In this magnetic episode, Richard Reid, Founder of Richard Reid Enterprises (IoM) Limited, shares strategies to develop authentic charisma for leadership. If you struggle with connecting authentically or feeling inauthentic as a leader, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What small, incremental changes in communication enhance your authentic influence
– Why charisma is about connection, not extroversion, for stage 4 leadership
– How to cultivate presence through vulnerability to inspire your team
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the Start scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder, there is a significant challenge that a surprising number of very successful founders face, especially as their organization grows, they have to learn to create more value through what they communicate to others with their words than what they can construct themselves with their hands. And to do so requires this tricky little thing called charisma. But what is charisma like, really? What is it? And the pressing question for today is, how much of it do you have? And to help us figure all this out is the one and only Richard Reid, who is a UK based therapist, coach and organizational well being expert with over 20 years of experience and as the founder of Pinnacle well being plus, he has worked with high profile clients, including executives And entrepreneurs offering tailored mental health, leadership and cultural transformation solutions. Richard specializes in Trauma Recovery, executive presence and fostering positive workplace cultures. Outlets like Sky News and BBC frequently feature him, and he’s also the author of a great book called charisma unlocked the science and strategy to captivate influence and succeed in business. He’s here with us today. Richard out of the gate, truth or myth. You ready? Charisma is all right. Here it goes. Charisma is only for extroverts and those who are loud and assertive.
Richard Reid
False, absolutely false. It’s for everybody. And basically, some people start further along that continuum than others, and we tend to naturally think it’s those loud, gregarious people who are charismatic. But for me, that’s that’s charm. Real charisma is about connecting with people and really making people feel feel heard and seen, and developing things between you rather than talking at them. And so you can have people very entertaining at parties, but they’re not necessarily connecting with people and making people feel important. And that’s charisma, and that comes in all shapes and sizes.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So for a founder who who, again, their success is demanding that they step up into this, right? They’ve got to take on maybe a more public persona. They have to lead their team and even internally, in a more public way. How does this myth that you have to be loud and assertive to be charismatic? How does that hold them back? And what’s a better way of thinking about it from that perspective?
Richard Reid
Yeah, I guess it tends to be society favoring extroverts, doesn’t it? And it’s not so extroverts don’t have charisma, because lots of them do, but, but equally, introverts can. And I think people tend to stigmatize themselves, and when we get the belief that we’re not good at doing something, we tend to shy away from doing it. And actually, some of the most charismatic people are introverts, because actually they take their time to listen to what other people have to say. They make other people feel important, and they understand what’s important to those people, what are their hopes and their fears, so that they can adapt their mass their message accordingly. And this is really important. You can be very entertaining at a party, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand what motivates other people. So you’re not adapting. You’re not showing flexibility in your communication style. And that’s the key.
Scott Ritzheimer
So true. So true. So I want to, I want to take a look at one more commonly held belief, let’s call it that way, and that is that charisma requires like James Dean, good looks, you know, like Marilyn Monroe, like just bombshell levels of physical attractiveness. Is that true?
Richard Reid
No, it’s not true. So I think there is research to show that people who are deemed to be physically attractive get more initial opportunities. But actually, in terms of sustainability, it is absolutely about how you connect with other people, and whilst looks might open the door, they don’t keep the door open.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Well, so if it doesn’t come from extroversion, if it doesn’t come from the good looks, if it’s really about this connection between us, what are some things that we can do to start to foster that? What are some of the areas that we can really cultivate to develop our charisma?
Richard Reid
Yeah. Well, a lot of people get excited about the body language and the stuff around how you adapt your voice, and that’s important. But all those fancy skills, those advanced skills, are only valuable if you start with the basics. And the basics are really around being more self aware, registering what’s happening for you, registering what you’re giving out to other people, so you can make informed choices about how you want to be. So it all starts with mastering your internal world to be able to influence your external world. And when you’ve got more mastery of that, then you can start to think about things like by. Language. But actually, if you’re not aware of the emotions you’re carrying and the energy that you’re giving off, you’re going to be using those things at inappropriate times. So being emotionally in tune with yourself and with other people means that you know which skills to bring to bear at which times, and it means that you’re doing it in a more authentic way. There are lots of people who undertake charisma training, but because they don’t do the fundamentals, it comes across as instancy, and people see through it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so there’s someone listening like, I’m not a real big emotion person. Don’t express a lot, don’t have a whole lot of tolerance for a lot. Is this something that we’re just kind of wired into? Is it a skill to be developed? How do we really understand what our capacity is in that area?
