Speaker 1: 0:35

Welcome back to Speak Out. Stand Out. I'm Elizabeth Green and today's guest is Richard Reed. Richard is a behavioral psychologist and an organizational consultant, working with issues from severe PTSD to leadership presence. He is a published author and appears regularly on TV and radio in the UK. And, Richard, we're glad to have you here today. Thanks for your time.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Thanks, elizabeth, really good to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:58

So what you know, our podcast, our goal is to build confidence and communication skills in kids, and I know you, what you are usually focused on often is more tied to adults, right? We're talking about today? We're talking about charisma and how to have charisma, how to build charisma. It just made me think of the. I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan, but the episode where Elaine's talking about grace. Does she have grace?

Speaker 2: 1:21

I don't know that just popped into my head, can you?

Speaker 1: 1:23

get grace? You know, that was kind of the question Can you get it? Can you get charisma? So you typically talk about these things for adults and like leaders in the business world, but these are strategies and skills that are just as important for our kids, right?

Speaker 2: 1:39

Absolutely. It's universal skills for anybody really. It's really about how you manage yourself, how you interact with other people, how you get the best out of all the social interactions that you have, but also how you put a good vibe out into the wider world as well. How do you help other people?

Speaker 1: 1:55

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's important in all of our interactions, but especially in initial interactions right with people, when we're making our first impression. That sets the stage for what they expect from us going forward. So what is charisma? I mean, it's a word that, honestly, we don't use very often, but I have an idea in my head. I see somebody kind of on stage and, you know, really commanding attention. Is that what charisma is?

Speaker 2: 2:21

Well, it can be. It comes in different shapes and sizes. You?

Speaker 1: 2:23

know, you ask 100 people.

Speaker 2: 2:24

They'll give you 100 different answers, but for me, what it means is how you connect with other people. So you could be really sort of loud, you could be, you know, at a party or on stage and dominate in the room, but actually are you connecting with other people?

Speaker 2: 2:39

The way you connect with other people is by generating the appropriate emotions within them, so either they feel drawn to you, they feel that you recognize them and that you're on their side, or that you understand them. So all of those things are fundamental needs for human beings in any walk of life, and so the risk is that we tend to think about extroverts as being charismatic, and while they can be, there are also some very shy, retiring or introverted people who can also be equally charismatic. They just need the right environment in order to demonstrate that. So it's about celebrating people's uniqueness as much as anything else.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Gotcha. And so why is this an important characteristic for us to have?

Speaker 2: 3:20

Well, I guess, whatever you do whether you're at school, whether you're talking to the mums in the playground, whether you're in a business environment you're connecting with people at different times in different ways. So having charisma is really good in terms of unlocking those relationships. So not only do you come across well, but you open up opportunities that are useful for you, but also, hopefully, you elevate other people as well. So one important aspect of charisma is how we create a virtuous circle. How do we not only create something positive for us, but put something positive out into the world that helps other people too? So that is going to be something that you encounter. Whatever walk of life, you're going to be coming into contact with people and it's really, really important to get on with them and open those opportunities up.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Yeah, and I think as a mom, you know that's something that we certainly want. We talk about building social skills in our kids, but it's so much more than just being able to speak to a stranger to order at a restaurant. You know, it's a, it's a matter of really, like you said connecting with people and that relationships like that that's what.

Speaker 1: 4:26

that's what make a difference. Not just casual conversations Absolutely Earlier, when I was talking about and people who don't know Seinfeld have no clue what I'm talking about but the episode where Elaine is talking about can I get grace? Do you have grace? Do you have to be born with grace? Can you get grace? Can anybody get charisma, or is this just something that some people will just have and others don't?

Speaker 2: 4:42

Well, I think it's fair to say that some people are born with more of it than others, naturally, but it's still something we have to work at, and even people who are very charismatic.

Speaker 2: 4:51

If they're not mindful of how they're coming across, they can dilute the impact of that or that can work against them. But equally, if you're somebody who doesn't regard yourself as being charismatic, there are absolutely skills you can learn and develop that will help you to move further along that continuum. Everybody, in my belief, has the capacity to become more charismatic and it's about. It's ultimately about being adaptable. It's being true, to who you are, but it's also adapting aspects of that to meet the people that you're with.

