The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

SERIES: Tech and Tools - How Practicing Real Conversations Unlocks Talent and Culture with Matt Sussman

• Jay Johnson • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Meetings move at the speed of voice, and too many talented people stay quiet when it matters most. This week, we kick off our new Tech and Tools series with FLOW Speak co-founder Matt Sussman. Matt unpacks a simple idea with big impact: targeted, AI-powered speaking practice that helps English as a second language professionals find their voice in real workplace moments.

We trace the gap between reading proficiency and live conversation, where humor, interruptions, and subtle tone undo textbook learning. Matt explains how FLOW Speak’s simulated dialogues mirror everyday and high-stakes scenarios—calming an upset customer, asking for a raise, clarifying a project risk—and why this matters for culture, inclusion, and innovation. Instead of piling on grammar drills, the platform delivers reps that feel like texting while capturing speech, converting it to text, and rewarding consistent practice. It’s mobile, low-lift to implement, and designed for the high-beginner to high-intermediate range where many professionals stall.

Learn more about FLOW Speak: https://www.flowspeak.io/

Our Tech & Tools series spotlights the technologies redefining talent, leadership, and the future of workplace behavior, with practical insights you can use right away. 

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we're shaping workforce behaviors. I'm really excited because this episode is going to be a little bit different than the ones in the past. Today, we're going to actually introduce an online tool to you that can help shift different behaviors as it relates to workforce that has English as a second language. To introduce this tool, I'm excited to welcome Matt Sussman to join me, one of the key founders of FlowSpeak. And welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Sussman:

Hey, thanks, Jay. Happy to be on the Talent Forge.

Jay Johnson:

So let's get to know the tool a little bit here. Tell me about FlowSpeak and what exactly is it designed to do?

Matt Sussman:

Yeah, so FlowSpeak is an AI-powered platform that uh learners, you know, employees uh from around the world can access from any internet connection through their phones or you know, their laptops, and they can have a virtually simulated conversational experience, helping them build up their confidence and their skill ability in closing sales and talking with customers, you know, everyday, you know, small talk, and just really helping them hone uh that that experience.

Jay Johnson:

So we all know how important communication is in the workplace. It's generally the number one skill set that's listed on every job description, and it's one of those things that creates the conditions for connection, culture, uh, you know, and understanding. So talk to me a little bit. How did you get into this space? Like what brought you to um something like FlowSpeak?

Matt Sussman:

Yeah, I've been working in international education and cross-cultural um, you know, organizations for over 25 years. And as you mentioned, I've just I've seen so many uh people that are uh, you know, non-native speakers really struggle with the speaking piece of the experience. And um, you know, reflecting on that, I thought, well, you know, there's very few tools out there that just focus on speaking. There's a lot of great tools out there that uh offer, you know, reading practice, listening practice, you know, writing practice, but there's very few tools until very recently uh for speaking. And that's because the technology was limited. So my co-founder and I actually connected during the pandemic. And we, I was in Tokyo and he was in Guadalajara, Mexico, and we both hit on the same kind of idea like, wow, this technology is really interesting and it could do some great things for you know, working professional students around the world. And so we started brainstorming, um, you know, just online together about how we could put this together to make something completely new to help people get that uh, you know, simulated conversation experience.

Jay Johnson:

So it's funny that you mentioned Guadalajara. Um, when I was, when I was young in my career, I was actually uh working in the industrial and systems engineering department at Wayne State. And I was sent to Guadalajara for seven days to go work with some of the different manufacturing plants that were down there. Now, I had two years of Spanish speaking training in high school, four semesters of it in college, and I had used it absolutely zero times other than to order something at a restaurant uh on rare occasion. And I thought that I had forgotten it all, but I get dropped into Guadalajara and I'm have a 45-minute taxi drive back and forth. That individual that was driving the taxi was the same person every day, thankfully spoke English, but helped me practice my Spanish. And I was shocked because I could read it, I could comprehend it if I was reading it, but because I hadn't practiced it, I felt so not confident in speaking it, in speaking the language, in in hearing the language, being able to process it. So the fact that you, you know, kind of founded this in interaction with that is pretty cool. But my question is when we think about the workforce and the behaviors of the workforce, a large portion of our workforce in the United States of America is English as a second language. And that's true also globally. You know, when we start thinking about English, really is a language of business across Europe, uh, across Asia, and a number of other spaces. So talk me through the, the, the why. Why is it important to provide this type of a resource for those employees that are English as second language speakers?

