of bringing it all together. And for some people they get it straight away. Other people, you’ve got to sort of talk them through it. And I guess.

Some people are very open to it, other people they’ve got that resistance thing, I don’t need more charisma, why do I need charisma? And what I always say to people is it doesn’t matter where you are on that scale, there’s always things you can be doing better and that’s me included. It’s always a work in progress.

Skot Waldron (02:16.334)
So I, you know, often they often say that authors, know, are writing the books for themselves more than the writing it for somebody else, you know? So is that, is that what you were like? Somebody told you one day, Richard, you gotta work on that charisma thing. You’re like, dang it, I should probably write a book on that then, So.

Richard Reid (02:24.526)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not quite, the book came after, the book came after, but it’s interesting when you start to put down all the things that you’ve been working on, all the things you’ve been thinking about in this area into a book, it really sort of crystallises your thoughts. You know, it’s almost when you’re trying to explain it to somebody else, how you really sort of take more of a deep dive into what you otherwise might do quite intuitively.

So it’s been a really, really good sort of consolidation process for me, writing a book about this topic as much as it is teaching people.

Skot Waldron (03:02.69)
Yeah, for sure. What? So when you were, thinking about this topic, Chris, you said it’s a good, with the word charisma or the idea of Chris, man, can bundle a bunch of things into it. Like, what are you bundling? What are you talking about?

Richard Reid (03:15.96)
So it’s anything from emotional intelligence. So how it is that you recognize and manage your emotions through to how you read other people’s emotions and how you can influence those, through to how you use words, how you use your body language, and even how you use your voice. how we use our voice is often one of the areas where we’re most lazy. We tend to rely upon the content of what we say to do the work for us. yeah, absolutely that’s important. That gives substance to your message. But essentially we’re sophisticated animals. And so the things that we emotionally respond to, the things that make messages resonate with us and prompt us to take action is emotions. And we generate those emotions by what we see and what we hear primarily rather than the words themselves.

So it’s really getting people to understand that you can have the most fantastic idea in the world, but if it doesn’t resonate with people, it’s going to fall flat. And that’s often one of the frustrations that I find when I’m working with people that they have all these great ideas and people just don’t buy into it.

Skot Waldron (04:20.418)
Yeah, I heard these, when I was doing some communication training. I mean, I forgot what percentage of, you know, communication is body language. think it’s like 60 something percent is body language and is it, and then the other part was more like vocal was how you say it. And then at last, like you just said, like the smallest percentage was actually what is said that, communicates the most.

Richard Reid (04:31.598)
It’s getting on for 70%. Yeah.

Definitely, and it’s really sort of, you know, it’s based on how humans have evolved. Words are a relatively recent addition to our repertoire. So, you go back thousands of years and it was body language and it was the sands we made, the same way as it is with other animals. And you think about when we meet people, sometimes even before they open their mouth, we form a view of them. And sometimes that’s accurate and sometimes it’s not. But we form a view. We get a sense of… Do I feel safe around this person? Is this somebody I’m going to want to engage with? Is this somebody I need to be wary of? All these things that we do instinctively within seconds of meeting somebody, even without consciously registering why it is that we feel that way.

Skot Waldron (05:31.448)
So when I’m working for somebody, right? Let’s just say I’m working for somebody. I’ve got a leader and I’m going, I mean, is anybody out there really asking like, I wish my boss is more charismatic. know, like I wish that some charisma. what, I mean, how does that play into the role of a leader in today’s workforce?

Richard Reid (05:57.913)
Well, I guess if you want to get the best out of people, you’ve got to be able to engage with them at a deeper level. And this is really important in lots of ways, because even if you’re a leader and you’re calling all the shots, you are more likely to get people engaged in what you’re doing if you can tap into what’s important to them on an emotional level. I think, you know, think about big things like organisational change.

