As our workplaces grow more complex and technology accelerates, one skill set is becoming more essential than ever: emotional intelligence. In this compelling episode of On the Brink, I spoke with Jeremy Williams, an emotional intelligence coach and consultant based in Paris, whose journey from sailing instructor to sales professional to global coach reveals how transformative emotional awareness can be—especially in our rapidly digitizing world.
Jeremy’s mission is simple yet profound: help individuals and teams enhance their self-awareness, empathy, and influence to become better collaborators and leaders. His work focuses on helping fast-growth companies develop cultures where people can thrive—and it starts with how we manage emotions, especially the tough ones.
Jeremy’s Journey: From the Sea to the C-Suite
Jeremy began his career as a sailing instructor, where he discovered his passion for sharing knowledge. That passion carried him through various industries—from luxury motorcycles to real estate—before he transitioned into teaching business English in France. Eventually, he found his way into consulting with startups and tech companies. As these teams grew from five to fifty employees, Jeremy noticed a recurring issue: “soft skills”—now rightly called emotional intelligence—were the glue (or the gap) in how teams succeeded.
It became clear: technical skills could only take a company so far. People needed to better understand themselves and each other.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
As Jeremy explained, emotional intelligence isn’t a single trait. It’s a set of competencies that determine how well we relate to ourselves and others—especially when emotions run high. Drawing from the Genos model (based on Daniel Goleman’s pioneering work), Jeremy outlined six key competencies:
- Self-Awareness – Recognizing your own emotional state and its impact.
- Awareness of Others – Showing empathy and tuning into how others feel.
- Authenticity – Acting with integrity and consistency; “standing in your own truth.”
- Emotional Reasoning – Blending logic and emotion to make sound decisions.
- Self-Management – Managing your reactions, especially in challenging moments.
- Positive Influence – Inspiring others with your emotional tone and leadership.
In practice, this means pausing before reacting, being present during meetings (no multitasking!), and responding constructively to tension.
As Jeremy put it: “It’s how we positively deal with negative emotions.”
Peer Coaching for 60: A Simple but Powerful Model
To foster these emotional competencies, Jeremy created the Peer Coaching for 60 program. It brings together four peers from different parts of an organization—or even different companies—for four one-hour sessions over four weeks.
Each session gives one participant the “hot seat” to share a challenge, while peers actively listen, ask clarifying questions, and offer insights. Importantly, the participant steps away for part of the session to hear their peers discuss their issue candidly. It’s powerful, humbling, and affirming.
The outcome? Better problem-solving, stronger connections, and a growing global network of emotionally intelligent professionals.
How Emotional Intelligence Drives Engagement
Jeremy’s work touches on a problem plaguing many companies today: low employee engagement. His prescription? Presence and intention.
Leaders must “walk the talk”—not just display company values, but live them. Meetings should have purpose, with multitasking discouraged. He introduced the P.I.E.O. model to guide communication:
- Proof: What evidence supports taking action?
- Impact: What are the consequences of action or inaction?
- Energy: What resources are needed?
- Objective: How does this support company goals?
Training employees to think and speak this way improves collaboration, productivity, and focus.
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AI and EQ: A Necessary Balance
As we explored, AI is transforming business. But what it offers in speed, it lacks in humanity. AI pulls from averages and past data—but human insight, creativity, and relationships come from lived experience and emotion.
Jeremy emphasized that the rise of AI only amplifies the importance of emotional intelligence. Roles focused on repetitive tasks will evolve. What will remain critical is how we build trust, nurture teams, and connect across cultures and experiences.
Key Takeaways
- Emotional intelligence is your superpower in a world dominated by algorithms.
- Leaders must cultivate presence, empathy, and reflective decision-making.
- Peer coaching builds trust, insight, and leadership capacity in a scalable way.
- To improve engagement, simplify meetings, foster focused dialogue, and model authenticity.
- AI isn’t replacing us—it’s augmenting us. But what makes us human matters more than ever.
Final Thoughts
Jeremy’s parting message was one of optimism: Embrace this technological era. Be curious. Stay connected. Lead with empathy. And above all, invest in building emotionally intelligent cultures where people can grow and thrive.
To learn more about Jeremy’s work, visit or find him on LinkedIn. And if this podcast inspired you, please share it—and let’s keep learning from each other.
Where to learn more about Jeremy and his work:
Jeremy’s Profile
Website
- immutableadventures.carrd.co/ (Personal)
Listen to these other podcasts or read the blogs about them:
435: Navigating the Management Maze: Tips for New Leaders
433: Organizations Must Embrace Human-Centric Design
430: How Does Dr. Chris Fuzie Create Great Leaders?