Matt Sussman:

Right, right. Yeah, really, really good question. So uh correct, you know, there's lots of working professionals in the US uh that, you know, English isn't our first language, but also internationally, we have professionals working in the medical field in the Middle East that are working with large, you know, European conglomerates that want to make a good impression on their boss and their coworkers during Zoom meetings. We've got engineers in Japan that are trying to explain the schematics to this plan that they're building uh, you know, in Southeast Asia. Um, maybe to other uh partners that are also English is their second language. Uh we've got uh employees in the United States that are working in warehouses, or maybe they're working in customer service. And they know that you know, if they miss that beat when the customer says something funny and they don't quite get it, or when a customer is upset and they need to be soothed, you need the right words for each of those situations. So my experience is I've I've spent many years living and working in Japan. And when the Japanese did international business when I first got there, believe it or not, uh, they were using fax machines. And they're still using fax machines even to this day, right? So, but uh you know, they're also using uh emails, uh any written communication that they can do. But they're starting to realize, like in the last few years, like that's just not cutting it anymore. And the world since the pandemic has switched to Zoom meetings, that's the standard. So now they have to jump on meetings and have conversations, which scares you know a lot of people. And there's a lot that you can't catch because there's a big difference between what you learn in a textbook, which is very formal English, and which is what you need for any language, you need the foundation. But to be able to go to the next step, you need to have the everyday language skill, which only occurred until recently if you were living in an English-speaking country and you would pick that up naturally, and that was a huge advantage. But um, you know, there's so many people in the world, you know, 1.5 billion trying to learn English. And if they're all stuck on textbook English, they're not reaching that next stage in their professional development. And that's where this new technology is exciting and can bridge that gap. So, you know, our mission is to give everyone a voice. And we've got learners from around the world. Uh, it's the most exciting thing in the world to me is that it's working. The people that are using it, they're like, I love this, it's helped me. I'm more confident now, I've broken through. We're helping those learners go from that kind of you know, timid, uh less uh, you know, proficiency level, like maybe a low intermediate or a high beginner level to going to high intermediate to, you know, kind of a lower advanced level, just kind of bridging that gap. And uh yeah, we get fantastic feedback from the learners when it fits just right.

Jay Johnson:

So I I love that you bring that up. And I'm gonna we're gonna get to the impact in just a few moments, but I'm gonna share a quick sort of uh it's just anecdotal, but I've I've had the privilege of training in 40 or so different countries. And out of those, I would say 90% of them, if not 95% of them, are non-English speaking native countries, right? Uh 100% of my experience in interacting with populations there is so many of them have come up, and this is true in Japan as well. Have come up and said, I'm sorry, my English is just not that good. I apologize, my English, and and you could literally see this pain on their face. Now, ironically, half of the time, Matt, I'm not gonna lie, the way that they told me that their English was not good was more grammatically accurate than a native English speaker. But, you know, it was just there is, there's this confidence level. And when we get to impacts, I'm gonna draw some some thoughts on that specifically. But let's get into a little bit of the of the uh the how. How does this work? What does it do exactly? What is somebody that goes through, you know, if an organization were to say, you know what, I want to provide this as a solution to my employees to be able to elevate their English speaking language proficiencies, what would those people experience? How would they navigate it? Does it take a lot of time? What are some of those logistics?

