Matt Havens
- A corporate America veteran, pitched Fortune 25 for enterprise transformations by age 25.
- His popular speaking style led nationwide engagements, steering large-scale change efforts.
- With experience leading contact centers in 5 U.S. locations, Matt emphasizes a realistic, humorous approach.
- His mission is to provide real-world solutions in a relatable and humorous manner.
- His unique style has rapidly established him as one of the industry’s fastest up-and-coming speakers.
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Matt Havens's 2024 biography
About Matt Havens
Matt Havens is an international keynote speaker, reformed corporate leader, son of a comedian, and a firm believer we overcomplicate work by overthinking the solutions. While Matt doesn’t take himself too seriously, he seriously delivers a highenergy, actionable, and hilarious message every time he takes a stage.
Matt is at the intersection of thought leadership, entertainment, and real-life. He spent 14 years leading diverse teams in finance, sales, and customer service for a Fortune 50 company which gave him the in-the-trenches experience companies can relate with and understand. Matt also grew up being snuck into the back room of comedy clubs while his Dad performed with some of the biggest names in comedy. That experience taught him the importance of engaging an audience and
the infectious impact of laughter. Understanding those two experiences don’t have to be mutually exclusive – that we can drive business growth and results while having fun doing it – has positioned Matt to help hundreds of organizations and recognizable brands like RE/MAX, Lockheed Martin, and Allstate to go along with countless government and industry associations from nearly every trade.
Matt lives in Dallas, TX with his wife and best friend, Megan, and their twin daughters Avery and Emersyn. When he’s not working, he’s probably trying to convince his daughters to love golf or plan the next family adventure.
Matt Havens's 2024 talks & topics
Mastering Simplicity: How to Lead in the Modern World of Work
It is no secret that we are busier, more stressed, and often paralyzed in our ability to make decisions quickly. The result is a workplace struggling with inaction, fatigue, burnout, and some of the highest levels of mental health concerns we’ve ever seen. With no course correction, these concerns are only going to get worse. While the reaction some leaders have is to over-engineer the solutions and pile on more, the truth is the best leaders understand their role is to harness the power of simplicity to reduce the noise and create space where ideas and true priorities thrive.
In this transformational keynote, Matt Havens shares research-backed ideas and practical, real-life solutions from his time in Fortune 50 boardrooms, leading teams, and speaking on hundreds of stages globally for companies like CISCO, State Farm, and RE/MAX.
Attendees will learn how to decode complexity both in and outside the workplace by adopting and implementing Matt’s Simplicity framework. Filled with realistic and actionable steps leaders can take to build more presence, more capacity, and more engagement in their teams, this framework is exactly what leaders don’t yet know they’re looking for to lead in the new world of work. Audience members will walk away with a better understanding of what’s holding their teams back from their true potential and will be positioned to build a culture full of purpose, productivity and accountability. Leadership has never been simple, but simplicity is clear and intentional and exactly what teams need to be their best in the future of work.
What audiences come away with:
- Clarity and understanding of what drives human behavior and how we harness the best qualities in our teams.
- A framework of how to approach every challenge with simplicity and reduce complexity.
- Tactics for moving from analysis paralysis to action.
- Real and applicable steps to build a thriving culture in the workplace.
Simplicity in Multi-Generational Teams: How to Attract and Retain Talent of All Ages
We’re being told for the first time in history, there are five separate and distinct generations in the workforce, all with different traits, characteristics, and needs. In a world busier and more polarized than ever, it’s not a surprise leaders and organizations are struggling to communicate, collaborate, and reinvent across the generational divide. The traditional solutions complicate the issue by leading us to believe a new group of people is born every 10 years with new motivations and new ways of working. The answer of creating more differentiation has been the wrong answer for decades and the time to stop is now.
In this engaging, entertaining, and actionable presentation, Matt Havens will bring decades of experience helping organizations navigate generational differences to audiences looking to finally understand how to truly engage each other and how to simplify (not complicate) the solutions.
Attendees will learn how to understand, recognize, and resolve their generational issues by harnessing the power of Simplicity. While most presentations focus on what people want, Matt shares the important distinction of why we approach work in new ways and how leaders can show up for their teams regardless of their ages. Attendees will learn from our experience in music, fashion, technology, industry – all the while utilizing research-backed methodologies for making sense of our unique human experiences. In the end, audiences will walk away with an immediate blueprint for action. Simplicity will create the space where relationships
can blossom, communication can flourish, and ideas and people can thrive together.
What audiences come away with:
- Tools for replacing the complicated five-generation model with a workable dichotomy between older, more experienced workers and their younger, less experienced counterparts.
- An understanding of the key cultural, technological, and social changes that have conspired to create a disconnect between team members from these two groups.
- Practical strategies for reducing complexity and maximizing action capital.
- Methods for navigating and thriving in change across age-diverse groups.
- Tactics for hiring and retaining the best talent, regardless of their age.
Unlocking the Human Potential In Work: How to Drive Personal, Professional and Organization Growth the Human Way™
Running a business, leading teams, or simply working within one can often feel like a never-ending barrage of problems. That’s in part because today’s conventional wisdom usually focuses on what separates us. Management vs. Employees. Me vs. You. It’s no wonder employers are struggling to build a culture of purpose-driven engagement and employees report the highest levels of burnout in history. What we need is a new way to unlock our collective potential in work.
Designed for all audiences, this inspiring and impactful keynote will help focus audiences not on the differences that so many of us seem fixated on, but on the profound similarities we all share as people. We need to understand, honor, and harness the qualities that make us human if we want to outperform the competition in creating memorable customer experiences and true workforce engagement.