Speaker 2: 5:20

So you know you can easily be charismatic in one environment and not charismatic at all in another environment if you're not using those skills in a deliberate and purposeful way. So it's about recognizing what the situation needs as much as anything else.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Well, you mentioned too that there's different. You know ways that we can learn this and become more charismatic. Can you give me some examples, specifically things that we can instill in our kids and our teenagers?

Speaker 2: 5:44

Yeah, Well, I think the first thing is people tend to think about charisma as being about an external set of behaviors, and whilst it is, it starts with how you manage your internal world. And so this is really about emotional intelligence, recognizing what you're experiencing at any moment, what you're giving at any moment, what you're giving out to the world. So you've got the spare capacity and awareness to think about what's going to be the best resource to draw on, and that's where you sort of get into some of those external behaviors. But if you're not aware of your emotions, you're not aware of the impact that you have, then actually, you can have all the skills in the world, you're not going to use them in necessarily a successful way. And this is the problem is that people tend to behave in certain ways without thinking about whether that's the best option for that situation. So when we do that, sometimes it hits the mark and sometimes it doesn't, whereas if we are registering what we're feeling, we've got an opportunity to manage that and have spare capacity to think what do other people need? If you're overwhelmed by your own emotions, you don think what do other people need. If you're overwhelmed by your own emotions, you don't think about what other people need, and that's where things start to break down. So emotional intelligence is the first thing recognizing what's going on for you, and then having some skills to be able to manage that, and it can be very simple things. Sometimes just registering the emotion means that you might tread more carefully in that next situation.

Speaker 2: 6:58

Just that awareness can make a difference, but also things like breathing. Breathing is one of the biggest indications of how we're feeling. If we start to manage our breathing, we can also start to inform how we feel. So breathing is a really good one. Setting intentions how often do we engage with people without thinking about how we want to make them feel? We think about what we want to say, but we don't think about how we want to make them feel. We think about what we want to say, but we don't think about how we want to make them feel, and that has a big bearing on how we deliver the message. So those are some very basic things, but I think one of the things that we're seeing more and more in society and I think particularly with children, is difficulty managing an impulse.

Speaker 2: 7:35

So in other words you know, everything's very fast.

Speaker 2: 7:39

Everything's potentially available at the click of a switch, and what that means is we're becoming less and less able to register our emotions but also to manage them, because the brain's trained to want everything straight away. So for me, one of the biggest things that we can do with our children is to teach them to tolerate uncomfortable feelings, and sometimes that is about getting them to wait for things. Sometimes it is about getting them to endure a little bit of difficulty before they get their reward, and sometimes it's about allowing them to be bored. How often do we feel we've got to fill every minute of a child's time? Sometimes allowing them to be bored allows them to tolerate those uncomfortable feelings, but also to learn how to manage them and to be more creative, and if we're spoon-feeding them, they don't develop that skill. So those are some of the very base things that we can do before we start to get into some of the more advanced things like body language, choice of words, how we use our voice, all those sorts of more intricate skills.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Yeah, I think that you hit the nail on the head with the boredom. You know as a kid that was just part of life. You know like there were many times when we just had to sit and wait, whether it be at the doctor's office or just waiting for the bus or whatever. And now I find myself anytime I sit down and I'm going to be waiting for anything. What do I do Exactly?

Speaker 2: 9:00

I'll let my phone Exactly.

Speaker 1: 9:03

And it's so easy. It is very hard as an adult now to tolerate boredom, because we have created this environment where we don't have it, and that is something that, if we're not careful that our kids will never experience because, like you said, there's so many things going on at all times and they always have access to entertainment in some form or fashion, that it's such a little thing, but it is so. It's so crucial. So you mentioned to breathing and and that's how we can.

Speaker 1: 9:31

I know emotional intelligence is something we've talked a lot about on this podcast and it's something that I think a lot of adults even struggle with. We weren't really taught necessarily to identify our emotions, I feel like as kids, I don't think that was a conversation we were really having in that time and now I feel like this is something we expect that our kids to learn, but it's still something that we have to teach them how to name emotions and understand that Right, absolutely Going back to your point about sort of mobile phones and devices, one of the biggest things we can do for our children is to model the behavior that we want them to display.