Matt Sussman:

Yeah. So uh I think on a scale of one to 10 of how difficult is this to implement in my organization? We've built our product to be a one and not go beyond that. Very easy. This is a self-learning platform. Basically, just sign up the employees and let them run with it. Um, there's already built-in point systems and motivational badges and certificates that they can earn. We have a dashboard to keep track of their progress. But it's very, very simple. And the way the learning process works is it's just like texting, right? So everybody around the world knows how a texting experience works. Something you know pops up that says, you know, some kind of a statement or some kind of a phrase, and then it's your turn to respond to that and goes back and forth in that interaction. But instead of typing your response, you're speaking it. So you use the mic on your phone or the on your tablet or your computer, and you go back and forth in it in a text visual basis. We have, you know, photos that kind of create the scenario, but we've we've developed over 1,200 lessons by our education curriculum team based on a wide variety of scenarios. We have some everyday topics like walking your dog in the park and bumping into another dog owner, uh, sometimes going to the dentist, uh, but we have some professional development ones, such as how do you talk to the HR department about an issue you're seeing uh in the workplace, something sensitive? How do you ask your boss for a raise? How do you do a teamwork project and sound cooperative? What are what are the words around that? And how do you practice that in a real-time conversation scenario?

Jay Johnson:

So uh just real real quick. It's now I think that that's probably the defining distinguishing characteristic, at least one of them. But I I would imagine that some of the audience is going, okay, well, what's the difference between this and say something like Duolingo or something of that nature? And and I would imagine contextual business professional applications would be one of the distinguishing characteristics. Is that accurate or help me understand that question?

Matt Sussman:

Yeah, yeah, that's a fair question. It comes up uh quite often. I I think Duolingo is a fun product if you're looking to learn a few words of French or learn a few words of Japanese, and maybe you're gonna go there and travel for two weeks. Um, but many of our learners will say, I use Duolingo, I took their assessment test and I passed out, but I am still not confident. I still need way more practice. So Duolingo will take you up to maybe like an high beginner level at best. It kind of helps you, you know, jump in and get your toes wet a little bit, get you interested in languages, and you can try lots of languages and learn basic greetings and how, you know, talk about your family. But that's a whole world difference when you're trying to use a language in a professional environment. So our product actually starts at high beginner and takes you to high intermediate or kind of a lower advanced level. Um, so we're in a different segment. Our product is more professionally oriented, as you mentioned. So the content of it is very different. Duolingo and other products that focus on the beginner level uh do that because most of most of the world's learners are at that level. And so they need a huge audience. We're a more targeted niche audience, and we can focus on their specific needs.

Jay Johnson:

Um, and and that's what we're doing. So what I'm hearing, if I'm hearing you correctly, is your product actually builds sustainability and practice to elevate competence and confidence. It's not necessarily like we're gonna teach you the language, we're gonna give you the platform to practice the language.

Matt Sussman:

Correct, correct. So I used to work for the Fulbright program, and uh this is a renowned program that sends, you know, students and scholars um to the United States and Americans to over 155 countries. When I gave a student, you know, the golden ticket to come to the United States and study at their dream college, uh, many of them had never lived in the United States before. Now they could uh read and write English at an exceptional level. They're very bright people, uh, but even they would have apprehension uh coming uh to the US. So uh when they came to the US and they they kind of immersed themselves and they made their friends, they would come back to Japan, you know, fluent because they had that daily practice, you know, asking questions in class, immersion, you know, doing internships, uh, you know, uh joining volunteer organizations. And so they were acquiring the confidence of speaking through everyday conversations. Now, we can't give that golden ticket to every ambitious young person from overseas to come to the US. It's just not gonna happen.

Jay Johnson:

Expensive, yeah.

Matt Sussman:

Yeah, it's just you can't do it. So the Fulbright program would try to select out of thousands and thousands of applicants, you know, the most uh merit uh-based, you know, selection process, but you know, uh we can only choose the the best and the brightest. Uh so that told me that if learners could get that same experience of having conversational practice, they could also build up their confidence. And that's what we built.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and I I absolutely love that. Uh you know, immersion is by research one of the fastest ways to learn a language. We find ourselves with that consistent steady practice. Now, I'm not trying to steal your thunder here, but I can speak from my own personal experience in working with global teams. And uh what I want to get to is a little bit of the impact of what impact does it have when we elevate the skills of English for English as a second language workers or workforce. Because in my experience, um, and I've had a lot of conversations, I do a lot of work on cultural adaptability, but having conversations is yeah, there's points and times where I don't share an idea because I'm not sure how to frame the idea, or I didn't speak up because I'm really nervous how I would be perceived or if I mispronounced a word in this group, or I didn't say anything because I could say it really well in my language, but I didn't think it would translate particularly well. And I think about how many lost innovations, how many lost ideas, how many lost impacts that were that were missed because of this confidence and competence uh and and feeling of confidence and competence in English language proficiency? So I don't know if I just stole the a major one, but that's one that I have seen. Can you help me understand what is the impact that you have seen? You mentioned it a little bit earlier, but what is the impact of being able to empower our workforce with this sort of confidence and competence in the behavior of speaking English?