People have to go through that process if you’re an employee in a company, but actually there are different ways in which you can deliver that message. There are different ways in which you can take people on that journey. And it’s about being authentic as well. Cause even if you’ve got a heavily scripted message you give to people, if people don’t believe that that’s authentic, that it’s coming from the heart, and we’re talking about body language here and how you use your voice, then people don’t buy into it. And it’s amazing how most people, even without realizing it, are incredibly, adept at reading authenticity. And so you see this with leaders all the time, you know, they’ve got their spin doctors and it’s the same with politicians, they’ve got the spin doctor, they say, this is what you need to say, but emotionally they’re not bought into it. And they’re not demonstrating that in the body language and the voice patterns that they use and people pick up on that dissonance.

Skot Waldron (07:12.91)
Do you feel that, and I’m kind of throwing this out there because I feel this way, but that we’re more sensitive to inauthenticity now with the rise of social media. mean, it could have started, I mean, it started, you know, could have started in the seventies with Nixon, you know, with, you know, saying he’s not a crook, right here in the States and, understand those and how the, the generation X became more jaded with, you know, the rise of the media and.

Richard Reid (07:32.344)
Yeah. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (07:43.058)
skepticism and things like that. Right. But I think that as we’re getting into the world of social media and going through waves of being authentic, whether, you know, Pamela Anderson’s not wearing any makeup anymore to be her true self versus other people that are still renting houses or renting boats so that they can do a video in front of that boat and that house to show success. like, what do you think about that as far as authenticity and how we read into that.

Richard Reid (08:16.418)
Well, it’s interesting. think for sure that there is almost certainly more in inauthenticity that we’re experiencing and we’re surrounded by. I think the risk is that we have the skills to be able to read that. But when you’re surrounded by it all the time, actually, it almost it always becomes the norm. And this is this is the risk that we start to normalize these experiences and we stop questioning them. It’s almost sort of a slow creep.

And I think social media is the big draw for that. it often inspires people to want everything without realizing what sits behind some of these images that they’re seeing. I  actually think we’re becoming less attuned to these things. And I think the other thing that plays into this is,

Society is speeding up. It’s always been speeding up, but more so now than ever before. And what that means is that if you take, there’s lots of models of the brain, but if you take the Daniel Kahneman model of the brain, system one and system two, system one is essentially the fast brain, the primitive brain. And if we’re doing lots of things at pace and you think about social media, social media lends itself to doing things quickly, doesn’t it? It’s very much about impulse, acting on impulse, pressing buttons, liking, then actually we’re not playing to the strengths of the part of the brain that is able to consciously register what’s going on. So system one will on some level notice what’s going on, but it doesn’t translate into the conscious brain, the conscious brain. So hang on, this doesn’t stack up. So in terms of emotional intelligence, going fast isn’t helpful in terms of us playing to our strengths.

And I think this is the risk in lots of environments now we’re speeding up. We’re speeding up in business as well. And when we speed up a business, we become even more transactional. What that means is we’re not building those deeper relationships. And as a leader, we’re less likely to think about or register opportunities for connecting with our people at a deeper level. And that’s how you make people feel seen. That’s how you can adapt your message according to what’s helpful for the people you’re surrounded by.

So we start to objectify people and that’s really dangerous.

Skot Waldron (10:36.61)
And then we complain that they’re not loyal anymore. Right. We complain that there’s no loyalty. but we treat them as, we treat them as disposable resources. And then we get mad when they leave and go somewhere else, as far as, as culture is concerned. And, I think that also, just going back to what you’re saying about this whole speed up culture is that. You know, we, we, it’s like this instantaneous dopamine hit that we constantly are looking for. that media has taught us, social media has taught us to train us in, but it’s also this idea of like, you know, Amazon prime can get me something by two o’clock today if I, if I want it if it’s available. so we’ve learned that, that, that slow is bad. We’ve learned that, boring is bad.

We’ve learned that hard is bad. Like we want things easy and fast, easy and fast.