Speaker 2: 10:11

So we're not walking the walk. It's very hard to enforce that and a lot of these things happen through osmosis, just being around people and not consciously modeling other people's behaviors, but just picking them up. So start by making the change that you want to happen in other people. So it is about cutting back on the screen time. It is about having downtime where there's nothing planned, nothing going on. It is about reducing options.

Speaker 2: 10:39

Another thing to think about is you know, as a society we have far more options. You know. You think about just buying a coffee how big a decision that becomes. You've got to make 20 or 30 different options you can have for a coffee. And again, having options means that we never have to just suck it up, you know. So think about.

Speaker 2: 10:54

You know, going back to days gone by, you might have two or three options and if you didn't like those, that's tough. But you learn to be resourceful, you learn to manage it. So I think some of those kinds of things would be a really good place to start, but one of the things that we can do is look at skills around something called mindfulness, which I'm sure you've heard about before. Mindfulness is really about focused attention. People tend to think about it as being about meditation or feeling relaxed, and it can be, but it's ultimately about you choosing where you're putting your attention and think about key times when we're together with our families. It tends to be, for example, mealtimes, or it could be mealtimes Sometimes it's not.

Speaker 2: 11:37

People are eating at different times because of busy lifestyles, but getting people to eat together is a great opportunity to introduce some mindfulness. And you know I'm not particularly religious, but you know you think about days gone by when people were religious. They would often have a prayer before they started the meal. And I'm not necessarily advocating that people become religious if that's not their, their preference, but there is something in that which gets us to connect and appreciate what we're doing, and it's also really important in terms of building emotional intelligence. So one of the ways in which we can adapt that, if we're not religious, is just to have a minute at the start of a meal where we eat in silence and we encourage everybody in the family to notice all the sensations that go with the act of eating. So what does it look like, what does it smell like, what does it feel like in my tongue, what does it feel like as it's going down my throat and then to discuss it afterwards? So by doing that.

Speaker 2: 12:30

What you're doing is you're starting to extend people's emotional vocabulary and their ability to express themselves, and that's a really good way, just for a minute, of trying to do that to the exclusion of any other thought or conversation. It's a great way to start to train the brain to be more disciplined and more focused, and that's a really good building block for emotional intelligence.

Speaker 1: 12:50

I think that I love that example. That's something that's easy for all parents to attempt to. Oh, my goodness, I just lost the word to. Oh, the word's not coming to me. It's an easy thing for us to do as parents.

Speaker 1: 13:05

And also just nice to have a minute of silence and appreciate the food that we have. But when you talk about mindfulness, to me it is something that sounds so intimidating, like I. You know it's so hard to keep focused If I try to sit down and and just you know, whatever it is, I'm trying to focus on something it is so hard to do these days. So I love the idea of just doing it for a minute at the beginning of each meal. That sounds like feasible, you know, that sounds like something we can do and then we ultimately build on that right.

Speaker 2: 13:36

It's like going to the gym and training the muscle. It takes time, and what I always say to people is, if you find some of these exercises difficult, that's all the more reason why you should be doing them. If you find them difficult, it's because there's a need for you to practice them. So you know, it could be a meal, it could be walking down the street and just feeling the air on your skin for a minute. It could be in the shower you know how often do we take a shower and we think about all the things we've got to do that day. Just being in that moment and a great one for mindfulness is Lego, okay. So if ever I want to feel mindful, I play Lego with my kids. It's a great way to lose sight of time and anything else that might be on your mind. So revisiting that playful behavior is also a really good way of getting more engaged with mindfulness.

Speaker 1: 14:20

And so tell me again. I mean, we're talking about mindfulness, but how does this mindfulness seem to me and charisma seem complete. They do not seem like synonyms, or how are they connected.

Speaker 2: 14:32

So mindfulness allows you to have more ability to recognize what's going on for you in a given moment. So, for example, if I've just had a conversation with somebody and I've been rattled by it, if I'm aware of that, I've got an opportunity to manage it before I speak to the next person. So I don't carry that over into that next conversation. So that's one way in which we can use it.