Richard Reid
Interesting question. So we often lose sight of the fact that as human beings, we’re essentially sophisticated animals. So first and foremost, we interpret the world through our physicality, our physical emotions and our energy. And so to not be tapped into those things is to really miss a trick. How often do we go into an environment and even before people speak, we’ve got a sense of how we feel about them, how we feel in relation to them, how safe we feel. So it really is the key way in which we we interact with people. And it’s estimated within eight seconds of meeting somebody, you’ve already formulated the view of them. Well, simple as entering a room and shaking hands with somebody, you formulate the view. And whilst you can overcome that, it’s a lot harder to do that once that impression has been made. So whoever you are, even if you don’t see yourself as being somebody who’s emotional or touchy feely, there are, there are degrees of touchy feeling and being in touch with your emotions, that all of us, wherever we’re starting from, can start to to progress within that continuum.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, I love that. So next one here, because you break this down into a few kind of key I think you call them pillars in the book and and what I found as I was reading through is these are words that a lot of us would recognize but struggle to define. So I’m wondering if we could just kind of lay out what, what some of these things are. So something like presence. What is presence? How do you define it?
Richard Reid
Suppressants is about how much of yourself are you bringing into a situation. You think about how often we are distracted because we’re talking to somebody, we’re already thinking about what we want to say next, or we’re thinking about the next meeting we’ve got to go to. And on some level, people know that, because they know that they pick up on that they hold back, they hold back in terms of what they divulge. And how often do people ask us how we are, and we think that they’re only being polite, so we don’t actually give them anything that actually deepens the level of connection. So slowing the conversation down, bringing more of ourselves to the conversation is really, really important, and presence is also partially about vulnerability. How much of myself am I revealing to you? And I’m not suggesting you tell everybody everything about you, but when we demonstrate some degree of vulnerability, then actually that invites other people to show vulnerability as well. And then we connect with people at a much deeper level than we tend to in everyday conversation. So being fully present is really about being in the moment and noticing what that interaction needs in any given moment?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I have found, particularly with things like vulnerability, that they’re a lot easier to walk into when they’re already established than to create. And one of the things that happens for a lot of founders is there’s this, there’s a lot of question marks around what’s the right amount when’s the right time? I don’t want them to think this thing’s going off the rails. I don’t want them to think them to think I’m going crazy. Like, how do you help, especially founders, CEOs, folks that are in that leadership position, that have the responsibility to really define and model what vulnerability looks like, and to kind of lay the groundwork for that. How do you help them to navigate what’s the right amount and right time.
Richard Reid
Really, really good question again, and I think it varies from person to person and scenario to scenario, but I think it’s about experimenting and experimenting in small ways. I’m not suggesting you give everything away in any given moment, but just small ways, acknowledging, maybe when you don’t have the answer to something, acknowledging when you’ve made a mistake, even in this day and age, so many leaders are feel the pressure to be perfect and to have the answer to everything. I think sometimes when we defer to other people say, What do you think? Or actually, I’m not sure, or actually, yeah, I couldn’t figure that out either. It’s given permission for other people to step up. So actually, the business starts to grow because it’s no longer about all roads leading to you, you can start to relinquish control and make other people feel more capable. And as the leader and owner of a business, you set the tone and the culture for that environment. So if you are leading by. Example, it means it’s more okay for other people to do that. And so many organizations I’ve worked with, people don’t want to admit when they don’t understand something, and actually it’s a sense of relief, and somebody else puts their hands up and says, I don’t I don’t understand that. Can you explain that to me? So it just sets that that tone for other people. And basically that’s something you haven’t done before that’s quite scary. So it’s starting off in small ways, getting more comfortable with it, gradually exposing yourself to the idea of it. And you don’t have to do that as a victim. You can say, well, actually, I made a mistake, but this is what I learned from it. So actually, there’s something positive coming from that experience.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. I love that. One of the challenges that I’ve bumped into, personally, and I hear from clients as well, just walking down this road is sometimes when you’re trying to make changes in things like vulnerability or presence or warmth or a lot of your body language, you end up feeling a little bit like a robot, like you feel almost like you’re living someone else’s life for a moment, does it stay that way? And what role does authenticity play in all of that, especially in that period of change?