Richard Reid (11:36.896)
Absolutely. Instant gratification. And that’s really dangerous because you think about, there are lots of areas of life where it’s a slow game and actually the benefits are far greater if you can withstand the initial difficulty. And I think this is one of the problems that we’re seeing in society now. People don’t want to have that discomfort. They want what they want. They want it now. that, you know, that’s massive ramification for society. But I think in terms of our emotional intelligence, in terms of our resilience, in terms of our patience for other people, it has wide reaching consequences. And I think, you if we really want to connect with people at a deeper level, it does involve slowing down, slower conversations that lend themselves more to that system to brain, where we’re looking for the depth in conversations, we’re not looking for facts, you know, and you think about a lot of the conversations we have, it’s facts, isn’t it?

You can come away for conversation. Well, they tell me this, they tell me that. But actually, do we know what those things mean to that person? And this is what’s important. What does that mean? How might that influence how you deliver your message? And it’s not about suddenly being all things to all people, but you might take a slightly different tack if you understand what that means to that person. And if we don’t, we make assumptions and we often base those assumptions on what works for us.

Skot Waldron (12:56.93)
You’re teaching workshops on this. You’re out speaking on this. You’re training on this. You’re talking about it now. You’re writing a book about it. as far as charisma is concerned, how does charisma play into helping mitigate, solve, move us beyond these problems?

Richard Reid (13:17.081)
Well guess first and foremost it’s about managing our internal world. There are other people out there teaching this stuff but I think for me most.

What are the vocal patterns that I need to use? They don’t think about the emotions and the thought processes that sit behind that. And so it’s quite superficial. But I think, you know, if we start to slow things down, if we start to play more to our emotional intelligence, then actually that’s really useful for us in terms of a happier, healthier life. But it’s also about connection with people. When we are more in command of our emotions, we’ve got more capacity to register what’s happening for other people, what sits behind what they’re saying. So we don’t just take it at superficial level. Maybe we show more curiosity for it. And we also create space for people to expand on what they say. Think about a lot of the conversations that we have. We often take people at face value, don’t we? And sometimes, particularly if we’re talking about things that are quite emotive, it may be the first time that anybody’s said those things out loud.

And it may be that actually they’re hearing their words for the first time and actually they’re still qualifying what they think about it. So if we dive in and we speed things up, we’re missing an opportunity to allow other people to understand themselves better as well. And so, you know, there’s all these fantastic opportunities in what we already have that we can be making more of. And it means that we can have a more tolerant society. We can make people feel more included in our decision making, even if we’re the ultimate decision maker, how we arrive at those decisions and how we acknowledge people’s alternative viewpoints can make a big difference as to how on board they get with our message. Even if they don’t agree with it, if we’ve shown respect, we’ve shown curiosity and we’ve acknowledged them, it makes a massive difference. And I think, you know, also most of us don’t feel seen on a day-to-day basis, particularly in big corporates.

Taking the time to really acknowledge people, you know, not just superficial questions like, did you have a good weekend? How was your weekend? What did you like about it? What was that like? Tell me more about it. All these kinds of things allow people to feel validated and, and creates a positive ripple effect in the world. And I think that’s, that’s going to be a good thing.

Skot Waldron (15:49.934)
Can you teach, I mean, can you teach charisma? Is that something that’s like, somebody can learn how to be more charismatic?

Richard Reid (16:00.804)
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s a big part of what I do, obviously. And I think it’s fair to say some people are born with more charisma than other people, and some people will always be ahead of other people. But my belief is, and the results of the work that I’ve done would back that up, is that everybody can move further along that continuum. And the way that you do that, first of all, is to learn the skills and the techniques to register your internal emotions, register your internal thoughts and to start to manage and influence those. And that provides that same basis for you to have spare capacity to then think about how you manifest that in the world. If you’re not in command of your emotions, you can have all the skills and the techniques in the world, but you’re not going to know how to apply them or when to apply them.

Skot Waldron (16:46.976)
Okay. So you talk a lot about managing the internal in order to help impact the external. at times I’ll talk about, you know, managing our inner peace because the outer chaos can have an effect on us and all we can manage to really that inner peace within ourselves. when you talk about that, is there like, I don’t know a secret three steps. Like, I mean, what is it like, what’s the formula? What’s the.

