We were lucky to catch up with Brandon Matthews recently and have shared our conversation below.
Brandon, so great to have you on the platform and excited to have you share your wisdom with our community today. Communication skills often play a powerful role in our ability to be effective and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your communication skills.
This is a great question, I’m glad that you asked me this. Communication is something that I love to help others grow in. 70% of global employers say that communication is the most desirable skill for potential employees to have.
Communication is a muscle that must be exercised in order to grow. Communication is something that I continually study and practice. I have been growing as a communicator for nearly 30 years and have narrowed it all down to three key factors: Clarity, Accuracy, and Simplicity. Each of these factors have deeper levels of skill and strategy, but I aim for these three elements so that everyone walks away from my talks and presentations having gained value.
Another way I continue to grow as a communicator is continual critique. I have learned to review my progress the way a sports team would review their plays and previous games. I’ll give you my secret. Here is a simple four step process I use for a self-review.
1. Pick a Video
I will choose a recent talk or presentation. If you wanted to do this you could record yourself a 5 minute video on your phone.
2. Listen to the Video (Auditory Review)
I don’t watch it, I just listen. This step of an auditory review is crucial because it will forever change you as a communicator by answering one very important question, “If you were your audience, could you listen to you?”
3. Watch the Video (Visual Review)
This time I don’t listen, I just watch. It’s a painful process, but it’s important. This step is extra important because as you speak you can at least hear a version of yourself, but it’s impossible to see yourself unless you watch a video. I critique my body language, body movement, and hand gestures.
4. Transcribe the Video
I highlight all of the non-words, filler-words, and catch-phrases. I look for words that rob me of credibility and authority.
This is system has worked well for me, and I think it will for your readers also.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I have always felt the most fulfilled helping others find fulfillment. I want to leave the people and the places I go better than I found them. Ultimately, I want to make a difference. This is why I’m passionate about doing what I call, bringing meaning back to the marketplace.
I first learned the importance of customer experience and customer service at the young age of 16 during my first job as a cold-calling telemarketer. Employees would come and go faster than you can change socks but I stayed for the two year tenure of my High School working days. This helped lay the foundation for what I would be passionate about sharing throughout my life.
Most of us will spend ⅓ of our life working. We dread Monday morning, work our week away, and wish for the weekend. The problem with living this life is that the weekend just doesn’t last long enough. When we are young we rush to grow up and then when we grow up we wish to be young again. We lose our health to make money, and then lose money to regain our health. We wish so much for the future, that we fail to live in the present or the future. We live as though we will never die, and die as if we never lived. I believe there is more than this. I believe we can shift the culture within our places of employment to provide employees with passion and purpose while sharing this change with the customers that we serve.
I help organizations become healthy by helping them develop better company culture, team health, organizational health, customer service, customer experience, personal, peer, and public leadership development.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
This is another great question. It’s tough to narrow them down but I would say that the three most impactful qualities in my life are:
1. Hard Work
Early in my life I noticed that most people get distracted, discouraged, and drop out. I realized that as I would continue to work hard and keep showing up, a lot of my success came from being the last man standing. I didn’t even have to be the smartest, most talented, or most qualified, I just had to work hard and show up.
2. Humility
Humility keeps you grounded. Humility keeps you committed to your mission, your vision, and your values. Humility requires that you value others and treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve. Humility says I win when we all win, so I won’t mistreat you to get what I want or where I want to be. Stay humble.
3. Purpose
I believe that there is purpose in everything we do. I fully believe we all have a purpose on this planet, so I choose to live my life on purpose and be intentional with every opportunity, every interaction, and every moment that I have. When you look at your life through the lens of purpose you will treat it and all of its moments as special blessing that it is.
The best way to grow in these or any others is to try again each day. Just because I failed or succeeded yesterday doesn’t mean that I don’t have to work just as hard today.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My ideal client is someone who wants their organization to stand above the rest. Someone who wants to develop a work culture that is so good that everyone lines up to work there, and every customer lines us to do business with them. I love working with individuals who value people as much as they value profit. These individuals realize that without people there is no profit, so they prioritize people and as a result increase their profit.
If you are interested in changing the internal atmosphere of your organization so that it increases the effectiveness of the external, I would love to work with you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://brandonmatthews.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandon_matthews/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandonmatthewscultivate
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandondmatthews
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandonmatthews
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVzOSppIC_gWPTRlia9kZjQ