Connect with me:
- Website: www.simonassociates.net
- Email: info@simonassociates.net
- Books: Learn more about these books here:
- Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business
- Women Mean Business
- On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights
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From Observation to Innovation,
CEO | Corporate Anthropologist | Author
Simonassociates.net
Info@simonassociates.net
@simonandi
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Andi Simon 00:00:02 Welcome to On the Break with Andy Simon. Thanks for joining us today. Whether you’re watching or you are listening. I’m Andy Simon and as you know, my job is to get you off the brink. I want you to become a little like me, an anthropologist. Go explore. Be curious. Observe and see what could help you see, feel and think in new ways so you can adapt to these fast-changing times. And they are changing faster and faster. Today I have a wonderful guest for you from Paris. We are global and I have people from across the globe, but this is a wonderful, wonderful individual who’s going to help you do all of my wishes, see, feel and think in new ways. His name is Jeremy Williams, and I’m going to have him introduce himself in a moment. But let me just tell you why it’s important for you to listen to Jeremy. He’s a certified genius emotional intelligence practitioner. It was funny because we were talking about who we are and what we do.
Andi Simon 00:01:03 And I always say I am an anthropologist while I do it, I know how I look at the world. Jeremy says he too, is an emotional intelligence practitioner. He sees the world in a particular way, and his conversation with you today is going to share with you how you can as well. He’s a coach and a consultant. He’s many years of experience helping hypergrowth companies enhance team performance engagement. Man, I’ve had clients talk to me recently about how do I improve engagement, become the new buzzword? Maybe. But I think there’s something really important because people want to belong and client retention. Working across industries from tech and finance and pharma. He specializes in developing key skills, some of which you may want to get more of, like self-awareness, empathy and positive influence to build high performing teams. He’s a creator of a program that we’ll discuss called Peer Coaching for 60 programs. And this is important. I have several clients who have realized that peer to peer coaching is really very useful, and what I can see in my peer, they may not be seen in a coach or someone outside, but what we can do to help each other is fantastic and my leadership academies will love you.
Andi Simon 00:02:19 Jeremy, thank you for joining me.
Jeremy Williams 00:02:22 Thank you Andy, great to be here on the On the Brink podcast with you today.
Andi Simon 00:02:26 Well, thanks for coming from Paris. Tell our listeners your own story. Remember, the story is what we live, and you have a particular story that we were sharing just before we went on air about your own journey. So share with the listeners about your own journey and how we got to the point where this is what you’re passionate about.
Jeremy Williams 00:02:46 Absolutely. So it all started back in the 90s when I was a sailing instructor. It was my first passion, and I developed a, you know, a real passion for this particular sport Board and sharing my interest for the subject with many people. And I realized at that stage that I had a gift. I had a passion for passing on, you know, things that I was really interested in. So I developed that over the course of a few years, and I decided I was going to move into the area of sales.
Jeremy Williams 00:03:18 So of course I moved from boats, then into motorcycles, luxury Italian motorcycles, so very different. And from there I stepped into the property industry. So you can imagine three very, very different journeys or parts of the journey. Obviously, I learnt a lot. I then moved over to France and developed, you know, moved into the teaching area, actually teaching English originally to business professionals. And then from there I stepped into the consultancy world and I started to work with some very exciting, very small companies about ten years ago or so that were in the tech sphere. So these were companies that were just starting. Working out of a little apartment with 3 or 4 very energetic, you know, people that had a vision to change the world. And it was super exciting. And I quickly realized that as these companies started to grow, so they were getting to a stage where they had maybe 20, 30 or 40 people that emotional intelligence or back then they were sort of calling it soft skills, were very, very important.
Jeremy Williams 00:04:26 And I dug into this subject a little more. Got involved with a few companies where I actually wrote training material and rolled out soft skills and emotional intelligence training. So things around empathy, you know, showing compassion, positive influence, etc. And that was when the penny dropped to me. I was like, this is why I’m here. Because emotional intelligence is at the heart of who we are, how we show up every day with all of the key stakeholders in our lives. And from that moment on, you know, I’ve really doubled down and made it my mission to help, to spread the word of how important emotional intelligence is to all of us in not just our professional lives, but our personal lives, too. And of course, just to finish off the journey, we’re now in the era of artificial intelligence and exponential technology. There has never been, you know, a moment as important as mastering emotional intelligence right now in the face of the algorithm.
Andi Simon 00:05:25 Well, you know, you need to help our audience know what you mean by emotional intelligence, because it isn’t a thing.
