We sit down with Lida Citroën, an award-winning expert in reputation management, renowned keynote speaker, and author of The New Rules of Influence.

Lida unpacks her 10-step strategy for building influence and shares actionable insights on how leaders can go beyond authority to foster authentic connections, inspire trust, and make a lasting impact.

We explore the evolving meaning of influence, the diminishing power of traditional symbols of authority, and the importance of transparency, inclusivity, and storytelling in modern leadership.

Lida also discusses how leaders can enhance their presence, embrace vulnerability, and use their “why” to connect with their audience and drive meaningful change.

Whether you’re a seasoned executive or a leader in the making, this episode is packed with tips to help you step into your full leadership potential.

Key Topics:

• The shift in influence: Why traditional authority isn’t enough anymore
• Lida’s 10-step process for building influence and why “why” matters
• How storytelling can help leaders build trust and connection
• Practical advice for increasing confidence and authenticity as a leader

Tune in to learn how to lead with purpose and influence in today’s rapidly changing world!

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Transcript (Auto-Generated)

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding, the only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

Hello, fellow brand builder. We have some huge news to kick off today’s episode, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with you. After years of connecting with creative entrepreneurs, designers, strategists and marketers like you, we realized the need for something bigger, a place where brand builders can truly thrive, grow and support each other.

So today, we’re thrilled to share with you the launch of the Brand Builders Alliance, our brand new exclusive membership for brand builders just like you. So whether you’re looking to sharpen your branding skills, grow your business or connect with like-minded creatives, the Alliance is here to help you level up. As a member, you’ll get fortnightly master classes, expert coaching from Matt, myself and our team of resident coaches, exclusive resources and access to an incredible community of branding professionals who truly get it.

The waitlist is now open. Head over to our website joinbba.com to secure your spot and become a part of the movement. That’s joinbba.com.

Now, let’s get in today’s episode. Hello and welcome to JUST Branding. Today, we’re thrilled to have Lida Citroën with us.

Lida is an award-winning expert in reputation management, an author and a sought-after keynote speaker who’s helped countless leaders and professionals shape their personal brands and build, you guessed it, influence. So known for her fresh take on authenticity in leadership, Lida has worked with top executives, veterans and organizations around the world, guiding them on how to stand out and make a meaningful impact. Her new book, The New Rules of Influence, is all about rethinking what it takes to build trust, drive change and lead with purpose in today’s world.

She’s here to share her insights on how leaders can go beyond authority and truly connect with others in ways that inspire and uplift. So let’s dive in and welcome to the show, Lida.

Thank you so much. Excited to be with both of you.

Welcome.

And for people watching this, Lida has kindly worn pink with her outfit, which is brilliant to see. Unfortunately, our videos are in black and white, thanks to Matt. But Matt does go red occasionally with that’s why we have it in black and white.

Don’t give away my secrets, JKS. Yes, give away your secrets.

Especially with that prompt.

I know, right? Everyone thought I was such a well pixelated, you know, well, well, well, I don’t know, what do you call it? Well, pixelated person.

But now they know that the secret behind it is that I just go red. But we appreciate you putting the pink on for Jacob’s flamingo style connections.

So kind of my brand thing too. So, you know, I had to lean into the title. So love it.

It works both ways. All right. Well, let’s let’s dive in just for a little bit of context for our audience.

Can you share a bit about your journey, how you came to write a book on influence?

Sure. So it’s been a long journey, but I’ll shorten it up for you. I spent 20 years in the corporate world, working in brand marketing, business development, marketing public relations, and really helping to stand up companies, products and services and bring them to market, right?

Traditional branding and marketing. In 2008, I pivoted and took all that learning and moved into what’s called personal branding or helping individuals position themselves in competitive markets. And what I realized for the last 16 plus years, is that we want to build brand, we focus on building brand, but brand isn’t the end goal, right?

So whether it’s a product or a person, what we want is that brand to do something. We want it to create an experience. And in the case of people, the experience is influence.

So that when you hear my name or you come across something that I stand for and my name’s attached to it, that there’s clout and credibility that comes with it. So influence felt like a really natural extension of what I’ve been working on for quite a few years now.

Okay. Well, let’s dive into influence. How do you define influence and why is it important?

Well, first to clarify, I’m not talking about online influence or not only, right? Because when we often think of influence, we think of influencers and then we think of Kardashians and people who monetize their online presence, which I mean, that is for some people what their path is. But influence is really the opportunity in a small or a large way to have credibility, to have clout.

So if you believe in something and you want to advocate for something, that people will take you seriously, that they’ll listen and they’ll want to hear what you have to say. And it’s having that sort of established presence that allows you to do the things you’re most passionate about. So again, I felt like it was such a natural place for a brand to go because at the end of the day, whether you just want to have more say in a meeting or you want to start a movement, you have to have influence.

Absolutely. And you mentioned that you’ve been in this for quite a long time. Have you seen any, you know, shift in terms of how influence is perceived today versus, like, say, a decade ago?

I definitely have. And, you know, I think a lot about that and I wrote about it in the book. I don’t know if it’s the emergence of cryptocurrency.

I don’t know if it’s divorce rates or social media or whether it was COVID. And I’m saying that a little tongue in cheek. I think COVID had a lot to do with how things change, the pandemic.

