The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

The Psychology of Presence: How to Connect and Influence Through Body Language with Richard Reid

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 42

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Richard Reid takes us on a fascinating journey from his classics degree and IT consulting days to his current role as a psychologist working with executives and organizations. 

The discussion opens with a counterintuitive insight: being too polished in your presentation style can actually make people distrustful. Instead, Richard advocates for finding that sweet spot between authentic self-expression and professional delivery. 

Whether you're looking to enhance your presence as a trainer, develop stronger connections with your team, or simply communicate more effectively, Richard's insights offer a refreshing blend of psychological depth and practical application. His emphasis on curiosity, authenticity, and psychological safety provides a framework for transforming not just how we present information, but how we connect with others on a fundamental human level.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
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Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are featuring Richard Reid. Welcome, richard. Hi Jay, good to meet you, nice to meet you as well, and I'm super excited about this conversation. You've got an incredible backstory and history. Let's let the audience get to know you just a little bit. How did you find your way into this talent development space?

Richard Reid:

Well, I actually started off in a funny kind of way. I did a degree in classics at university, then fell into IT and business consultancy and hated that and took a year out and went traveling and ended up sharing a tent in Patagonia with a psychiatrist from Wales. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Richard Reid:

We started talking and he said I think you'd be a really good psychologist. So when I came back to the UK, I retrained and I've been doing that now for about 20 years, first and foremost starting off with one-to-one therapy and, over the years, moving more into the corporate space, working with entrepreneurs, working with organizations, really looking at their culture, their behaviors and how it is they can optimize performance.

Jay Johnson:

Okay, so you moved from IT and you know probably some sort of engineering there, to kind of human engineering. What was that transition like, like what was going through your mind?

Richard Reid:

during that time. Well, the IT thing was really, for one, a better idea. You know there's only so many things you can do with a classics degree, so I sort of fell into that um. But the part that I really enjoyed about it was, um, the people aspect of it. So I've never, despite working in it for several years I'm not really a techie. I was always the guy who would be the conduit between the techies and the rest of the organization. So so for me it's always been about human interaction and understanding what works, how you can put people at ease, how you can connect with what's important to people.

Jay Johnson:

That's incredible. So that must have been a fun transition, but the background in people and just sort of having that passion I'm sure really kind of facilitated that way forward. I want to dig into something that I think is going to be so useful for our audience here on the Talent Forge and you talk quite a bit about body language. Now, as a trainer and as a coach, you're standing in front of a room or, if it's virtual, you're sitting across, hopefully not looking at a completely blank screen, but maybe being able to see some different things. Let's start this conversation off around body language. Richard, what would you suggest for those emerging trainers? How might they be able to manage that effectively, or what are some tips or tactics that you might be able to share to help them out?

Richard Reid:

Yeah, good question. So I think first and foremost it's about self awareness, and a lot of the time we do things without thinking about it, and if somebody sort of tapped you on the shoulder and said, why did you just do that A lot of time we wouldn't be able to answer that. So I think it's building that self awareness and it's then you can start to identify what are the areas that you might want to change in order to have the most impact, and I think it's striking a balance. I think if you're too polished, that can make people wary. You know, I can think of lots of British politicians, for example, have had lots of training in this area and it actually is counterintuitive because people don't trust it. So it's not about eradicating who you are, but it's about sort of polishing the edges ever so slightly.

Jay Johnson:

Isn't that so interesting, though? Like being too smooth, or you know, it's not human, it's not human when we're too smooth.

Richard Reid:

So I'm all for improvement, but I think it needs to be within the context of who you, you genuinely are at the heart of yourself, and if and if it's not, people are very, very good at looking through that and it actually diminishes the amount of trust and connection that people have with you.

Jay Johnson:

I want to stick on something that you said about that awareness. I it's so important and yet it's seemingly so difficult. I always mess with people whenever I'm doing a you know a presentation or anything like that on compelling presentations. If I'm doing something, I'll ask the audience. I'll say, can you fold your arms? And you know all of them. You know, obviously, we can all fold our arms. Then I asked them to switch them, and watching them switch them is is like watching a newborn take its first step. It's like they look at their arms confused and it's just like I'm like yep, they actually fold that way too. You just don't do it and you're not even aware of it too. Let's dig into that just a minute, because I think that's so important. How can we improve our own awareness you had mentioned you know you tap somebody on a shoulder and say why'd you do that? How can we give ourselves that tap on the shoulder?

