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:

- Why charisma is about connection, not extroversion, for stage 4 leadership

- How to cultivate presence through vulnerability to inspire your team

- What small, incremental changes in communication enhance your authentic influence

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 4 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

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/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 Reed spell, r, e, i, d, or you

can go to my website, which is www.richard-reid.com.

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.