Richard Reid
Yes, it’s a really tricky one. It’s a question that comes up quite a lot, and I think it’s finding that balance between being true to yourself, but also developing and you think anybody in any course of life, inevitably, you develop and you’re not the person that you were 10 years ago. So this is this is doing that in a very focused and targeted way. And I think to make lots of dramatic changes overnight is going to feel clunky and it is going to feel disingenuous. So again, it’s this idea of small, incremental changes, maybe just refining something you already do, doing it in a slightly different way. And when we do that, when we step outside of our comfort zone, it does make us more vulnerable. It does make us feel more anxious. And the temptation is to revert back to what you know best, but it’s taking just those one or two small changes and sticking with them and reflecting back on how they’ve gone refining them. And as you do that, they become a more natural part of who you are. And then that may be all the change you want to make, or it may be you’ve then got spare capacity to think about what else you might want to improve. But fundamentally, yeah, it’s trying to integrate these new skills into who you already are, rather than trying to make them into something completely new.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. I love that language of integrating new skills into who you are. Because it’s not just skills, right? It’s not just riding a bicycle, you know? It’s it’s also becoming a certain kind of leader and and so I feel like that phrase does an excellent job of just kind of pulling both of those worlds that it is developing a new skill you can learn it. It. You don’t have to deny who you are to gain it, but it makes you a better version of who you are. It’s very cool language. I like that. All right. So there was this concept that just jumped out at me in the book, and I have to get to it, and it’s this idea of anti charisma. So you talk about the paradox of anti charisma. So tell us what it is and why it works so well.
Richard Reid
Well, anti charisma is really going against the grain of what everybody expects charisma to look like. And actually that there are lots of people in the world who, on the face of it, might be quite geeky, might be quite awkward, but actually they have a brand around that, that people know them for that, and they own it, and they and they and they accept that, and don’t apologize for being that person. And because of that, people start to associate them with those characteristics, and people talk about them in glowing ways because they’re brave. They own who they are, and they step out from the crowd. And this is also part of charisma. Charisma is not about being like everybody else. It’s saying this is who I am. And whilst you might Polish some of the edges of that, it’s fundamentally being proud of who you are and owning that and the confidence that comes with that is often inspiring for other people. You know, you look at people like Elon Musk, who’s quite divisive. Not everybody likes him, but he’s slightly awkward. He’s slightly unusual in some respects, albeit very accomplished, but people talk about it. When you ask somebody about they’ve got an opinion on and they remember him. Part of what charisma is about. Charisma is not always about being lights. Often the two things go hand in hand, but sometimes people might not like you at all. They might not be able to stand you, but they know what you stand for, and they respect you for that, even if they don’t like you, yeah. And that’s really what anti charisma is. It’s not this idea of being all things to all people and being liked by everybody, if you can be fantastic. But some people’s brand is about saying this is what I stand for, whether you like that or not.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. Richard, there’s this question I like to ask all my guests. I’m interested to see what you have to say. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish every founder watching and listening today knew?
Richard Reid
Well, I’m going to quote the lyrics from a song here. Silence is golden, and often in any walk of life, but particularly when we leaders, we feel we have to be openly and in very obvious ways, adding value to conversations and sometimes. And particularly as a leader, being quiet can actually be empowering for other people and can be also insightful for us. Sometimes, when we hold back, it encourages other people to fill that space and to step up, but more importantly, it allows people to fully express themselves. And when they fully express themselves, not only do they feel more validated, but also it gives us more insight into what motivates them, and so as a consequence, we can start to adapt the direction and the flow of our communication to more readily meet with their hopes and concerns. And we often see that as being passive, but if we do it in the right way, it actually adds tremendous value.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so hard to when you’re used to, especially when the whole room goes silent, right? Yeah, and you got, like, this type a go, get it. I’m going to come up with the answer going all the way back to your opening point there, around the inner work, right? If, if you can’t silence that inner voice, it’s impossible to silence the outer one. And, yeah, so fascinating. Fascinating, fascinating.
Richard Reid
That discomfort. My background is as a therapist. As a therapist, it’s one of the first things you’ve got to do, get comfortable with silence, because then you can make more informed choices about if and when you speak.
Scott Ritzheimer
Very uncomfortable, uncomfortable. No, no. Just kidding, Richard. There’s some folks listening and you’ve given them hope in a way that they haven’t had in a long time. You’ve normalized something that felt like it was completely foreign, and they want to know more about the work you do, or even get a copy of their book. Where can they find the book and where can they find you?
Richard Reid
So the book is available on Amazon, and if you want to find out more about me, you can find me on LinkedIn, and it’s Richard Reid spell, r, e, i, d, or you can go to my website, which is www.richard-reid.com.
Scott Ritzheimer
Brilliant, brilliant, Richard, thanks so much for being on the shows a privilege and honor, having you, having you here today. And for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us, I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Richard Reid
Richard Reid is a UK-based therapist, coach, and organizational wellbeing expert with over 20 years of experience. As the founder of Pinnacle Wellbeing Plus, he has worked with high-profile clients, including executives and entrepreneurs, offering tailored mental health, leadership, and cultural transformation solutions. Richard specializes in trauma recovery, executive presence, and fostering positive workplace cultures. His acclaimed books, The Charisma Edge and Cure Your Phobia in 24 Hours, showcase his expertise. Outlets like Sky News and BBC frequently feature him.
Want to learn more about Richard Reid’s work at Richard Reid Enterprises (IoM) Limited? Check out his website at http://www.richard-reid.com