Richard Reid:

Yeah, yeah, I think the first thing is setting the intention to do that before you go into a situation. Set the intention to notice more of what you do, and I think one thing that really helps with that is slowing down. You know, we do so many things in autopilot and at speed and sometimes we've got to do that, but we do it by default a lot of the time and that really affects our interactions with people, because we start to without meaning to objectify people, we don't see them in real time, we don't pick up on the nuances and, as a consequence, we become very much one tool for every job approach. So that slowing down is really important because then you can make more informed choices about what you choose to do in response to what's happening. So it's freshly baked the interaction you're having are freshly baked, rather than things that you are bringing by default.

Jay Johnson:

You know, it's so interesting because I think slowing down could help us in so many different ways, but it's always as though we're flooded with, you know, all these signals and everything else. Does our body language then sort of just kind of become a little bit more autonomic? You know, is it something that, because we think about the movements, we have our skeletal movements, our muscle movements and you know where those are connected inside of the brain? And I know we're getting a little deeper into the science here but uh, you know, as we start to think about, um, just generalized movement and mindfulness of that movement, are we, are we sort of shifting a little bit away from that autonomic response? Are we kind of literally creating the conditions of being present or more mindful that way?

Richard Reid:

absolutely, and for me it comes down to the idea of psychological safety. So, generally speaking, people particularly people who don't know us they feel safer when they have more opportunity to process what it is that we're doing. Uh, and particularly when there's a, there's a rhythm and a pattern to it, and when we're operating at pace 10, things tend to be more erratic. Um, it's harder for people to keep up with the flow of things, so that's slowing down. It's a great opportunity to be more inclusive and also to adapt to whatever the circumstances might be that are unfolding. So we don't tend to do that all that often. It becomes very transactional, okay.

Jay Johnson:

So let me, let me shift this side again One more time. Here I'm now standing in front of a room and I'm trying to set my intention for being mindful of my body language and now, all of a sudden, I'm creating panic. I'm like, oh my God, they're looking at me, they're looking at my face. I got a smile. I'm doing all of these crazy things to try to, you know, be authentic but not be too authentic or overly polished. How do we get out of our own head sometimes, because I know that that can be a big thing. We, right, we're, we are social creatures. We look to other creatures, you know, in our, in our species, for cues and those types of things. How can we make sure that we're not overanalyzing but still setting that intention in a proper, in an effective manner?

Richard Reid:

Yeah. So I think we can set assumptions at the outset of those interactions. But I think we, you know, as you've sort of pointed to there, we have to check those assumptions as we progress through that interaction. But I think certainly we could start off by thinking about what we think the audience needs from us, what the situation needs from us, and then use that to inform how it is that we use our body language and the kind of energy and emotions that we want to create.

Richard Reid:

And you see this quite a lot when people are giving presentations that they're very heavily caught up in the content of what they're delivering but they're making assumptions about what is relevant to the audience and assumptions about what the audience will then take away from that information and act on. So we've got to think about what do we want to invest in this interaction and what are the action points that we want people to take away and that will then inform how we then use our body language, how we use our words, how we use our voice. You know voice is often an underestimated part of our interaction. You think about animals. Animals don't necessarily understand the words that we use, but they understand the tone and the pitch and the pace and the energy that's connected with that, and it's exactly the same with humans. You know, over time we've lost connection with the fact that essentially we're sophisticated animals and we need to get back to remembering that.

Jay Johnson:

Well, you know and I love that you say that, because tone is one of those things where we know how important it is If you've ever gotten that text message that just says okay, and how we personally read that tone, that's a great way to get me to go from zero to 11 in like six seconds because I read that.

Jay Johnson:

But I do know a number of friends and colleagues where it's just like yeah, okay, and that's the tone that they intended behind it, despite the fact that I misread it. You know, when we're thinking about something like tone and inflection, it's always astounding to me and I want to dig into you and your background and your knowledge here. We have the ability to influence other people's mood affect and their entire experience simply by monitoring our tone and inflection. We can get them really excited if we get talking fast and bring the tone up and we can put them to sleep with our tone going low and slow. So you know, as a trainer, as a coach, as somebody who's trying to build influence with the audience, what would be some of your recommendations to really kind of zero in on that sweet spot of tone and inflection?