Blending research-backed insights with real-life practical applications, Matt helps audiences dive deep into how we can approach work together. Audiences will leave with a renewed appreciation for the value of human connection, how to foster it more intentionally in their lives, and why it’s more important than ever to change the conversation from being about Us vs. Them to WE.
What audiences come away with:
- Understand and embrace the collective human experience and how it impacts not only our behavior, but the behavior of employees and customers.
- How to implement a people-first approach to leadership that will drive engagement and resolve the seemingly endless “work/life balance” debate.
- How to create an environment where people can be their best version of themselves.
- How to create a place where fear and failure are not only acceptable but celebrated as opportunities for true growth.
- How to balance short-term needs against long-term goals in a way that reduces personal stress and improves strategic decision-making.
Make Your Business Human
The 4 Human Truths that Drive Personal, Professional, and Organizational Success
In the not-so-distant past, business success was defined entirely by money. The bigger you were, the better; the more profitable you were, the more successful your business. End of story.
Today, though, society is increasingly interested in how that success happens. Employees are no longer willing to work for companies whose ideals they don’t support or whose profits come by any means necessary, and customers are quick to abandon businesses that are insensitive or selfabsorbed. In the past, one bad advertisement was an embarrassment; today, one inflammatory tweet can be fatal.
The businesses that will succeed in the future will not be the ones that spend all their time thinking about how to sell more products and services at higher margins. Rather, they will be the businesses that recognize the common human needs and motivations that govern employee and customer behavior. Make Your Business Human is a transformative keynote that focuses not on the differences that so many of us seem fixated on (Boomer vs. Millennial, Leadership vs. Workforce), but on four profound similarities we all share. Organizations which understand, honor, and harness the qualities that make us human will outperform their peers in creating memorable customer experiences and true workforce engagement.
This shift in perspective is not theoretical. It’s already happening. If you want to be on the leading edge of tomorrow’s success, then you need to be leading The Human Way.
Partial List of Takeaways:
- Understand the Four Human Truths and how they impact our behavior as employees and customers
- How to implement a people-first approach to leadership that will drive engagement and resolve the seemingly endless “work/life balance” debate
- How to create an environment where fear and failure are not only acceptable, but celebrated as opportunities for true growth
- How to balance short-term needs against long-term goals in a way that reduces personal stress and improves strategic decision-making
Stop Acting Your Age! (generational issues)
If you’ve listened to any other discussion about generational ssues at work, then you’ve undoubtedly been told there are four distinct generations operating side-by-side in today’s working world. You’ve then been told the differences between those four generations, and then you’ve been told (although probably not in these exact words) that you need to just deal with all these different people, because they’re not going away and they’re not going to change how they operate. If that advice suits you, fantastic.
However, if you’ve ever been frustrated by how impossible it seems to employ four different strategies to manage four distinct generations, and if you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one who’s being asked to make any changes, then Stop Acting Your Age! is exactly what you need. Because it turns out that there really aren’t four generations. In this hysterical keynote, you’ll learn a simpler way of looking at your own generational picture, and you’ll also learn how to understand, recognize, and resolve every generational issue facing today’s workforce. That’s no exaggeration; by the end of Stop Acting Your Age!, you and your colleagues will walk away with all of the knowledge you’ll need to address 100% of the generational issues you’ll face for the rest of your career. Other generational presentations focus on what people want, but Stop Acting Your Age! will tell you why everyone wants the different things they do. It’s an important distinction, and it will make implementing new solutions easier than you ever thought possible.
So get ready to laugh more and learn more than you ever thought possible. Because improving your generational issues doesn’t have to be boring.
Partial List of Takeaways:
- Learn to replace the complicated four-generation model with a workable dichotomy between older, more experienced workers and their younger, less-experienced counterparts
- Understand the key cultural, technological, and social changes that have conspired to create a disconnect between team members from these two generations
- Walk away with several immediately applicable strategies to address and eliminate problems caused by the disconnect mentioned above
- Inspire a healthier, more robust work ethic in your younger employees (and your older ones, too)
- Inspire a healthier, more robust attitude toward change in your older employees (and your younger ones, too)
You’re Not an Acronym: A Practical Approach to Leadership
If you’ve been a leader for a while or are being groomed to become one, then you’ve probably taken your fair share of personality tests. Perhaps you know your Woo strength, or maybe you’ve recently discovered that you’re a purple triangle when you’re stressed. If this kind of information is all you need in order to be the kind of leader your people are excited to follow, then you probably don’t need to keep reading this.
But if you’ve ever suspected that leadership may be about more than just you, then You’re Not an Acronym is the kind of leadership presentation you’ll truly appreciate. Matt Havens has spent over a decade in various leadership positions at a Fortune 25 company. He’s taken dozens of personality assessments, and he’s recognized a fundamental flaw in the way that all of them attempt to help people become better leaders. By addressing and then correcting this oversight, You’re Not An Acronym will help you expand your understanding of leadership exponentially – and you’ll do it while laughing all the while. Because not only is this one of the most insightful leadership keynotes you’ll ever sit through, it’s also one of the funniest. After all, boring isn’t a business requirement. So get ready to enjoy the process of becoming a more effective leader more than you ever thought possible!
Partial List of Takeaways:
- Understand the value (and limitations) of personality tests and other types of self-analysis as they relate to improving your leadership
- Discover the two pillars of effective leadership – neither of which have anything to do with you!
- Develop a system for creating roadmaps for success that everyone can get behind, including people who operate differently from you
- Realize that leadership presentations don’t have to be mind-numbingly boring!
Matt Havens's 2024 speaking fees
- United States
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