Because what happened in 2020 is that all of us around the world, right? In the UK, in Australia, in the United States, we all experience something together. And as a humanity, we came together.

We struggled together. We cried together. We laughed and cheered for our health care workers together.

And when we came out of that, we didn’t want to go back to how things had been before. We wanted to keep that sense of connectedness. So I do think that the pandemic had a lot to do with the biggest push to shift.

And what I’ve seen is that the old rules, you know, scripting and polishing and airbrushing and sort of leading with something that maybe wasn’t as authentic isn’t working anymore. And it hasn’t worked for a long time.

I 100% agree with that. I definitely think there was a massive shift to that kind of, as you say, authentic approach. You know, I think we’re all sick of all those polished things, and particularly now, right, with the rise of AI, right?

You can’t trust anything. But if you show up in a really authentic way with mistakes and blusterings, and thankfully for me, this is now a thing, right? Like, it’s actually acceptable to have the odd spelling mistake in something or something come out wrong.

It’s more genuine, right? And people respond, I find anyway, at least from my own personal marketing and online, they actually respond far better than if it is super polished and pristine and everything perfect. So, yeah, but that comes with its own, I guess, its own challenge, right?

Because, you know, naturally, we want everything to be polished. So I’m really excited as we go through this podcast to tuck into that and kind of figure out, you know, those human imperfections, you know, when do we bring them to the forum? When is a great idea for us to do so?

Well, and one of the things I talk a lot about and we’ll maybe we’ll get there or we’ll get there now is that I believe in authenticity, but I don’t believe in transparency. And I think the mistake a lot of people made during the pandemic is they share too much. And then as soon as the lights went back on in the offices, they said, well, just forget all that stuff I was sharing.

And that doesn’t work that way, right? Once you say it, once you share it, it’s out there. You don’t get to take it back.

So we do need to see people as real because real people will make mistakes. Real people will turn red when they’re excited or make a typo, right? Because that’s what real human beings do.

And I think that does connect us. But how real and how far we go with that, that’s where we have to be careful.

Yeah. I’m curious about this transparency side of things because there’s obviously a line here. How do you find how transparent to be online?

Well, especially online, but even in person, right? My advice is when you answer a question or you’re asked a question or you decide you want to chime in or jump into a conversation, if you decide to do that, you should give a real response, right? It should be something that you really believe in.

You don’t make it up because it’s trending or you don’t want to be left out, but you don’t have to weigh in on everything. You don’t have to have an opinion on everything. There have been some major events, especially here in the States, that a lot of my clients have struggled with because they didn’t know how to be in those conversations without compromising or sharing too much about themselves.

My question is, if it’s part of your brand, then you have to negotiate that and we have to have a strategy. But if it’s not, you’re allowed to keep things private. There are certain topics that are very triggering and bring up a lot of trauma or things that we just don’t have any kind of social obligation to share.

It’s just when we do share, it should be the truth. I think that’s where I create that line. My advice is always think about it ahead of time, and create those guardrails around where the areas you will go and where the areas you won’t.

For instance, we were chatting ahead of coming on to this about politics. I don’t talk about politics in public. I don’t talk about politics on social media.

I don’t talk about it on podcasts. That’s not part of my brand. I don’t work with politicians.

They should read my book on influence, but I don’t work with politicians. I can refrain from those conversations and stay in integrity with my brand. I think that’s important.

Just think about it ahead of time. It’s really hard in the moment to try and come up with that rationale. I have clients that don’t want to talk about that they have young children.

They don’t want to post pictures online. Absolutely fine. Then think about that ahead of time, make that rule for yourself, and stick to it.

I think that’s super interesting. We often talk about branding as the management of meaning, which is what we’re talking about here. Really, what we’re talking about is a very deliberate approach to considering ourselves as brands.

It’s really interesting to hear you talk about that. I don’t tend to share any of my personal life online. I stick to the persona.

It’s not that, as you say, it’s not authentic. It’s just that I don’t see the need. It’s not relevant to my mission online, which is to spread more brand cheerfulness around the place.

Whereas, Jacob, you share a little bit sometimes. I see some pictures of some holiday snaps from time to time. I love looking at them.

I’m like, hey, look at Jacob. He’s off in Peru, wherever you are, and it’s super interesting. But I wouldn’t usually share anything like that.

What are your thoughts on that, Jacob? Where do you draw the line?

Yeah, I think it is a personal choice. I’m pretty open with some things, but I’ve definitely cut back a bit more. But we have a lot of content online.

We went traveling around the world for a number of years, and we had a travel blog. So we have a lot of photos online already. So we’re not really hiding our lives too much.

There’s plenty of content out there. So I find that sharing family photos and travel, it builds a connection as a personal brand with other people that may be in a similar position, like freelancers or sole brand designers, for example. They can relate.

In contrast with yourself, you’re working with a lot of higher-end execs and have a higher-end corporate image. I’m a little bit unique in the fact that I’m serving that audience, but also designers and people that are on their own as well. So it’s like the choice is there to be open and transparent, and my work and life is integrated, and I share that together because I see them as one and the same, and that’s just my personal view on how I share.

I would actually encourage you, Matt, to think about where the opportunity could be if you did share more. And you’re sharing within control. So it’s not like all of a sudden everything, the floodgates are open and we get to see in all the closets, right?

We don’t want to.

You definitely don’t. No, I’m just kidding.