Richard Reid:

Yeah. So first of all, I go back to the point I made before what is the purpose of your presentation or your training? What is it that you're trying to evoke in the audience and that will then inform how it is that you can use your voice? One of the things that sometimes gets in the way of that is not just the speed that we speak at, but also the complexity of the sentences that we use. So a lot of the time we use very long sentences that don't naturally lend themselves to particular emphasis in how we use our voice.

Richard Reid:

So shorter sentences not only makes it easier to follow what we're saying, but it also gives us more opportunity to choose about how we say it. And those shorter sentences are also useful because we can have the pause. And the pause, for many people, feels like I'm not doing anything, nothing's happening. But the pause is so important for for a number of reasons firstly, to draw breath, to think about how we want to present the next sentence, but also in terms of audience interaction yeah, if I'm talking at you, I don't know how my message is landing. The pause is an opportunity for people to reflect on what I've said, to make comments, ask questions, but also for me to start to just gauge the energy and and the bodily responses of other people pauses are always that scary thing for that trainer.

Jay Johnson:

It's like why am I silence? We are so uncomfortable with silence. Do you have any insight? Is what is it about silence that really just absolutely makes people uncomfortable?

Richard Reid:

Yeah, I think silence is a leap of faith, isn't it? And if you think about the human brain, it's very geared towards doing rather than being. That's our natural place to be, towards doing rather than being. That's our natural place to be, and for many of us, we often feel we need to prove our existence in interaction by delivering something, and a pause can feel quite passive, but actually it adds a tremendous amount of value. If you're doing it all the time, that might be a little bit strange, but now and again, used in a deliberate way and that might be a little bit strange, but now and again, used in a deliberate way, it's immensely powerful.

Richard Reid:

You know and I speak from the position of, first and foremost, being a therapist and so often the biggest insights come when I hold back. Yeah, if I take people at their first comment and move forward with that, sometimes that works, but it often leaves a missed opportunity behind. Yeah, how often do we get people's full attention and opportunities to really express ourselves? Not very often, so people will often say the first thing that comes into their head without then reflecting and having an opportunity to qualify that. So really, really important if we want to get those deeper conversations.

Jay Johnson:

Huge. So I am not a clinical therapist, but it is exactly what I teach in negotiations, in sales and everything else. I want to really draw out something you said and I'm going to borrow this and I will give you full credit for it Silence is a leap of faith. I don't know that I have heard that more brilliantly stated. Get that into a book, richard, because that is incredible. Silence is a leap of faith and I love how you framed this with.

Jay Johnson:

If we're really considerate, if we're empathetic to what our audience needs, what they want, how they're interacting with us and what message they need to take away from us. That's going to influence how we demonstrate our body language, how we're going to demonstrate our tone and inflection and, importantly, how we're going to be comfortable with that silence. So powerful, so powerful. All right. So I have, you know, we have a number of emotions and and I've I've actually been doing a lot of research into emotional intelligence, particularly like how emotions are made. So looking at the neurobiology of emotions, so going a little bit deeper than just the, say, standard Daniel Goleman, let's read you know, emotion 2.0.

Jay Johnson:

So really getting into the fundamental neuroscience of it, and it is so fascinating how complex our, our, our emotional systems are. But let's, let's take it to the classify, or even explain emotion.

Richard Reid:

I think people really struggle. They really struggle Men more than women but people in general struggle to express their emotions or qualify their emotions, and this is why their emotions or qualify their emotions. And this is why this is another reason why the pause is really important, because actually, I may not know what I'm feeling or I might need time to reflect on what I'm feeling. And so often you think about our interactions with people. They exist at a very superficial level. If somebody asks me how are you doing, they don't want to hear about all my problems, they want the abridged version, they want the polite version of what's going on. So, actually, when we do get an opportunity to really express ourselves, we don't always take that opportunity because we think, well, surely you just want a quick version of what's going on.

Richard Reid:

So this is why pausing and sometimes reflecting back what we think is going on for people is really, really important. So, for example, when somebody says something, maybe commenting on the body language or the energy that you experience when they're saying that. So, for example, you seem really excited when you talk about that, or you seem a bit worried when you're saying that. So deepening that conversation is really important. And again, a bit like what we were just talking about in terms of silence. It's an opportunity to create something. It's not me talking at you and you talking to me. We're creating something and because that's unscripted, that can be very scary for people. Most people feel comfortable when they know how the conversation is going to go, what we're going to talk about, what I can expect from you. So to do that is really to tie into the idea of leap of faith. I don't know where this conversation is going to go, but we're going to see and something interesting and exciting is going to come from that.