Richard Reid (17:05.062)
Sure.

Skot Waldron (17:16.002)
Thing that you use the tool, the principle that you use to help people, I think start on that road to really get into getting to manage that inner peace. Well.

Richard Reid (17:26.202)
Yeah, well, I think it depends on people’s levels of commitment to the work. So I think, for all of us, there are blockers, there are patterns that get in the way of things. So for people who really want to dive into it, we start to look at some of those things. are the blockers? What are the negative self beliefs that inhibit your ability to be your true self in the world? It’s about getting more of your uniqueness out into the world. So that is really the deep, deep work that we might do. But I guess most people, when they’re coming into it, they’ll come for a one day workshop or something like that. And then what we teach them is elements of mindfulness in effect. So how can I register what’s going on for me and be more intentional in what I do with that? And a lot of the people I work with are business people and inevitably they’ve got very busy lives. You say to somebody like that, know, go and do mindfulness for half an hour. Number one, for a lot of them it’s going to be an alien concept, but number two, they’re going to say, don’t have a spare half an hour. This is going to feel like a another stress when I’ve already got an action packed day already. So what I tend to do with Pickles talk about transitions. So even if you’ve only got 30 seconds or a minute between one meeting, another meeting, you can still be doing things in that, in those brief moments to register what’s happening for you and to set your intentions for how it is that you want to be in that next meeting. And it almost sounds too obvious, but it’s, it’s almost so obvious. It’s not what we do most of the time.

So for instance, if you’ve just had a difficult meeting, inevitably your emotions are going to be quite high. You’re to be angry or you’re going to be upset or whatever it might be. And that probably isn’t going to be conducive to the atmosphere you want to create in your next meeting. So if you can register that, you’ve got an opportunity to manage it or at the very least to be more attuned to the possibility that might feed into the next meeting so you can mitigate against it. So for instance, very basic things like slowing down.

Yeah, one of the most obvious ways in which we manifest our emotions is through our breathing. So even noticing that in the 30 seconds you’ve got between one meeting and the next meeting allows you to start to adapt your breathing as a consequence that starts to influence the emotions and the mannerisms that you might manifest in that next meeting. So that’s one thing that you can do.

You may have heard of the work of Amy Cuddy. Have you heard of Amy Cuddy? So she’s an American social scientist. So there are simple things you can do around that as well. So for example, if you’re high emotion, then you might want to bring that emotion down. And one way in which you can do that, even in those brief transitions, is to just make yourself slightly smaller and just to hold that position for a few seconds before you then perhaps go back to a normal position. Or it might be vice versa. It might be you’ve been rattled by the last meeting.

Skot Waldron (19:52.142)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Richard Reid (20:15.74)
and your confidence is a little bit shaken. So it might be, you just make yourself a little bit bigger. And Amy Cuddy’s research shows that that has a big impact upon the internal resources that we’re accessing, whether we’re accessing cortisol or whether we’re accessing testosterone, our confidence and our anxiety levels get affected from situation to situation. So these are small ways in which we can consciously start to adjust these things.

So, those are the most obvious things that you can do, but then there are other things too, know, things like shorter sentences. If you’re aware that your emotions are running away with things, shorter sentences are a good way for you to self correct. Imagine, imagine your North Star, your North Star is where you want to be in that next meeting. If you’ve got shorter sentences, you’ve got more time to change course. you think, hang on, I’m, I’m, I’m showing some of this anger here. I’m showing some of this anxiety.

I can take a breath, can slow things down and I can reformulate the next sentence. So lots of small things that can contribute towards a bigger, more positive outcome.

Skot Waldron (21:22.796)
Hmm. That’s interesting. The shorter sentence thing is interesting to me. So what’s that doing again? Like you’re telling me like, if I’m feeling agitated, I’m feeling like, cause you know, I just want to get my point across. want to like, my wife often says Skot, too many words, too many words. And I’m like, you know, cause it’s all in my brain. I’m trying to get it out and it’s not coming out the right way. Richard. So, what’s the shorter sentences thing doing?