Speaker 2: 14:52

Another way in which we can use it is when we are engaging with people, when we're talking with people. How often we talk with people and we're thinking about what we want to say next and we're thinking about something that's happening after that conversation. So we happening after that conversation. So you know, we might come away from the conversation being able to recount all the facts of the conversation, but we're not connecting on that deeper level where we're thinking, well, what does this mean for somebody? What's the emotional significance of what they're saying? How are they physically reacting to what I'm saying? All those kinds of nuances that you don't recognize unless you're fully engaged.

Speaker 2: 15:24

And again, if we're thinking about what we want to say next, you're not following the conversation. In other words, you're running to a script. So the best conversations that open things up and connect with people are ones that are freshly baked, and I come from a therapy background so, speaking as a therapist, I learned very early on that when I go off script, those are some of the most profound conversations that I have with people. When I don't go in there with any expectations of what we're going to do, it's amazing how things go in a very, very different way. So actually you don't create these self-fulfilling prophecies about how it's going to be.

Speaker 1: 15:54

You know I used to be a news reporter and you just jogged that memory in my brain that we would always start rolling the camera as we were setting up the interview. And 90% of the time the soundbites that we used were from that section, not whenever I was asking specific questions and, like you said, it's just more authentic, but outside of, let's say, getting a good soundbite. Why does it matter? Why does any of this matter?

Speaker 2: 16:21

Good question. Well, it matters for a number of reasons. It matters on a social level. So, in terms of the society that we want to create, people tend to be more engaged in society when they feel seen and heard. So you think about it on the broader scale. That's important.

Speaker 2: 16:37

When we have a conversation with somebody and we make them feel good, either we acknowledge something about them or we unpack something that maybe they weren't aware of before. They come away feeling good about themselves and they come away feeling good about themselves and also they become away feeling good about us. And imagine, you know, one of the things I always talk about with charisma is think of yourself as a brand. Most of us don't think in those terms, but actually, if you were to ask lots of people who knew you to be honest about you when you're not in the room, they would probably come back with very similar descriptions, and that's ultimately a big part of your brand. And when you're engaging with other people using some of these skills, those people are your potential marketing team for your brand. Those are the people that keep you in mind when opportunities open up. Those are the people who speak well of you to other people.

Speaker 2: 17:21

So, engaging with people, even when there's no obvious immediate benefit to doing that, is really really important. And it obvious immediate benefit to doing that is really really important and it doesn't have to cost a lot. So think about how many superficial conversations we have. Did you have a good weekend? Yeah, not bad. Thanks you. What do you learn from that? It's polite conversation, but how was your weekend? What did you get up to? What was that like? Just subtle shifts in the language that we use encourage people to give more expansive responses, to start to tap into things that demonstrate what's important to them and the emotions that sit with that. So not only are you getting a better understanding of them, but they are also connecting with the emotions more.

Speaker 1: 18:01

And when they connect with the emotions more.

Speaker 2: 18:03

They have a really good experience of interacting with you.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Yeah, I think that this is important in our interactions with people all around us, but also our own families, you know, especially within our own families, like you just said. You know, every day my kids come home from school. How was your day? Eh, and that's about it. But, like you said, if you really dig into it more and we have to be mindful again to use that word in order to do that, because it's so easy just to fall- into those superficial conversations, Definitely.

Speaker 2: 18:32

And one thing that's really important in this is silence. We tend to think about charisma as being about doing. Again, going back to mindfulness is also about being, and one of the biggest gifts that we can give to people is to give them more of our time. So, for instance, if I ask somebody a question, it's very tempting to take them at the first answer and move on, ask another question or hijack the answer. Oh yeah, I've done that too. It's great, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 18:57

