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Interview With Paul Reid

Writer's picture: Dorenda BrittenDorenda Britten

Updated: Nov 18, 2024



In this interview, Dorenda engages with Paul Reid, an Independent Director at Christchurch International Airport and Chair on multiple company boards. Paul candidly discusses his journey with dyslexia, from concealing it to embracing it as a strength that enhances his professional approach.


The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Transcript


Dorenda: Welcome to this series of interviews. We're a range of New Zealanders with dyslexia will share their Insights on where this diverse way of thinking has influenced their lives. I'm Dorenda Britten. Joining us today is Paul Reid, who is the CEO of Author-it, a content management and software company; a chair of Figured, a farm financial management software company; and a director of the Christchurch International Airport. So when we first met Paul I believe you had just discovered you were dyslexic. Is that true?


Paul: So, it wouldn't have been up until probably 10 years ago that I would even admit that I was dyslexic. I hid it. And it was out of shame, a feeling of being thought of as a dummy: as somebody who wasn't very "smart" because, when I grew up, you were judged by you know how well you could spell, how well you could read, and pronounce words. And of course just your traditional Sciences as well. So when you were growing up, and you realised your reading ability was fairly poor, you hid it. I hid that for a huge chunk of my life and used to sometimes feel quite embarrassed by it. But I developed quite a few coping strategies in life. They were little things. Some of them have actually turned out to be advantages. You might have thought it was a disadvantage: you'd be travelling around to different companies and businesses, and you go to sign in, and you had to write down the name of the person you were visiting. If I was with somebody else, I'd always let them sign in first, and then just do the little ditto underneath. If I wasn't with somebody I would have had written out their name in advance on a piece of paper and had it in my pocket, so that I could pull it out and copy it. You'd prepare yourself for different kind of situations. And if you're forced to [use pen and paper], drawing pictures, never using words. It was a fear of being found out; and the fear that everyone will realise you're a fake. It took me a long time to realize that leadership and intelligence and a whole bunch of other things aren't judged by whether you can read a book very well or not.


D: What do you remember from your school days that you believe has left the biggest mark on you?


P: I remember back to school days the the worst thing that would happen, and this is at high school, was you'd go around the room having to read a paragraph from a book. You'd be sitting there, your palms and hands would be sweating, and you'd get your turn and you'd start, and then you'd hear people giggle and the laughing would start, and you'd get worse and worse because you get yourself wound up completely. Yes, I have problems with words. I have problems with spelling and reading and writing, and you could try and explain to me to your blue in the face what a noun is, and I'm still just not going to get it. I'm just not going to understand what you're saying. But I was really fortunate. I'm really good at maths. That's the only thing that kept me at school. I made it into university. I had to do a summer school to get in. I studied the first year of Bachelor of Agriculture and I failed after that. I quit and flipped over to a science degree in maths and stats, and the rest is history work starts etc. So, how do you actually then continue to be successful from a from a business perspective? I don't want to define success. You know from a from a business or monetary standpoint, but from an ability to work, you know and and provide yourself with an income and then ultimately my family with an income etc, etc. Well. I quickly learned I'm not going to be able to do it by reading books and becoming very book smart and clever in a particular skill set.


D: How would you describe your way of learning as a dyslexic?


P: What I had learned through being dyslexic was the way I learned. And the way I learned was through observation, and I was really fortunate again when younger, to work with some really great people. And I learned by watching their leadership style, and how they spoke, and how they approached things, and then it was by doing. So sitting in a lecture room and listening to a lecture or learning that way just just doesn't work. I'd rather bury myself in a project or an activity and just observe and and and learn, and then try it out for myself. I do believe everyone, regardless of being dyslexic or not, thinks differently. I know through the science that dyslexic people do conceptualise things quite a bit differently in terms of shapes and puzzles, and and how you approach problems, and how you think about things, which is not a disadvantage. A lot of the creative people that you meet and talk to are dyslexic. They're wired and think in a in a different way, and that for them has been a really good thing.


D: Paul are you able to identify any support you have had that others may not have had access to?


P: So, I was lucky because I was given some opportunities in life that a lot of people don't. My parents were in a position where they could continue to support me at school, but a lot of children aren't in that position, usually for financial reasons, and then they are labelled as a dummy, because they're not doing well at school. Low self-esteem can quite often lead into really bad cases of anxiety. Just not being recognised that they just might think a little bit differently doesn't necessarily mean they're dumb, and it takes quite a while for a person with dyslexia of any form to actually think that way. I can remember trying to read uh Harry McLary to my eldest daughter, and she corrected me. I was so pleased that she wasn't dyslexic. That's actually quite the wrong thinking; because if she was, it doesn't actually matter. But as society has taught you, and drilled into you, that there's these certain standards in life that define whether you're bright or not, or whether you're good enough, or whether you can be accepted, and that standard is predominantly around your education. The other thing that has helped massively is technology. I use a paid subscription to Grammarly. Without that, my emails would be very difficult to understand. So we're really fortunate now with that. And as we're talking today, the way we communicate, we're now talking by video. You don't really write letters anymore in personal communication or in business communication. Yes, you write emails, but even emails are getting less and less in terms of length, and the content. I say to my team, if you're gonna write something in email longer than a paragraph, I'd rather have a quick conversation. The power of verbal conversation is much stronger than than the written when communicating.


D: During my research, I have often been told that dyslexia is a problem in the workplace for health and safety reasons. The story has been that if people learn to read and write, then they will find valuable work. I'd like to put it another way: if they learn to read and write, they can have the keys to the Kingdom, but there you are. Have you discovered other ways of communicating at Workpool?


P: I can recall (and it would have been 20 years ago), I was working at Carter Holt Harvey, and talking with our health and safety manager, Pat. People were dying. How do you get your message across? Simple. Employ a cartoonist. It got the message across. People could understand it. They could read it. You've just got to think a little bit outside the square. How can I address this problem to to a different audience? It's just the way the world is today, and I hope that you guys are able to make an impact. Even if you just make an impact on one life a young New Zealander, that would be awesome, because kids shouldn't have to go through what children did in my day.


D: How would you feel about efforts to diagnose dyslexia in children earlier? In your opinion, would that have been uh an advantage or not for you?


P: However your you approach your journey with dyslexia, it takes time. There's no simple quick fix, because you've spent the first, formative, part of your life being taught that "this is how we do things," and then you discover when you're in your young adult years that actually, that doesn't work for you; it isn't just gonna change overnight. It isn't gonna change other people's behaviour. And it's also not gonna change, necessarily, how you view yourself. My key message is: don't tie up your own personal self-worth to other people's view of how self worth should be measured, because you're gonna be in a continual loop of trying to please others, and do things the way that society expects of you, in a very traditional manner, and you're gonna be disappointed. Don't attach yourself to something like this, because you're actually, as an individual, worth a lot more. You have incredible talent and and skills, when applied in a way that that suits you.


D: Thank you, Paul. Your story is an inspiration, not only to people who struggle with dyslexia, but for all of us. Thank you for your time.


P: Thanks for that.


D: This is the first in a series of interviews that I'm conducting for a program, in the name of the late John Britten, a well-known dyslexic engineer who had to overcome many hurdles on the way to realising his potential. The program we are building takes an alternative view of dyslexia. We would prefer to think of dyslexia as a gift. We are staggered to learn of the number of dyslexic people in New Zealand, and how their special view of the world is underrated.

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