But, you know, I have a lot of people who feel like I’m an open book on social media, right? I might be more buttoned up on LinkedIn because that’s my biggest platform, but I share quirkiness on Instagram or Facebook because that’s different sides of who I am, and my clients are very senior executives, military veterans, people in positions of influence and authority. They want to know the real person behind this methodology and strategy.

It’s not the product, it’s me as the product. And for your audience listening, who are designers or entrepreneurs or solo practitioners, they might have a service they offer, but there’s a person behind the service. And what we know about marketing is companies don’t buy from companies, buildings don’t buy from buildings.

A person buys from a person. And, you know, Jacob, where you’re sharing family pictures and travels, it also gives people something to start a conversation with you, right? And maybe they’ve been to some place you’ve been, and that’s a launch place for them to start that relationship.

So I don’t share unintentionally. I’m very strict, and I always look good in my pictures. It drives my husband crazy.

He’s like, my eyes were closed, but I looked great. Because I’m building my presence, right? But I’m very careful about the things I post.

If they don’t have anything to do with who I am, if they’re just unrelated, then it really doesn’t support who I am, and I can still be very genuine.

This is really interesting about the personal perspective, right? Because one observation I’ve had over the years is that, and we can love it to tuck into this with you, is that the personal brands of the people leading the brands, if you like, is becoming more and more important. For example, Elon Musk has more followers than Tesla.

Richard Branson has more followers than Virgin in terms of the company, and these are huge companies. So the person and the personal touch like you were talking about there, transcends the faceless corporations that are made up of tens of thousands of people, some of them. So what are your thoughts on that?

Do you see that as a key part of, say you’re building a global brand, the CEO brand, the personal brand of that person becomes very, very important in the wider strategy?

Absolutely. It is the why. And so when I was working in corporate, before personal branding really took off, and before I went out on my own, I was always negotiating and managing the reputation and brand of our people, right?

Whether that was the front desk person or the CEO, and making sure that they aligned. Because if somebody comes into the building and has a bad experience, the brand has fallen apart. If the CEO goes on microphone and has a bad experience, that reflects on the company.

So brand isn’t the brick and mortar. It’s the experience that you believe you’re gonna have if you go into this store or you buy this product. And that’s why I found the transition from corporate branding or product branding to personal branding really kind of easy.

I mean, people are more complicated and a little more unpredictable, but it’s not that much different. In fact, we have so many more things we can do as people. You know, the product can break, but if I know the person who stands behind the company, I’m gonna forgive that and give the company another chance.

So, I’m often asked the question when I teach this, is it more important to build the personal brand of the business owner or the company brand? And it’s not an either or. It’s both.

Because when it’s both, then you have something that’s sustainable and scalable. If it’s just one, it’s risky, right? If it’s just the founder whose brand is well known, if the founder leaves, the company is devalued.

If it’s just the company, the founder leaves. Now, what is that person supposed to do? So it’s both.

And that’s where we build something really meaningful.

I’ve got a practical question on that. I’m seeing more and more of my corporate clients, as Jacob said, take this more seriously, right? So in a lot of strategies that I’m working on, the exec team, there’s a segment usually about the exec team and their personal brands.

But something I’ve encountered from time to time is a question of investment, right? So investment of time, investment of resource from the company. A lot of executives just do not have time to manage, say for example, their digital footprint.

So they need help, and that requires budget. And then the company’s like, well, is it really worth us putting all this effort in? And the biggest challenge is, what if that person leaves or we have to fire that person?

So like, hey, we’ve built their brand up and then we fire them. And then they basically jump on the channels that we’ve basically set up for them and they stab us in the back. So have you ever come across anything like that?

And what would you sort of say around that question of, I don’t know, hesitance and fear to actually raise up leaders around, or key subject area experts in businesses in relation to what I’ve said?

No, I run into it quite a bit, right? And I don’t wanna say it’s a little bit antiquated thinking, but yes, they could leave. It’s the same as if you train someone on a certain technology, you get them certified, they’re expert at it and they leave.

It can still happen. But if you have instilled brand values, they’re not gonna go and say bad things about your company. And they might go to another employer and be a leader and say positive things and lift your brand that way.

Like we can’t invest with the idea that we might lose. That’s kind of a scarcity mindset. I’m a believer that I invest.

I invest in my team. I put them through courses. I teach them things.

They could leave me. Absolutely. And they’re gonna be amazing if they leave, but they’re gonna be more amazing if they stay.

So, I mean, that’s kind of life, right? To the idea of, does it make fiscal sense for an organization? Absolutely, it does.

Because we will forgive a person probably more than we will forgive a car, right? Or a widget. Because people make mistakes.

People are flawed. People are human. And depending on how that person’s brand is established, they can rectify that community really quickly.

But a product has a mistake? Wow, who’s going to speak for the product, you know? So I do see it more and more.

And I see it globally. So I work in over 30 countries, which is really cool. Although some of the countries I have to look up, I don’t know where they are.

That’s happened twice to me.

Happens to me in Wales. People are like, where’s Wales? I’m just like, hey, carry on.

And it’s not just an American thing. That’s usually a question I get, right? Is this just kind of a US thing?

Because we’re known to be kind of self-promotional. Absolutely not. I think the cultural narrative has to play in.