Richard Reid (21:41.242)
Ha ha ha ha. Yeah, yeah.

So there’s a variety of things that go on with the shorter sentences. And if you look at sort of those sort of public figures who we regard as being very charismatic, so somebody like Barack Obama, if you watch a classic Barack Obama speech, generally he’ll use quite short sentences. And there’s a number of reasons behind that. So first of all, it allows your audience more opportunity to reflect on the key message in that sentence. You know, if you’ve got sentences with lots of sub clauses, we may know where the sentence is going, but other people don’t know that. So it gives them more time to process that and takes into account the slight time lag between what we say and how people hear it. So that’s one thing. As we’ve already said, sentences also allow us to self-correct if our emotions are running away with us. And what tends to happen is when we’re angry, when we’re agitated, we have these long sentences, again, with lots of sub-clauses that may or may not be helpful, but may dilute the key message.

But more than that, when we talking about things like charisma, those shorter sentences allow us to bring more impact into the message. So imagine, and you know, this is tricky, but it’s something to maybe work towards and aspire to. Imagine being more deliberate and purposeful in your messages, particularly when it comes to speeches or presentations. So in other words, using every sentence or most sentences in what you say, for a deliberate purpose or effect. And that deliberate purpose or effect might vary from sentence to sentence or from slide to slide in your presentation. It might be different emotions that you want to access in your audience, depending on the topic of that slide, for instance. Or it might be you want to emphasize sound bites. So even with the best of intentions, people switch off, they drift off, they come back. So one of the things that I taught to people about is imagine you’ve got one key message in each sentence that you deliver. How are you going to use your voice, your body language, your choice of words to really point to the key message in that sentence? Almost saying to your audience, if you don’t hear anything else I say, this is the bit you need to listen to. How can you do that without being that explicit? And so these shorter sentences allow you to start to think about the emphasis in the sentence. How am going to use my hands? How am I going to use my voice?

How am I going to use my pauses? Do I want to pause so it really registers with people? This is something you need to think about. There lots of reasons why it’s useful.

Skot Waldron (24:22.562)
Hmm. That’s really good, man. Yeah. Another, I was talking to somebody else. no, wasn’t talking to somebody else. was listening, to Adam Grant show and he was having somebody on there that was talking about, the, the fluctuation in your voice, right? And how, you know, when, when you are, when you’re talking and you hear the up,

At the end, right. you a fluctuation of your voice? can tend to cause people to question if you really understand what you’re trying to say and communicate that, about going back to Barack Obama and you hear a soundbite from one of his speeches. A lot of his fluctuation is down. Like at the end of his sentences, he will have the, like you said, the short sentences, but he also is very like it’s a.

Richard Reid (24:51.782)
Mm. Mm.

Skot Waldron (25:09.09)
Down statement and authoritative, competent. So going back to our earlier statement about how it’s vocal, a lot of communication is vocal as far as getting our message across.

Richard Reid (25:10.3)
Definitely. You know, I think it’s a really good point. been a lot of research done on politicians and politicians whose voices dip at the end of a sentence are generally regarded as having more gravitas. And it’s interesting, if you go back several years now and you think about, you know, one of the archetypal British politicians, Margaret Thatcher, she deliberately undertook voice coaching to achieve that effect. if you listen to her voice and compare it to her early career, her voice became more masculine. And that was an intentional thing. people have mixed reactions to Margaret Thatcher, but what I would say is she’s memorable and she generates conversation. know, charisma isn’t always about being the most popular person in the room, but it is about having a brand. So when your name’s mentioned, people have a strong opinion on you one way or another.