But sometimes, within reason, holding back for a fraction of a moment allows somebody to hear their own words, to connect with the emotions and sometimes to qualify what they've just said. And again, this is something that I've used time and time again in the coaching and the therapy arena. When you give people that extra moment, it's something they don't get in most walks of life. You think about how often we're held to account for the first thing that comes out of our mouth. So now and again, doing that allows you to open up things that the other person wasn't aware of, that you weren't aware of, so you have a deeper connection than they would do with the average person.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Yeah, and it's funny, the things you're saying, like I said, are kind of taking me back to my prior career. That was something else too, that moment of silence. If you leave that moment lingering, the other person feels the need to fill it, you know. And so if you just let them, then most of the time they will go on and add more to what they were going to say that you wouldn't have gotten. If you're just ready to jump right in, yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Obviously you've got to use it sparingly. If you do it after every single thing they say, then that gets very intense. But now and again you know a couple of times in the five-minute conversation is not necessarily a big difference, but actually it can make a massive difference to the outcome. And one of the biggest challenges to that is that most of us don't feel comfortable in silence, right. So learning to sit with the silence and even just saying, well, I'm just going to go a moment longer than I normally would and experiment with it the more you do it, the more you'll learn to tolerate it.

Speaker 1: 20:31

And you'll also hopefully see the benefits of having done that Well. I think these have been really helpful in ways to help us connect with our kids and help us build these skills in our kids, and I can particularly see how these are helpful in the business world and getting nominated or tapped for certain jobs or promotions or things like that. What about just in the everyday world? Besides it making people feel listened to, why does this matter so much that we teach this to ourselves and our kids?

Speaker 2: 20:58

Well, it's about creating psychological safety With our children. Even if we're a parent who prides ourselves on being very supportive of our kids, if we don't give them opportunities to fully express themselves or we only respond to certain things that they say, that indirectly gives a message about what's okay and what's not okay and it potentially causes problems later in life in terms of pressure people put on themselves, in terms of what they divulge to people, maybe when they're struggling. So it creates that extra safety for people to feel comfortable to express themselves.

Speaker 2: 21:33

So I think that's the first thing that I would say, but I think, in terms of children's potential you know to be everything they can be in life again, creating that safe container, creating space to explore ideas, express things in a way that they don't with other people, allows them to grow in other areas that you or they may not have considered before. And you know there's so many people that I encounter in the coaching and therapy world who've been channeled not necessarily because their parents have said right, you've got to do this or you've got to behave like this, but because they've picked up on the subtle cues about what's okay to express what's not okay. How much time have I got to express myself?

Speaker 2: 22:11

So it's like a pot plant the bigger the pot you give it, the more the roots can grow.

Speaker 1: 22:21

Yeah, oh, I love that analogy and you're making me identify things in myself that apply to this. So well, this has been really really interesting, and we haven't had a conversation like this at all yet on the podcast. Is there any other tips or anything else you want to leave with parents about building charisma and themselves and their kids, or any last words of wisdom that you want to share?

Speaker 2: 22:40

Yes, I think the final thing again taking this from the world of business is humility. So as an adult, it's very easy to think we've got to have all the answers to things and hopefully we've got the answers to most things. But I think sometimes showing humility and even talking about your own mistakes, particularly the mistakes that you've overcome, you're working through it's really inspiring for other people, and the same goes with children. It allows children to develop what we call a growth mindset, in other words, to own their mistakes, to talk about them openly and to feel comfortable doing that. And again, what that means is that they're more likely to grow up in a healthy, balanced way.

Speaker 1: 23:15

Yeah, and that's, of course, what we all want for, as parents, for all of our kids. Well, richard, this has been a great conversation. You also have a new book out right? We'll be sure to link to that. But a new book out right? We'll be sure to link to that.

Speaker 2: 23:27

But if you want to tell us just briefly, about that real quick too, and we'll have a link in the show notes. Fantastic. So the book is called Charisma Unlocked. It's primarily aimed at business people, but the skills in there are transferable to anybody really, and you can just pick out bits. You don't have to read it all the way through, but it gives you some very practical insights along the similar lines to the things that we've discussed today. So you can find that on Amazon if that's something that interests you.

Speaker 1: 23:48

All right, we'll be sure to link to that, and we'll also link to Richard's LinkedIn and social media, so if you want to connect with him with anything else, that information will be there. Again, we really appreciate your time. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 23:58

Thanks, Elizabeth.