Jay Johnson:

I love what you said. There, too, it seems that you are excited, and that's actually something that I've been working with trainers on doing is when they identify some kind of reaction from the body language, from the crowd it seems, it sounds, it appears and it could be any of those three. But being able to label what they perceive and then dropping silence to follow, that gives the opportunity for the audience to reflect, respond. I noticed you know, I noticed you really kind of reacted to this. It seems to me that you might be frustrated by this content, or it seems to me I should spend more time here and then gauging a response. So I really love that you drew that out.

Jay Johnson:

Now here's one of the things that I've found across the different research capacities is that people are really bad at nuancing the difference between what we would consider very similar emotions, which obviously have very different impacts, so things like I'm happy versus I'm content. What does that mean? How couldn't we as humans because when we think about the emotion wheel and the complexity that it extends out, extends out, extends out what would be some of your best advice for maybe learning the deeper aspects of some of those emotions? Obviously getting in there and having deeper conversations or even trying to. But what are some other ways that we can really lean into that emotional complexity?

Richard Reid:

Well, I think the emotional world that you've just touched on is one of those things, because I think for most of us, we have a very limited vocabulary around emotions. So actually exploring those words, trying to apply those words to situations, is really important. But again, you think about life in general. We're often socialized, particularly as men, not to express our emotions, or life is simply so busy and so fast. So I think it's also about carving out time to explore these things, and mindfulness is a great opportunity for that, and it doesn't have to be sitting down for an hour completely removed from the world.

Richard Reid:

One of the things that I often talk to people about is transitions. So I've just got off the phone to a client. I'm about to go into a meeting. Even just taking 20 or 30 seconds to take stock allows you an opportunity to notice those smaller emerging emotions, and a lot of the time we're okay at recognizing the big emotions. I'm really angry, I'm really excited, but it's those subtle emotions. So, even if I can't label it, just knowing there's something, there's something that feels slightly out of kilter, something about that last conversation that I need to reflect on, because when we don't do that, some of these things accumulate and you know we might get to the end of the day and we don't feel great and we can no longer ascribe those reactions to any particular circumstance.

Jay Johnson:

So trying to do some of this in real time, even if it's just those 20, 30 second transitions, is a great opportunity to connect with that in more detail I love that, you know, because a lot of times when we think about doing, uh, deep emotional work, or when we're even thinking about, you know, shifting some kind of mindset, it's it's always we look at that and it's it's the top of mount everest, right, like it's, like my gosh, that's so much work we got to do that. I love that you brought that to 20 or 30 seconds of reflection, because anybody can do that. We can literally do that right before we get onto the call. It's something that's so accessible and if it's easy from my behavioral science side, if it's easy, people will do it.

Richard Reid:

If it's not easy, they're going to do everything they can to not do it Exactly. I work with lots of busy execs and they haven't got time to do all these big things. Even if they're stressed, they come for you with stress. That's stressful for them to have to implement new strategies. So 20 or 30 seconds is not a big ask. It's an opportunity, as we said, to connect with your emotions and even if you can't manage those emotions fully in that moment, if you're aware that they exist, you can at least be more measured in your next interaction. Because one of the things that often happens is we have emotional leakage, so we take things from one experience into another experience where they may not be applicable or helpful or helpful. So at least knowing it's there means you know. If you're angry from the last conversation.

Jay Johnson:

Noticing that might mean you take extra steps to make sure that doesn't spill into the next conversation, slowing down you know I've naturally done that and didn't realize that I was doing that, because there's been points in times where I've gotten really frustrated. You know, maybe maybe I got a call from uh, maybe I got a call from a family member or something Just set me off to a real frustration. I'm like, okay, in 30 seconds I'm jumping on and this didn't actually happen today but you know, in 30 seconds I'm jumping on to a podcast with Richard Reed. I cannot bring that into here. Let me just acknowledge it, set this aside. Cannot bring that into here. Let me just acknowledge it, set this aside.

Jay Johnson:

In the next 30 to 40 minutes I'll come back to this and I'll process it at that point in time. And literally that 30 seconds of saying I'm acknowledging you emotion, you exist, you are certainly something that's affecting me, but I can't let you affect me in my work right this minute. But I am going to come back to you and it does. For some reason it really feels like I've set that on the shelf. It knows I'm coming back, so it's not nagging me, it's not frustrating me. And then all of a sudden, I can step into whatever the next piece is in my more natural sort of authentic self. And then, sure enough, as soon as it finishes I get back, I grab that off the shelf. I'm like, oh, I'm frustrated again.