Matt Sussman:

Yeah, I think you're really on to uh an important point there. Um, I think overall this just opens up more communication, more transparency in your organization. You're 100% right that there's a power dynamic uh with language. And American companies going overseas, you know, I've seen lots of companies, they're being very respectful, they're making, you know, an environment where all employees can feel included. You want to create a team environment and you want to replicate your culture uh that you've you know built and nurtured here in the US, and you want to replicate that in in other areas of the world. And all of that's very admirable. But if you don't have the communication piece, it's it just turns into a lot of language that you know resides in a document and it's not actually being fulfilled in the organization. So I think it resonates with building culture of your organization. It helps with retention because if you're providing a tool and you're uh empowering your employees for personal development, they're gonna say, this company cares about me. Um, I've got a future here. Students or excuse me, employees, when they're doing this practice, right? The the way the technology kind of going back to the how or what question is when they're speaking, they're seeing their voice converted into text. It's also recorded. So that practice of doing this, you know, three, six, nine months over and over again, even the shyest student's gonna say, wow, okay, if this technology can understand me and if what I'm trying to say is being understood over and over again, then you know what? I'm gonna take a chance in the next meeting, or I'm gonna talk to my boss and try that situation in the real world. So it's helping them make that step, bridging that gap between, you know, uh where they are currently and getting them to where they can really open up uh in the organization. So you're right, it's not just speaking, it's about you know opening up culturally and and fitting in in the organization.

Jay Johnson:

And I think that's so powerful, Matt. You know, this is this is one of those tools, and this is obviously the first time that we've done anything with like a tool deep dive on the talent forge. If our audience wanted to learn more about the tool or more about uh, you know, more about the process, you and I discussed, we're gonna have a uh demo link in the show notes, but where else would they reach out to connect with you or to learn more about the tools? What would that look like for them?

Matt Sussman:

Yeah, they're they're welcome to uh check out our demo video just to see like how does this all work and uh go to our website um and and contact us to set up like a demo. Let's talk about what your organizational needs are, where are the the the most uh you know pressing need is. Um we can do a pilot. You know, you're saying this is a new tool, I'm not sure how it fits. Let's Let's get it in the hands of a few of the employees. When we do that, uh, like 95% of the time, the employees say, I love this, I want to keep going. Uh, and that usually just says it all. Uh, and so then we we branch out there to to other, you know, other um regions and and other um you know departments within the company.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, that's perfect. And we'll get those links into the show notes. But Matt, I can tell you as a global consultant, speaker, trainer, and somebody who's worked with a lot of international teams. Uh, you know, I served as a vice president for a global NGO where I was assigned to different parts of Europe, all non-native English speaking. I can tell you that I really, when I was introduced to the tool, I was like, wow, this is this is really something that has meaning because there's a lot of people out there that are not feeling seen, are not feeling like they're confident enough to speak up and to bring their authentic self, their ideas. And that's unfortunate. And the workforce in the United States, as well as the global workforce, I think will truly benefit from this opportunity to elevate their confidence and competence in English speaking. So I just want to say thank you for the work that you've done. I know how meaningful it is. And thank you for being here with us today to share this powerful tool with the audience.

Matt Sussman:

Well, thank you, Jay. Um, yeah, I'm I'm really excited about the potential of this. I think up until now, learning English and learning languages has been kind of a nice to have type of skill. Um, and it's been kind of a warm, fuzzy field. I was an English teacher myself, but now we're bringing a more measured and practice opportunity for anybody around the world that really wants to level up. So I think it's very exciting. And I think a tool like we're building is going to be the standard in the next five years. It's just a matter of how quickly the organizations and schools implement it.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, it's so true and well said. So thank you again for being here and joining me. And uh, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the tool. And uh thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we're shaping workforce behaviors.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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