Skot Waldron (26:14.19)
That’s right. And I speak about that a lot. It’s like, what is your leadership brand? What are people saying about you at the barbecue next weekend? Or, you know, when they’re out on the boat, you know, with their friends and whatever, it’s used as a recruitment tool too. And so your, your argument here is that the more I can build this inner state of my being, the more, um, in tune with myself, I can be the more charismatic that I can come across, um, and control and communicate influence, uh, to other, the more, again, influence I will have, whether it’s change management or whether it’s just trying to get a project across the finish line or whether it’s trying to retain my people inside of my organization.

Richard Reid (26:59.356)
Absolutely. When you get a grip on your internal world, you’ve got flexibility, you’ve got options. But when we are heavily within that system one brain, or we’re not questioning these things at all, we’re just sort of sleepwalking through life. It’s almost like being a trades person turning up to every situation trying to use the same tool. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t. But when you’ve got a range of tools, you’re more likely to get the outcomes that you want. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with this, teaching people what those options then might be.

Skot Waldron (27:28.226)
Okay, I got a question for you here. What is the thing that you think makes people the most uncharismatic? Like the thing that you see the most out there that is like, yeah, I’m seeing that thing mostly in most people. What is it that?

Richard Reid (27:48.278)
Yeah, I mean when people think about uncharismatic people they tend to think about people with a monotone voice and low energy. there’s that. But for me, the thing that makes people least charismatic is lack of curiosity for other people. So showing curiosity for people is really important. A lot of people that I talk to say, well, know, charisma, surely that’s just for extroverts.

And I say, well, it can be, but there are also extroverts who are superficial and drown other people out. They like having acolytes to make them feel wonderful, but they’re not actually interested in other people. And even if you’re a very quiet person, your superpower in terms of charisma could be actually when you’re in a one-on-one situation, you make people feel heard, you make them feel understood, you make them feel like you’re meeting them where they are. So even if you’re a quiet, retiring person, showing curiosity for people, creating space for people to really express themselves and maybe hear things about themselves they didn’t know they thought. means that you’re having a relationship with them that they don’t get in most walks of life and straight away that makes you more memorable.

Skot Waldron (28:56.248)
So by the time the show comes out, your book should be out. tell us about the book. we’ve, we’ve been talking about cares, you know, charisma this whole time. It’s, based on that idea. so tell us about, about the book, the way it’s formatted, who it’s for, where they can get their hands on it, et cetera.

Richard Reid (29:16.996)
Okay, so the book is going to be on Amazon Kindle and it’s called The Charisma Edge. And it’s, there’s something in it for everybody, but then again, I would say that wouldn’t I? then it involves more sales, but it’s generally directed at business people and it’s chapter by chapter talking about different aspects of charisma. And you can come at it from two angles. It’s got all the theory that sits behind this stuff for those people who are quite inquiring and perhaps a little bit skeptical, but most importantly, it’s got lots of practical things that you can pick out and apply. And you don’t need to read it cover for cover. It might be this one aspect of charisma that you’re particularly interested in, or you feel you need to develop in. And you can pick that section out. And there are step by step action points in there that you can start to apply and really start to ingrain them and make them a more natural part of who you are. So, you know, when you’re making changes, it can feel clunky. It can feel uncomfortable. And, you know, if you’re trying to make lots of changes, that’s probably unrealistic. But if you take one aspect of the book, and say, right, for the next month, I’m really going to focus on doing this on a daily basis. What you should start to find is that starts to become more natural. It starts to become a more integrated part of who you are. And then it starts to feel more authentic. And authenticity really sits at the center of this.

Skot Waldron (30:28.756)
What Richard, this is your last question, man. You’re ready. This is all for me. This is all for me. What is one thing I can do that you want me to like, just focus on work on. That’s a simple, you know, charismatic hack for me.

Richard Reid (30:32.11)
Mm. Yep. Go for it.