Richard Reid:

But there's a process around it, and I think this is really interesting because for me, one of the things about the brain is that it's a bit like a small child. It wants what it wants right now. And if you can set that rhythm where you say, look, I hear you, you can set that rhythm where you say, look, I hear you, you can have that ice cream, but you have your ice cream when you've done your homework. Delaying that that process, not ignoring the process, delaying the process when you do that consistently, the brain starts to trust, it knows that it's going to get that attention that it needs at some point, and so it relax, it doesn't feel it's got to be front of mind all the time.

Jay Johnson:

And I do tend to find that when I come back to whatever that emotion is, it feels less hot, it feels less intense, even if I was really, really frustrated. If I'm able to kind of set that aside, acknowledge it, put it away for a minute, when I come back to it I really do feel as though I'm coming back to it with a little bit more logic. Maybe and don't get me wrong there's times where it's like, yeah, right, I'm, I'm, I'm back into this emotion and I'm feeling it, but it just doesn't feel quite as intense as it may have when I first put it on the shelf. Is that a normal reaction?

Richard Reid:

Absolutely. So. You mentioned that, um Danielman earlier. You know this is kind of daniel goldman territory really and and um, um and and daniel canneman as well.

Richard Reid:

So this idea of, uh, you know, system one and and system two, so slowing down, it's a bit like the pause when I don't act on an impulse straight away, I shift to a different part of part of the brain and get a very different response, you know. So, even if there's something that I do need to address, I'll do it in a way which is like to be more constructive, more inclusive and not have to spend lots of time picking up the pieces afterwards. And I think this is often one of the problems that you know, when we've got that emotional leakage and we don't recognize it or do something to to acknowledge it, it causes problems in the next, next interaction. It rolls into other things. So the the pause is massively important. Again, it feels so obvious that that a lot of time we don't do it, and for me it's often the really obvious things which are are the things we need to do.

Jay Johnson:

We need to do them more consistently yeah, I love how he framed that as sort of the low road and the high road of how we manage, because that is one of those things where it had kind of stuck in my brain of, okay, am I taking the low road right now, Am I taking the high road right now? Which one do I want? How do I want to show up in this moment and kind of taking that pause, just like you said, gives that momentary reflection of, okay, I need to be at my best in this next meeting. This can be handled at a different time and brings back that sort of cognitive, rational cerebral cortex function of okay, I probably don't need to throw this plate across the room at this moment in time.

Jay Johnson:

We've all been there, right. So, as a trainer and as a coach, for our audience's sake, when we're thinking about being able to better understand emotions, if you're coaching, it's pretty clear where this can be really powerful, right, being able to understand and maybe call out some of the emotions that you're seeing in the person that you're coaching. In a training room, it might be a little bit more different to nuance each person's individual emotion because they're going to all experience that from their own personal lens, from their own personal experiences, from their own personal traumas, et cetera. What would be maybe a thought process for me, Richard?

Jay Johnson:

How might I, as a trainer, if I've got a group of 20 people? How might I, as a trainer, if I've got a group of 20 people and I'm seeing, obviously, a barrage of different emotions? Or and maybe they're you know you, obviously I make a joke and everybody kind of laughs and giggles. The one person over there doesn't, so maybe they're not having a great time or whatever. How do I manage mass emotions in a world where I'm standing on a stage or I'm standing in front of a room?

Richard Reid:

Yeah, it's, it's, it's a. It's a really tricky one and obviously it's not practical to go around everybody individually. But one of the things that I often use in those situations is when I'm getting the sense that there might be an emotion, or when we've just done something that might be quite um, provocative or thoughtprovoking for people. Um, I will often get them in smaller groups and get them to share their experience within those smaller groups and even if we're then not directly feeding that back into what we do, often that helps people to um process what's going on for them, um, because they've got somebody to bounce it off. When we get a um a person to bounce something off, it helps us to connect with our emotion more. Yeah, and then it might be that during the breaks or the intervals or the smaller group exercise, I might go around those groups and just get a sense, check of what's going on for people.

Richard Reid:

It's really mobilizing those smaller groups within the group.