But how many of us, I mean, we’ve got three different continents here that we’re talking on. How many of us are working this way on a daily basis? So we have to think about navigating what’s true culturally, but also understanding that personal brand is coming across all cultures, at least in my world right now.

It is not just something I’m dealing with Americans on.

I agree. I agree. I think we’re almost like you to your point going back to the pandemic.

It’s almost like we’ve realized that. I know a lot of cultures, I do a bit of business in the Mediterranean. In fact, I’m going to Cyprus next week and they have dinner together.

That’s how business is done. It’s not as sort of stiff and starchy as maybe we have with protocol over here, sometimes in big business in the UK. So it’s really, really interesting to hear you talk about that.

I 100% agree with you, by the way. We should invest in our stuff and also we should make it so amazing that they don’t want to leave. They’re just like, hey, if I leave, I’m going to not have all that support and build my personal brand.

So yeah, I 100% agree. I’ve got this client actually in Norway and they’re in a sort of a strange place. They’re kind of a SaaS company around data.

I won’t go into all that and bore everybody. But one of the things that we’ve been working on and that they’re doing and we’re doing before I started working with them, was to really lift the people, put that they’ve got some absolute geniuses and world-class analysts in their team, who were basically obscure and unknown. Over the last two years, I’ve seen them invest heavily in those people, in training for those people, in getting them on stages, in video, the whole marketing team is there’s a massive engine behind it set up, and they have been absolutely flying right now.

So it takes some time to get going and to think it through and to plan it. There’s a lot of resistance at the start, I know there was, particularly with people maybe who are a little bit uncomfortable being on camera or speaking or whatever. But once you get it going and you get them, there’s no stopping them now.

These people who once were really kind of nervous and now like, hey, I’m ready to do my video, let’s go. And so it’s amazing what can be done with some investment, some training and some considered thought around reputation, as you’ve been saying. But I wanted to get back to you in the book.

And I know in the book you talk about symbols of authority. Can you tell us a little bit about those and what they mean and what your view of them is?

Well, and I love the question because I think I’m like a lot of people, right? I spent those 20 years in the corporate world doing what I thought I was supposed to do to achieve success, right? And I use the air quotes because I don’t know where it came from.

It was society, parents, whoever told me that’s what success was, and my boss, right? So I was told how to behave, how to look, how to show up. And then I got promoted so I was rewarded for that.

And I kept doing that for 20 years. And I was very successful, but I wasn’t really fulfilled. The money was great, the prestige was great, the authority was great, but it wasn’t fulfilling.

And I would come home every night and just I couldn’t wait to, as I would say, be myself. And that was a problem. And when I started my own business, as you know, Jacob, I mean, I’m putting my logo and my name on the door, right?

It has to all be about me. That’s really when I kind of figured out where the disconnect had been. And in working on this book, I realized it was a lot of those symbols of what we traditionally think of as executive presence.

And those symbols, there’s a poster child, if you will, for executive presence. And it typically is a middle-aged white man with, you know, a Navy or charcoal suit and a red power tie. As long as you look like that, right, you will have presence and authority and influence.

And that’s what I’ve been doing wrong all these years.

Well, you have a better shot at it than I do, because I’m not middle-aged and I’m not male. And what if I don’t want to be an executive, right? What if I’m somebody who is of color or I’m looking to start a nonprofit or…

And then I started learning more about… I took courses on executive presence and influence and I read all the books. And they all seem to theme to three pillars, right?

First you have to look a certain way. So, they talked about how to tailor suits and how to have the right image. And that’s where a lot of that airbrushing and, you know, putting your best face forward came from.

You had to speak a certain way. So, that’s where scripting and polishing messaging and having, you know, boilerplate language and all of that came from. But the one that really stumped me is this idea of gravitas, which when I was researching the book, I looked it up and overwhelmingly, you know, hiring professionals say gravitas is a key ingredient to growing in your leadership skills.

Very important, but nobody can define it. It’s one of those when you know it, when you see it, but we can’t tell you how to get it. And I’m going, wait a minute, if it’s that important, we’ve got to be able to teach people.

So, I kind of just took those symbols of the red power tie, all of that, and said, maybe there’s something different. And that’s really what I’m trying to do is to say, we don’t all have to look and sound the same. We can wear bright pink, we can have a full beard, you can do whatever you want.

You can be who you are and how you are, and understand that there’s a path to influence for you. And I think that’s why the book is really resonating, especially with marginalized and underrepresented groups. It’s resonating a lot internationally, which even my publisher was a bit surprised with, is that it’s kind of that guidebook that the rest of us can use.

If there are textbooks, there are fabulous, academically written books for those who want to follow more of the traditional model. I’m just offering a different way.

And it’s really about that authentic connection, right? It’s like connecting with people. And coming back to sharing on social, for example, you know, I never really understood why people shared food photos or like what they’re eating.

And like, and it took me a long time to understand that. And at the end of the day, it’s like, well, they’re trying to connect with you and share what their interests are. And it could be food.

It could be the gym. It could be whatever your hobby it is. It’s really just about what you love.

And that is how you can authentically connect with people. And like you said, like wearing what you want to wear, you know, pink suit or flamingo things or speaking in an Aussie accent, whatever it is, you do it your way and you can stand out in your way. And I’m excited to go into this next segment because it’s pretty much your whole book.