Okay, interesting. So this is one that applies to a lot of people. And obviously this is sort of, you know, first time we’ve really met and it’s, you know, it’s quite a tight period of time we’re working in, but pausing. Pausing is a classic one. So, you know, when we pause, if it’s not something we do, it can feel like an eternity. It’s like when somebody asks you a question and you can’t think of the answer. For them, it might not seem very long, but in your head, it’s like, my God, this is going on for forever. Even if you pause for a fraction of a moment longer, feels comfortable it will start to feel more normal and what you should start to find is that in conversations with people reveal a little bit more so in other words they’ll give you their first response and then maybe they’ll qualify that they’ll reflect on it and say a little bit more and being somebody’s come from a therapy background is something we use in therapy people will give you the first answer often the often it’s the unthought answer it’s the defensive answer but actually that fraction of a moment longer encourages people to reveal themselves and a lot of time people are socialized to be quick with their answers because people aren’t interested. So, taking a fraction of a moment longer for you, me, for everybody is massively important.

Skot Waldron (31:56.75)
Yeah, I lied. This I have more questions. This is so are you saying that when I, somebody is talking to me, that I just hold, I, I stay silent, that kind of pause, or are you talking about when I’m communicating, when I’m saying words that I stop pause, let it process. And which one, which one you talking about?

Richard Reid (31:59.836)
You tricked me.

Interesting, so you can come at this from two angles. So, first and foremost, I’m thinking in terms of when somebody says something to you to take a fraction of a moment longer before you respond, because it gives them, as I’ve said, it gives them time to add to what they’ve said. It might mean that you reformulate what you say next as well. So, that’s the first thing. The other way you can look at it, know, one of the things that’s attached to charisma is this idea of gravitas, so literally white. So, when I say I’ll do something, it has white behind it.

People take it seriously. People are attentive to what I say. And if you think about, you know, classics of business meetings, there’ll be certain people we work with, we think, right, they’ve got gravitas. When they speak, everybody listens. One of the things that helps with that, obviously it helps to be knowledgeable in your field, absolutely. You have a bit of substance behind it. But sometimes pausing before you respond to something also gives you gravitas. Not only does give you more time to think about how you want to position your response, but it also, creates a perception, a perception of a more considered response. And again, it’s not what most people do. And I’ve done it today. People ask a question and you feel obliged to respond straight away. So you’re being dictated to by your emotions, you’re not in control of your emotions. And what we tend to do is even if our emotions are not necessarily directly relevant to our sphere of expertise, people extrapolate.

People look at somebody who’s not in control of their emotions and it might not be a conscious thing, but they think, right, if they’re not in control of their emotions, do I want to trust them with these other things?

Skot Waldron (33:57.256)
I’m going to tell you, Richard, as I’ve been doing the interview, you’ll pause and then as me, the host, I sit there and go, is he done? Should I fill this space with questions and responses or do I just let it sit for a second because he just dropped some good wisdom and let it process? I’ve been trying to let it sit. I’ve been trying to let it sit.

Richard Reid (34:18.3)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a challenge, isn’t it? Because silence feels like doing nothing, doesn’t it? It feels like going into the unknown. How’s this going to play? Is it going to say something more or am just going be left hanging? So it’s, you know, I wouldn’t advocate, if it’s something that people don’t do, I wouldn’t advocate you do it in high profile situations to begin with. But maybe try it in a conversation with a friend or a loved one, just once in the space of a two or three minute conversation, see what it’s like to hang back a bit and you’ll feel uncomfortable but the more that you do it over a period of time, the more your brain basically says, actually, it’s unknown, but it works out. Yeah, it’s unscripted, but maybe we create something fresh.

Skot Waldron (35:00.024)
Good, man.

Richard Reid (35:00.038)
So it’s doing that over period of time and getting comfortable with it.

Skot Waldron (35:03.852)
Yeah, I love it. Awesome, man. Yeah, totally. Totally. can be used for good and evil Richard. So, well done, man. Thank you for your insights and your wisdom. Good luck with the book. keep we, we, think we need a little more charisma out in the world. think that’s, that’s a good way to put it. I’m glad we talked about it. Thanks, man.

Richard Reid (35:05.434)
Don’t do it all the time because that will feel like an interrogation.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, really enjoyed it.