Jay Johnson:

And that's brilliant, because what you're essentially doing jigsawing that out. So that way you've got small group, small group, small group and then obviously being able to bring that back, you can probably get a reasonable synthesis of the entire room. So when you find yourself and I've seen this, so I'll share just a little backstory on this One of the trainings that I've done in the past is on influence and how to create the conditions of influence. Leaning heavily into Dr Cialdini's work and even looking at things like social proof, which in Cialdini's work one of the things he references is the impact of and just for the audience, I am going to use sort of a sensitive topic area here on suicide. So if that is something that triggers you, please give me just a moment. I want to give you a second to kind of acknowledge that.

Jay Johnson:

But in Cialdini's work he talks about how social proof can actually create the conditions for normalizing behaviors such as suicide. When we see a celebrity in the paper or when we see somebody else. You know that. We know that we identify with or connect with when we see that occur, that that can create the conditions for other people having those types of ideations.

Jay Johnson:

Now, when I talk about influence, and I talk about the dangers of influence and the power of influence in social. That's obviously something that can bring the energy in a room down, and my question for you is when we find ourselves getting into some of that deeper territory, or even if it's really working with somebody and them drawing their own personal experiences, their traumas, their emotions out as a trainer or a coach, how might we be able to level that line? Or should we? You know, is it something that we want to try to bring them back up and spike them, and or is it something that we want to give them space to explore? And obviously this is going to be very contextual, based on the situation. But what are your thoughts on that, richard?

Richard Reid:

Yeah, I think it does very much depend on what it is you're trying to achieve with the exercise. But I think, provided it's relevant, then I think it is important to give people time to recognise and adapt to whatever it is that they're feeling and, if appropriate, to bring that into the discussion. But I think there needs to be a limit to it. Particularly if it's sort of low emotions, that can be quite tiring, it can drag everybody down and it might mean that you sort of open things up that you can't contain within that group environment. So I will sometimes let those things run for a little bit within a session, but then if it feels that actually this is going to take us too much off track, then I might do something to lift the mood. One of the things that I often use is the work of Amy Cuddy. I don't know if you know the work of Amy Cuddy, yep.

Richard Reid:

So just a very brief exercise is where we get people to change their body state, to hold that body state for a couple of minutes as a way of putting some boundaries around what has gone before, and and having having a bit of a reset doesn't mean that we're sweeping it under the carpet, but we are containing it. Yeah, if you've got sort of a group of, you know, 50 people, 100 people, it's very hard to manage everybody's emotions. So I think that's really important, but also to to put some caveats around um the work that you might be doing as well. So, just as you've done a moment ago, just to give people forewarning of what it is that we're about to do, so they can make choices in terms of where they want to go within that group setting, given that they might not get that one-to-one support that they need. So really, really important that people have that in advance so they can make those choices.

Jay Johnson:

That's some excellent advice there. So you know when we think about bringing the human aspect into the training and this is going to be my overall general question, right? So this is my all right, richard, this is your chance. What's on the top of your mind that you would love to share with a trainer, a coach, an HR professional? What are some things that we really need to be thinking? If I was to say, could you give us just a couple of your top level tips, tactics, in whatever space, whether it's in emotional intelligence, whether it's in the body language, tone, inflection or something completely different, what are your best tips and tactics that our audience would be able to kind of think about, reflect upon and take into their next levels of talent development?

Richard Reid:

Yeah, yeah, I think the biggest thing for me is psychological safety. How is it that we can make people feel safe enough to really acknowledge what it is they need, what it is that they're experiencing? Because then you can have more authentic conversations. And I think too often because we're we're not going into these conversations having thought about what we we want to achieve, or maybe we're trying to be too prescriptive in what we're trying to do, we're not really meeting people as individuals. We we're objectifying them, and that tends to be most people's experience of the world, so it's very easy for us to play into that narrative. So I think slowing down, showing curiosity for people's positions is really really important Understanding more about where they're coming from, what's of primary importance for them, before you start to offer solutions. And even if you know the answer, you know the solutions they need. How you position those solutions will determine whether people buy into those and see those as the right fit for them.

Richard Reid:

So understanding people's hopes and fears, understanding people's idioms, use of language, all those sorts of things are really really important if we want to pitch our message in the right way. So, whether that's working in HR, whether that's in mental health, whether that's in training. I may know why what I want to do is important, why it's valuable, but it doesn't necessarily follow that other people do. So adapting the message to the audience is really important and that takes a degree of courage and, as I said before, a leap of faith, because when you start to open things up, there are no obvious rules. Conversations can go in a number of different directions and most people find that quite scary. So doing that in small ways and building your confidence up with it is really important. You can hold that space wherever the conversation might go.