I know it’s like you have a 10 step guide to building influence. I’m sure we’re not going to be able to cover all of that, but we can look at an overview of it or perhaps go into like a couple of the core steps inside the book, whatever way you think would be most useful for our listeners.

There are 10 rules, right? And I think a little different than steps is you don’t have to do them in order, with the exception that the rules are grouped into sections. So the first section, for instance, there’s four sections, which is a little more manageable.

The first section is understanding why do you want to have influence, right? Before you can do it, you have to know what’s the motivation. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier.

Why do you want to have influence? Do you have something burning in your heart that says, I think there’s a better way? Or something’s wrong with the way it’s been done and nobody’s pointing that out.

It’s kind of understanding where is this coming from? And I do talk about purpose in the book. I’m a big fan of understanding why we’re all here, right?

I believe I am here for a very specific reason, having this conversation with both of you, and that’s going to do something. It’s not happenstance that we’re together in this call. And I want to know what that is.

So, there are three rules that anchor into understanding your why. And they’re tough ones. They’re grizzly.

You’re going to have to chew on those for a bit. There are things like courage and being real, like we talked about. Understanding how to build credibility, because it’s kind of like if you can’t get past that, it doesn’t matter how good you are at marketing yourself, you don’t understand who you are.

And, you know, marketing and branding are not the same thing. So before we can market, we have to build the brand. And that’s kind of where that first section comes in.

Then, the second section is who? Who do you want to influence? Who do you want to lead?

Who are your people? You know, not everyone in the world is going to find you charming and attractive and loving and interesting. They’re just not.

And that’s okay. But what is your mission, your vision, your idea, and who needs to know about it? And that might be one of my favorite sections, because I introduced the idea that you don’t have to come from the community you want to serve.

You don’t have to. Now, you have to, there are certain things you have to do if you don’t come from the community you want to serve. But I use myself as an example.

I have spent 15 years helping veterans come back into the workforce. And while it was mostly US, I have worked with some groups in Australia, in the UK, and also in India. Because some of our issues are similar, I don’t come from the military.

I have no military connection, except part of my purpose is to serve. So I had to learn. I had to embed myself.

I had to ask questions and listen without judgment, and really unpack that in order to serve in the right way and to influence in the right way. So I think that creates so much opportunity if you want to represent and speak or create ideas for a group you don’t come from. Absolutely, you can, but then you got to learn.

You can’t just choose to do it. You have to know how to do it. The last two sections are more tactical, right?

It’s how and where do you want to influence? So it talks about storytelling. It talks about being a brand because I couldn’t let a book go without having brand in there and being visible because you can’t influence if we can’t see you.

And so there’s a lot in there, but it’s broken into those four sections with a lot of exercises. And people are telling me that makes it manageable.

I love the simplicity behind the approach. We often talk about the why and how to wear without branding clients. But the lens that you put in on this, the influence, I think, is the unique aspect here.

And I was going to come back to influence. And you said gravitas before. And I’m going to share.

We get a couple of emails a day about people coming on to the podcast, wanting to come on. And we can’t serve everyone and get everyone on. But part of the process of trying to choose the guest is, you have to do your due diligence.

You look up their persona. You look up their book, their mission. And you get a feel.

You do the gut check, right? And you had gravitas. And I think that was from just your online presence, right?

Like you shine through with how you talk and your mission. It’s there and people can connect with that. So the proof is in the pudding is my point.

So where did you want to go from here in terms of your four steps? Did you want to dive deeper or?

Were there any, as you looked through the rules, were there any that you want me to dive into? Because I can go into any of them. Trust me.

I wanted to go into that visibility one, if I may, a little bit. What are your tips and thoughts around how people get out there a little bit more and build that undefined but now defined by Jacob Gravitas?

Exactly. It might be now easy to define, but not easy to say. Visibility is a hard one for most people.

I mean, I am an extrovert. I’m a Gemini. I’m type A.

I’m female. It is not hard for me, but for most people, being visible is scary because when we’re visible, we’re seen. And we might not be seen for the right things or in the right way, and maybe it’s uncomfortable to be seen.

So a lot of times people will stay in the back of the room. They’ll sit on their hands instead of raising it to offer an idea. And we see a lot of that with women.

We see a lot of that with younger generations, right? That are a little unsure. The loudest voice in the room is usually the one we think of as the most visible, but it’s not always.

And so what I’m doing with this rule is saying it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be large and in charge or quiet. That there’s a way to come forward and just sit a little bit closer to the front of the room.

If you have an idea, think it through, raise your hand and see what happens. Your idea might be the thing that changes everything. And if you don’t share it, if we don’t know about it, nothing can be changed for the positive.

Is it scary? Absolutely. Because when we’re visible, we can be judged.

And what we know about working in branding is it’s all about judgment and perception. I often say I work in the perception business because we’re managing perception. People will judge regardless of whether we say something or not.

They will form opinions and beliefs about us. But when we do offer an idea and it’s thought through and we have credibility and courage, now we’re affecting and influencing the way that they will see us instead of leaving it to chance. Something you said earlier, Jacob, reminds me of a quote that I’m often quoted for, which is everyone has a personal brand by design or by default.

We all have a brand. It’s just, are you doing something to proactively manage it to be received the right way or are you just kind of crossing your fingers and hoping that people are going to judge you for the things you want to be judged for? And I don’t know, hope isn’t a strategy for me.

