Meet Matt Stone

 

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Stone. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.

Matt , we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

My first memory of any type of self awareness about resilience started at a young age. I was born to two parents who were married at 19 and had me when they were 22. At the time, neither had a college degree and we were not stable financially. I could feel it.

When I was about 5 years old, my father joined the military. That began many years of moving. We first landed in Monterey, CA where he studied the Czech language at Defense Language Institute. Two years later we were off to Texas, then Germany, then back to Oregon, then Kansas, then back to Oregon, and so on.

Every time we moved I had to reinvent my life. These days, one might call some of the things that I went through “traumatic,” but they were also incredible opportunities to develop skills. I learned how to adapt to new environments, make friends quickly, and ask for help from strangers.

I continued moving as an adult, domestically and internationally. I have lived in Japan twice in my adult life, went to law school in Hawaii, and have now landed in the NYC area for the last two years.

I believe that my childhood experiences influenced my love of entreprenuership. Ater all, It requires extraordinary resilience, adaptability, and relationship-building skills.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am the CEO of BehavioralOS®, a global agency that provides leaders with a proven method developed by an MIT behavioral scientist for proliferating the two most important ingredients for any company’s success: trust and respect.

We help supercharge relationships and improve communication on leadership teams charged with high stakes change. We do this through a proven method originally researched and developed by company Founder Dr. Irv Rubin, who was an M.I.T. faculty member, behavioral scientist, author, and consultant.

We work with senior leaders address complex human challenges at U.S. Federal Government agencies and in private industry in the U.S. and around the world.

I draw on broad experience over twenty-five years as a business development professional, entrepreneur, and former practicing attorney. I bring a global perspective to all of my engagements, having spent over fifteen years of his life living in Europe and Asia.

I have been a speaker and facilitator on leadership and communication at various events and conferences including the Organization Development Network Conference in the U.S. I have also provided executive facilitation and consulting services in Europe and Asia.

After spending many years focused on senior leaders, I am excited to bring our proven methods to new managers who want to become effective, human-centered leaders. I’ll be launching a new accelerated online journey for new managers in 2024. I have also started Substack channel and podcast to serve new managers who want to become leaders.

I earned my B.A. in History from the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon, and my Juris Doctor degree from the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai’i. I currently lives in the New York City area.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think the three most important skills have been:

1. Interpersonal Communication – I highly value the ability to communicate clearly, logically, and sensitively. It’s an ongoing process that we never graduate from, and it is worth every bit of investment. Learning communication skills comes through any number of activities, but the most important thing is to meet people, build relationships, and have a tribe of “honest cheerleaders” who will hold up a mirror to you.
2. Curiosity – Along with general communication skills, I believe that curiosity helps create the most opportunity in terms of building great relationships, learning, and adapting quickly. Curiosity starts by being present. So I would recommend meditative activities, couple with a conscious choice to pull threads when communicating with others; and keep pulling.
3. Self-acceptance – Of course self-awareness is critical to success in all areas of life, and yet for me I would say that self-acceptance has been even more profound. Tara Brach’s “Radical Self Acceptance” program and teachings have been hugely valuable in understanding the self-defeating troll that lives in my head and how to keep that troll from ruining my life, relationships, and business.

How would you describe your ideal client?

My ideal client is a company led by people who know that the fate of their teams is determined by the health of their “relational infrastructure.” They know intuitively that anonymous, aggregated feedback, surveys, and traditional personality profiling will not lead to the kind of open, direct dialogue that fuels innovation, agility, and high trust. They also know that they need managers who can lead in order to adapt at speed through the AI revolution.

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