Jay Johnson:

That's brilliant.

Jay Johnson:

You know it's interesting with psychological safety and I'm digging on this for just a moment.

Jay Johnson:

It really feels like psychological safety is very much like trust, right, like it takes a little while for you to build it up and how quickly you can lose it.

Jay Johnson:

You know, when you're in one of those spaces and I've seen this occur in a number of different spaces where either you've got a tense conversation in the facilitation and somebody you know, the manager shuts down one of the employees in the middle of that and all of a sudden you can just sense the psychological safety has been sucked out of that room. Since the psychological safety has been sucked out of that room, what would be? How do we recover from that? As a trainer, as a facilitator, as a coach? What would be some ways that when we see those violations of authenticity or those violations of somebody bringing themselves in, feeling safe, putting it out there, and then all of a sudden getting smacked down, not necessarily by the trainer or the facilitator but by somebody else in the space, how might we be able to handle that in a professional, graceful, courteous manner? That maybe helps to start the process of rebuilding that psychological safety?

Richard Reid:

Yeah, interesting question. I think the tendency in those sort of situations is people recognize something's gone wrong and they tend to speed up and they tend to do more and and, as a consequence, dig that hole deeper in a lot of cases. So I think it's again, it's this idea of slowing down, pausing, so let's take stock of where we are before we decide where we're going to go next. So that might be, you know, using skills like immediacy I sense that you're feeling frustrated at this point, or how are you feeling at this point let's take a moment just to reflect, and doing that means that we don't plow through without recognizing somebody's emotions, and sometimes what we might get back might be uncomfortable to hear, but it's an opportunity to to reconnect and and to indicate to somebody actually I we might have got off to a bad start, but I but I care about what you're thinking and I want to make sure that this gives you what you need.

Richard Reid:

Yeah, and I think you know we can all be clumsy in in our interactions, but I think owning that and and and showing that, despite what we might have said or done, that actually we genuinely care is is really, really important. So have the humility to be able to acknowledge that. If that, if that's the case, and I think that go. That goes a long way, and actually it's. It tends to be a rarity. Most people plow on regardless, and that's most people's experience the world. So, pulling from that, acknowledging when there's a difficulty, collaborating, showing curiosity, those are all the skills that I think we need for all kinds of interactions, and they're not there enough of the time.

Jay Johnson:

You know it's so interesting. You say that because you're right A lot of us plow through or we push past it because we want to just get it in the rear view mirror and we don't want to deal with it. But that is going back to, I think, exactly what you said the idea of having to manage emotions from others as well as our own reactions to that is just almost too much to bear. But to hear you and I think that this is such an excellent tip that you've shared stay in the space, take the leap of faith. I'm telling you, I really, really love that framing, that silence is that leap of faith. Take that leap of faith, engage, and what's going to come out of that is probably going to be far more impactful, engaging and meaningful to the audience than potentially our own fear of what if I can't control this situation or anything else.

Richard Reid:

Absolutely, you know. I think you know in terms of coaching and particularly in therapy. So so my initial training in therapy was trauma therapy and some of the stories that people used to bring you know. Particularly in the early days, my reaction would be how, how on earth do I deal with this? This is just so outside of anything I've ever heard before and self-regulating. Regulating my reaction to that and holding that space and just showing curiosity in the absence of knowing what to do with it, was actually more powerful, because you take the conversation deeper and when you do offer expertise, you're doing it in a way which is entirely tailored to that person's experience, and that's so important. You think about organizations, all the provisions that they have in terms of mental health support, all these kinds of things. It's the psychological safety which is the glue between all those things.

Jay Johnson:

Brilliant. Richard. I was excited for this conversation and it did not disappoint. You have given so much insight and some incredible tips and tactics to the audience here at the Talent Forge.

Richard Reid:

If our audience wanted to reach out to you and connect. How might they be able to get a hold of you? Well, they're welcome to visit my website, which is richard-reidcom, or you can email me it's richard at pinnaclewellbeingservicescom.

Jay Johnson:

Well, thank you so much for joining us here today, richard. This has really been an insightful conversation. My pleasure, really enjoyed it. And thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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