Let’s say people are trying to get out there, trying to get more visible. They’re a little bit intimidated. What advice would you give for them to increase their confidence, their presence while maintaining your authenticity?

So that is the word, right? So I think it starts with understanding how far you want to go, how much you want to share, right? What we were talking about earlier.

What are those guardrails? These topics feel like quicksand for me, so I’m not going to go there, right? What are the things I want people to know about me?

It’s branding what I want. How do I want to be perceived? When I leave a room, when I leave an online chat, or when I leave this planet, how do I want to be remembered?

And then making decisions very intentionally to move in that direction. And this doesn’t have to be a big swing. So, for someone who’s really uncomfortable, maybe posting on LinkedIn, or going to an event and being around decision makers, it can start small, right?

If you go to an event, bring someone with you so you feel a little more comfortable. Practice your elevator pitch. Have something timely that you can talk about.

Actually, my client in the UK, who was terrified to make her first LinkedIn post. I cannot tell you how long we worked on this post. It was wordsmithed to the point I don’t even remember what it was.

Because that first post was so scary. And I’m like, you’re not going to remember your first post. And if you make a mistake, then you’re a human being like the rest of us.

Welcome to the club. But it wasn’t a mistake. And now I can’t stop her.

Now she’s posting like four times a day. It’s like, okay, wait a minute. Because she got into it, right?

She got over that intimidation. Sometimes it’s just about being intentional, thinking it through, and then taking one step. And then the next step, you know, if you’re in a meeting and you want to be more visible in your company, bring something interesting to the next team meeting, instead of just waiting to see if anybody asks you a question.

Bring an idea, bring a trend, bring something you’re seeing in the industry into that meeting and offer it up. Those are ways to be visible.

I love that. It’s like reframing of from fear to contribution, right? So it’s like, it’s not all the things that could go wrong.

Like, what actually could go right? Like, what if I, as you say, what if I shared an idea that was, that was so important that it changed the course of history, right? You know, surely that should outweigh the fear of, well, what if I share it and everyone thinks I’m an idiot?

Well, it’s like, well, you know, come on, if you don’t share it, like how are things going to move forward? So I love that re-framing of things from fear to contribution.

There’s a story I sometimes share of one of my last jobs before I started my own company. I worked for a large organization that had a board of directors and every month the board of directors would meet with senior staff and the board of directors sat at the table and the senior staff sat around the back of the room. And it was just, it had always been done that way.

There was this huge table in the middle and the board filled up about half of it. And after a few months, I was like, why are we sitting here? I can’t hear everything because they’re at the big table.

And nobody told me I couldn’t. So I sat at the table in the next month. And everybody kind of looked at me.

Nobody said anything, but they were wondering why I was there. And the meeting went on. The next month, I said something.

I sat at the table and I offered an idea from the table. And again, nobody said I was wrong or shouldn’t do that, but it had never been said I could. The following month, one of my colleagues sat with me.

The following month after that, they said something. So it’s, you know, sometimes there are just these norms that we accept because they’ve always been, but they’re not necessarily right. There was no reason I couldn’t sit at that table.

This hierarchy, this caste system had been developed that made no sense, and I just kind of challenged that. Was it scary? Absolutely.

I was afraid I was going to get in trouble, you know, but what was the worst that was going to happen? They were going to go sit in the back of the room.

That reminds me of a scientific experiment that I once heard of, and forgive me, folks, because I cannot quote it, right? But there’s basically, like, it’s set up, so there’s like a waiting room situation, and there’s like six people who know what they’re doing. They’ve been briefed.

They’re in the waiting room, okay? What happens is every minute a bell chimes, and then you’ll stand up for a few minutes, and then they sit down, right? And then basically one of them goes through to the doctor or wherever, you know, and then a new person comes in, and the new person hasn’t been briefed.

They don’t know a thing, right? The bell goes, everyone, all the five of them then stand up, and this person’s like, what the heck is going on? Sort of stands gingerly to their feet to conform, and that goes on, right?

So then another person goes in, and now what happens is when the new person comes in, the person before them who wasn’t briefed is still is conforming and standing up is ready for the bell to go, right? No one really knows what’s going on, and the whole thing continues until basically everyone in the room, right, is not briefed. They literally are just doing it because that’s the way it’s always been done, like you were saying.

So hey, contribute, offer a challenge, offer suggestion. Why don’t we try and do things differently? I absolutely love that.

What a great example.

My boss wasn’t that happy with me, but you know, whatever. I brought in a lot of money to the organization. He couldn’t complain.

There you go. But it does come down to the work culture and how safe it is there as well. 100%.

I really enjoyed the example of the person on LinkedIn who went from being so fearful to now just being obsessed. Are there any other examples that you could share about, you know, maybe a leader that you’ve helped drive change, has gone through your steps and, you know, you’ve seen that kind of shift?

Oh, I have lots of examples. I mean, I think examples of people who are living these principles, maybe not all of them, but most of them, not my client. But, you know, I look at Greta Thunberg when she sat at Swedish Parliament at age 15 and spoke on behalf of climate change.

She didn’t have the red power tie. She wasn’t the most eloquent. She was a kid.

But she was deeply passionate about something. And I think that for me was evidence that things were changing. I look at people who’ve achieved celebrity in their industry or in sports, and they use the platform to do good for something they’re passionate about.

