Give me 10 minutes, and I'll improve your communication skills by 110%

if you give me less than 15 minutes of your time today I promise you'll come out of this video equipped with knowledge that'll change the way people perceive you Warren Buffett says if you can't communicate it's like winking at a girl in the dark nothing happens you can have all the brain power in the world but you have to be able to transmit it and that transmission is communication now regardless of whether you agree with Warren one thing is for certain communication is something that literally anyone can benefit from doesn't matter how old you are

what industry you work in what stage of life you're at Studies have shown that better communicators not only make more money and have better work outcomes but also just have better relationships with the people around them if you're new to the channel hi my name is Matt I'm currently a strategy and operations associate at Google and before that was a Management Consultant today I want to share with you the most valuable tips and advice that I've learned so that you too can improve the way you interact with other people let's get right into it okay

so what is communication communication is when you try to transmit a message to another person and sometimes the message is properly received but other times the message is not properly relay and so the other person is left thinking what the heck does this person mean now if we break things down into first principles and we really try to think about the components of communication from the perspective of the person who's delivering the message I would say that there are two components the first is the idea what we want to say and what we're thinking about

in our head and the second is the actual message that gets delivered so idea and then the reality of the message that actually gets delivered now good communicators don't have a discrepancy between the idea and the message that's being communicated but most people run into issues when it comes to translating your idea or your thoughts into actual words and an example of this is like when you were in elementary school and you had a crush on a girl and your idea was oh I like this person and I want them to know that I like

them but then instead you made fun of them or you made a joke that was mean about them and so they thought that you were being mean to them but in reality you actually like them and you just don't know how to express that in the right way so that they perceive it properly and so I would argue that the first step to being able to accurately convey your ideas starts though with understanding because if you don't have a clear idea of what you're trying to communicate to another person then how can you expect even

with the best possible delivery in the world how can you expect them to understand the concept or the emotion that you're trying to convey and so this is where there's two things I think are critically important for making sure you have this understanding component the first is training yourself to think in first principles and to really force yourself to understand the basic components of whatever it is you're trying to convey so for example if you are trying to explain to a colleague some complex technical scientific concept then you need to make sure that you actually

understand that concept extremely well and that you can literally teach it to a 5-year-old without resorting to Industry jargon or fancy big words because if you can't do that then it means that you don't actually understand the idea or the concept similarly self-awareness is really important because say for example we want to convey an emotion that we're feeling to someone else but if we haven't taken the time to process that emotion and to really understand why do I feel this way why am I angry at this person or why do I feel sad then we

can't properly ensure that we're going to deliver the message properly to that other person and so it depends on the situation but at the end of the day it all comes down to understanding the ideas and the feelings that you're trying to then deliver to this other person but assuming that you do understand the idea that you're trying to convey then the next problem that most people run into is how do you accurately deliver it and the delivery is where I think 99% of communication advice on the internet comes in right they tell you things

like make sure to take a deep breath before you speak use the right vocabulary follow a structured approach now none of this advice is bad necessarily but what I find oftentimes is it fails to account for the first component which I just spoke about which is the understanding of the actual idea that you're trying to convey but now let's talk about the highest value tips that I've learned about actually getting good at the delivery of the message that you want to convey so number one is you have to have to record yourself now I know

what you're thinking mat of course you're saying that like you're a YouTuber you record videos all the time I'm not a YouTuber why do I need to record myself well the reason is because recording yourself is the fastest possible way to get feedback and we as humans are the harshest critics of ourselves so what better way to get feedback on your own communication skills then to force yourself to be the own critic of the message that you're trying to deliver right and I know most of you when you record yourself if you've ever done this

before you will cringe at first at how your voice sounds and how you look on camera you're going to be like what the heck I sound like that I look like that on camera and I know this because most people aren't used to recording themselves but for me because now I make all these YouTube videos and I've been doing it for a while I know what my voice sounds like and I know what I look like on camera and people will now come up to me and say Matt you're so articulate how did you get

so good at communicating the thing is if you just go back to my earliest YouTube videos over a year ago on my channel what you'll see is that I was not this comfortable speaking I was not good at explaining Concepts I was very very awkward with my words but posting videos forced me to basically spend hours looking at myself listening to my voice my tonality seeing how I came across and so I got a ton of feedback and so if you're serious about improving your communication one of the most actionable and immediate ways to improve

is to just start recording yourself if you have to give a presentation record yourself if you have an interview record yourself if you have a phone call that you're feeling nervous about record yourself trying to practice what you're going to say if you have to have a hard conversation with someone record yourself there's literally zero downside now the second thing is you need to learn how to become a good Storyteller now let me give you an example of why this is so effective say for example I went to work one day and then I ran

into my friend on the way to work on the subway now if someone asked me hey Matt how did your day go and I told them oh yeah it was good I in the morning commuted to work and actually ran into my friend Jake then they would be like okay awesome but there's nothing special special about the way that I said it now on the other hand if I said something like yeah so you know this morning actually I was on my way to the subway you know I had my earbuds in I was dialed

in listening to the latest Drake album as I usually do on my commute to work and when I'm about to get off the train I'm like turning somebody Taps me on the shoulder and my first thought is like okay first of all who is like why is someone tapping me on the shoulder is it a homeless guy that's trying to ask me for money like do I need to be afraid for my safety like why is someone bothering me at 8:30 a.m. in the morning and so I'm thinking all these things but then I turn

around and then I see my friend Jake and he's like holy crap you're you're on the train too and that just absolutely made my day because normally I don't run into my friends on the subway going to work and so what I did just there was I created a story out of a very normal interaction and the point I'm trying to get across is that if you can learn to tell stories and become an effective storyteller that is how you can Captivate people and it doesn't matter what situation it is whether it's like at a

party or at lunch with your friends and you're trying to tell them about something that happened or if it's a more formal corporate setting and maybe you're interviewing for a job or you're trying to explain something to a cooworker or your boss or give a presentation being able to tell stories captivates your audience and it gives people another reason to pay attention to what you're actually saying and so that's step number two is get good at storytelling now the last thing is you need to immerse yourself with people that are good communicators and with content

that represents the kind of communication that you want to be able to convey now what do I mean by this well one of the biggest things that contributed to my Improvement in communication was the fact that when I was working in Investment Banking and in management consulting and even now in Tech I'm surrounded by people who are really great communicators and I'm surrounded by people who are really charismatic eloquent and have a way with words I'm not naturally this way and in college I clearly remember being one of the most awkward people on campus I

literally forced myself to take a public speaking class because I felt like it was such a big issue that was holding me back but what I later realized is that when I just surrounded myself when I talked to people who were working in professional jobs when I did internships and when I just listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos of people who are great communicators this drastically improved my communication abilities because subconsciously if you immerse yourself in something then it's going to come out in the way that you think and the way that you communicate

and so regardless of whether it's the content that you consume on the Internet or the people that you interact with be very thoughtful about how you're spending your hours because like it or not the way that we live influences the way that we think and the way that we communicate and so now you're already equipped with a deeper level of understanding about communication that most people don't have and if you just take the steps to improve on all of the things that I've discussed here then I'm confident that you'll be able to improve your communication

skills