I have numerous clients who are not household names that have done things that have changed industries, have changed the trajectory of populations. One of my clients, you know, is a white Jewish woman, and she is deeply passionate about migrant women and helping create a path forward for migrant women in the United States. She doesn’t come from that community, but she has leaned in to all of the rules.

I mean, I was so excited to share the book with her because I said, you are living all of these to create a path for community she’s passionate about. I have a client who is a man who works on behalf of keeping high school and college athletes, school athletes, students safe when they’re playing football or hockey. These are all people who are driving change within their little world or their community.

And they’re not all household names. So unfortunately, I can’t show names of clients who are more well known. I’m not at liberty to do that.

But I think it’s important to just look at patterns because one of the things I really try to do in the book is say, the people with influence are not always the people at the top. They’re not the people who necessarily have the title and the authority in the rank. They may be someone who’s new to the company or someone who’s in a very junior position and just sits in a cubicle farm all day.

But when they say something, it carries a lot of clout because it’s well thought through. They’ve established their credibility. They’re being inclusive.

They’re bringing a service mindset like, I’m going through all of the different rules. They’re doing all the right things. They just don’t have the job title.

And influence does not come with a job title. That’s a really important point.

Yeah. I love the difference between authority and influence there. It’s a key point.

And listen to all that, like the common thread or the pattern is the why. And that’s like the first part of your book. It’s like, well, and where we start often with brands is like, why are we here?

And that’s where the passion comes from. And that’s going to drive that growth and help you shine through and stand out. And it comes from a good place.

And that’s naturally going to do good. So I think it’s amazing.

Lida, just what I also echo Jacob’s thoughts around the distinction between authority that you’ve made and influence. One thing that I’ve found, like I consult, I’m in now, I think, sixth, seventh year of consulting with leadership teams. And I consult all over the world.

And one of the things I always find, barely consistently, is that once you get in with a client, there is always kind of a figure in a leadership team that rallies that leadership team together, right? And typically, they don’t actually sit on the C-suite. They’re either the PA or they’re someone in the office.

Usually, I’ve found, and I don’t know if this is just from experience, it just seems to me the way it is. They’re kind of like a maternal figure, right? If you like, they kind of keep everybody together, keep everything moving.

They look after everybody. They deeply care about them. And they’re massively passionate for the company and where it’s going.

And what I tend to find is that they’re the people that, as a consultant, I need to really make sure that I get it, keep on the good side of, right? Because they’re the ones that make everything happen. They set the meetings up.

They make sure people’s diaries are free. And their words, like you were saying, they go a long way. Like if you are rude to them, like that’s game over, right?

But if they like you, if you’re looking after them and you’re not awkward and you’re trying to do the right thing by the company, they will stand by you and stick up for you. And I see that all the time. So I just want to say like, it’s true.

It’s true, folks, right? Authority does not necessarily mean influence and vice versa. So great observation.

Well, you’re describing gatekeepers, right? Absolutely, yeah. Gatekeepers have a tremendous amount of power, and they also have a lot of influence, right?

And I share some examples in the book of gatekeepers. But I think where I have really understood the difference between authority, rank, position, and influence is in my work with the military, right? When they come out of uniform, oftentimes they don’t understand why that respect and the credibility and the clout isn’t still there.

And what we know is, if I have the job title, you will do what I say because your paycheck depends on it. It doesn’t mean I influenced you. It doesn’t mean you’re wanting to follow me and challenge me and hold me accountable and grow with me.

It means you don’t want to lose your job. So compliance and coercion are not influence. And that was something I really spent a lot of time trying to unpack and understand to write the book.

And that’s where anybody can have influence. You don’t have to be in the C-suite. Many people don’t want that.

But they want to know that if they say something or they have an idea, they can take it forward. And maybe that idea is really worth something. Maybe it isn’t, but maybe it is.

Right.

I always think you can tell a good leader that if they leave the company, like for whatever reason, other people follow them. And that is powerful leadership, because as you said right at the start, people buy people, they follow the people, they trust the people, not necessarily the company. And so I think as time goes on, like this is my observation, I’d love to get your thoughts.

Do you think that that’s going to carry on? Like we mentioned the pandemic and kind of that human connection and the more authentic way of going forwards. Do you see that sort of trend continuing?

Or like, how do you, what do you think it will recede back into the depths of the midst of the pandemic? What are your thoughts?

Oh, I hope it doesn’t. I hope it doesn’t go away. I mean, I think social media is keeping us, you know, tuned in at a higher level.

And yes, it’s been around for a long time, but we all learned how to navigate social media during the pandemic. Netflix and social media, right? That was all that we had.

I hope it doesn’t go away. I think companies are embracing it, they’re listening. They’re still mandating things.

We see companies in the US, you know, requiring return to work and getting all this pushback, and they’re sitting down with their employees and talking it through. And in the past, they might have just said, look, if you don’t want to work here, that’s fine. But there’s more of that conversation and collaboration now.

And I think it’s because we’ve realized we can all win. This isn’t a zero-sum game. We can all win here.

We just might want to listen and ask questions without judging and see if there’s a better option.

My segue here will kind of leadership you mentioned. The last thing I want to tuck into was the power of storytelling and connection when it comes to leadership. So why do you think this has become so vital for leaders, the power of storytelling?

I think a lot of people don’t think they’re good at storytelling. And that’s what I hear, right? I’m an engineer, I’m an architect, I work in technology, I’m not about stories.

And people say that as if it’s an excuse to not have to think about it. But everybody can learn how to tell stories. In working in all these different countries and all these different cultures, the one thing that’s common, one of the things that’s common is stories work, right?

We’ve all grown up learning stories. People read to us when we were children, and we learned right from wrong in the stories we were told, whatever culture that was. So the power of story is not to be underestimated.

And we look at now people who make a living teaching people how to write stories and how to create stories. Anytime I tell my clients, anytime you can wrap something in a story, it’s going to have more stickiness, more brand stickiness, more community stickiness. Because if I just share data, if I just share research or present a methodology, it will make logical sense.

But if I present a story, you’ll connect with it differently. It doesn’t even have to be a story that you’ve had a similar experience. You’ll put yourself in my story and we’ll bond in a different way.

And we see that happening at the highest levels of government. We see it happening at the highest levels of business where they’ll all of a sudden switch from sharing a pro forma to, let me tell you what that really looks like. Here’s what it felt like for me.

And all of a sudden, as human beings, we all come together. And a story really follows three sections. And as long as you remember, there’s got to be an opening, there’s got to be a middle, there’s got to be an end, then whether you’re looking for a job and being asked to present an example of something that happened, you’re trying to sell a brand message, or you’re just trying to build your team whenever you can think, how do I want to introduce this story?

What’s the opening going to look like? What are the key points in the middle? What’s the story?

And then how am I going to end? I did a video on my YouTube that got a lot of interest. And I just talked about the ending, because most people don’t think about the ending, right?

It’s like, oh my gosh, I’m done, right? If you’re on stage, it’s like, I’m done speaking. And they just run off stage or they finish the story with, well, that’s all I’ve got.

And it’s like, ugh, it just kind of like flops there. Think about the ending of a story, right? I always use the analogy of a gymnast coming off the balance beam, right?

They stick the landing. And that’s how a story has to play too. Every story I share, I think about how do I want to bring my listener in?

What is the story? What’s the purpose and the intent of the story? And how am I going to put a bow around it at the end?

It’s not rocket science. We can all learn how to do this and apply it to our personal lives, our professional lives and our building community.

I love that gymnast metaphor. I was thinking of like, you know, how they put their hands up at the end. I was like, ta-da.

It’s like, no, the story is done. That’s the end.

You know, there’s an interesting thing about that because I study body language. And one of the, I did a training recently. So they do this, right?

The arms go up. They don’t go out to the side. They go up in a V formation and the V is victory.

When you look at people crossing a finish line, arms go up like this. You know how we’ve been taught power poses and things like that? I’ll sometimes have an audience like do the V for victory.

And all of a sudden, everybody feels like a little more successful, a little more confident. It’s something we do without thinking. There you go.

Now, Matt.

I feel great now. I feel amazing. Come on, everybody, listen to the podcast.

Do your victory sign and, yeah, thank Lida for that.

But it is one of those things that sort of subconsciously, it does make us feel that way. And that’s why people will do it in a moment of victory without even realizing it. So, gymnasts, for sure do it.

Thank you so much, Lida. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Just to wrap up, would you like to share some final tips for our listeners looking to build influence?

Some key takeaways, the end of the story, if you will.

Sure. The end of the story actually starts at the beginning. What we’re talking about on this podcast and what I talk about in my book is scary stuff.

I get that. And I was scared to write the book because I shared some very personal things in the book. But the first rule of influence is to have courage.

And if we don’t have courage, things don’t get better. Things don’t get looked at differently. We may not change the world, but we can perhaps introduce an idea that makes things better.

The other thing is just raise your hand, right? It doesn’t have to be a huge shift, but take small steps today. Keep yourself psychologically safe and physically safe as you do it.

But we have to start taking small steps. That is the only way that we do see positive change. And we’ve got to measure, right?

I talk about measuring and monitoring influence, whether you’re looking at KPIs like followership or number of shares in a social media post, or you hear somebody talk about something you introduced, there’s influence, and influence is very much a ripple effect. The influence of your voice may not show up in your lifetime, and you’ve got to be okay with that. It’s a beautiful and powerful thing to have influence in this world.

And when you share it with other people, then things get better for all of us.

I love that. Thank you so much. Can you share also where people can connect with you, where they can grab your book, The New Rules of Influence?

Sure. I’m pretty much on every social media platform, surprise, surprise, except TikTok, not on TikTok, but everywhere else. So please connect with me on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, wherever.

My website, Lida360, is full of content, a lot of articles that I write that I give out, and the book is available, certainly on Amazon and a lot of international bookstores. So wherever you go for books, if they don’t have it, ask them to get it and they will, but certainly it is available everywhere. The New Rules of Influence, the subtitle is How to Authentically Build Trust, Drive Change and Make an Impact.

And I’m really proud of it.

It packs a punch. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Like I said, thoroughly enjoyed this. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed it, a review on Apple Podcasts is always appreciated. So thank you.

Matt, did you have any final comments?

Just to say, like, I’m just going to go away from this and just do that victory kind of across the finish line, you know, finish just to put a bow on this episode. But I just wanted to say thank you as well, Lida. It’s been absolutely amazing.

Great tips. Huge value. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for what you’re both doing. It’s definitely needed in the world.

So I’m an avid subscriber.

Thank you.