Andi Simon 00:05:34 It’s several things, and it’s a self-awareness. It’s social skills. It’s relationship building. It’s understanding how to feel without necessarily being sympathetic, being empathetic. And, and as we know, the best leaders have very strong emotional intelligence. more than that even. but help our leaders, our listeners and our viewers. What is, from your perspective, emotional intelligence? Why should they pay attention?
Jeremy Williams 00:06:04 Yeah, I mean, there are many, many different ways of summarizing it, but what I would say is it’s effectively how we positively deal with negative emotions. So, you know, for example, as a, as a, as a parent, there are many times when my patience is tested. You know, we’ve all been in that situation. The gut reaction of many people is to raise their voice. You know, when you’ve asked numerous times for something to be done and it hasn’t been done, it’s a natural reaction for many people to raise their voice as they become more frustrated. But we all know to be great parents, what we should do in that moment is not raise.
Jeremy Williams 00:06:42 Our voice is to just calm down, take a breath, reflect somewhat, and engage with our child in this moment and move ahead in a very constructive way. So that would be a good example of how we deal positively. Negative emotions. And obviously this is the same for the business world. You know, on a daily basis for many of your listeners.
Andi Simon 00:07:06 Well, you know, we often decide with the heart and the eyes and the emotions kick in, when in fact, a little quiet wisdom might be a better way of dealing with the situation. And so as you’re, you know, as you’re thinking about explaining emotional intelligence to our, our listeners, tell me about the Genos emotional intelligence practitioner ship that you have and how does that work? Because my hunch is that you go deeper into the human besides the key characteristics of just emotional intelligence.
Jeremy Williams 00:07:39 Indeed. Yeah. So Daniel Goleman kicks off with the book Emotional Intelligence, which we all know and love. And many people cite that as like the advent of, you know, emotional intelligence in the modern world.
Jeremy Williams 00:07:51 He was the first one to really bring it from academia and start to share it with the masses so people could actually understand it. And then Doctor Ben Palmer started Janus in Australia in 2001, and what they did is they took these fundamentals that Daniel Goldman had, you know, educated many people around and codified it, put it into a way. I think that was very easy, very visual to understand. So you have the six competencies and then you have the positive behaviors and the negative behaviors. So for example everything starts off with self-awareness. The way we get up in the morning where we get out of bed, the way we show up will impact everything that happens to us that day. So the positive area of self-awareness would be being present. And incidentally, this is one of the biggest challenges in this era of technology. When we are there, maybe zoom call, for example, you know, are you actually really there or are you multitasking, looking at looking at a multitude of apps and distractions as they come through.
Jeremy Williams 00:08:53 I think many of your listeners.
Andi Simon 00:08:56 Jeremy. That’s a very good point and a very important one. But please continue. What are the other elements?
Jeremy Williams 00:09:02 Yes. Then you have obviously awareness of others. So the positive behavior here will be showing empathy, which again has been talked about a lot over the last few years is it’s really, really important. It’s core, I would say, to having a high level of emotional intelligence. Then you move on to authenticity. So showing up in a very genuine way. I heard somebody describe it once as like standing in your own truth.
Andi Simon 00:09:29 Oh, don’t miss that one. That is a remember standing in your own truth. Wow. Particularly when I often say the only truth is there’s no truth. So that’s a very important point there, please. And the others.
Jeremy Williams 00:09:41 Indeed. And then emotional reasoning. And this is, this is what I mentioned to you about the copy paste problem. This I think is a good example of emotional reasoning. So in a nutshell, what this is, is how we bring together facts and emotions.
Jeremy Williams 00:09:56 Yeah. So the positive behavior of this one would be to be expansive or open minded. But to give you an example for your listeners. we’ve all had situations, let’s say when we’re relatively experienced in our role, we let’s say we have an intern or somebody less experienced that comes into the mix and they have a problem. Faced with a challenge, they come to you and say, hey, I’ve got this problem. If you’ve got a few minutes to help me with this, it’s absolutely no problem. Just summarize it to me, you know, please. So they summarize the issue to you and then as you as you’re listening to them, you start to think, okay, have I experienced something similar before? Yes, or no? Okay, yes, I have. It was a few years ago. Okay. So what did I do? Well, I did this this and this is the important part. Do I perceive that I was successful in how I dealt with this situation all these years ago? Yes.
Jeremy Williams 00:10:43 It’s very tempting at that moment to copy paste the solution to this young person stood in front of you, eagerly awaiting the magical solution. Right? Right. Or vice versa. You had options A and B a few years ago when you were faced with something similar, you chose option A, but with hindsight afterwards, you realize that option B would have been better. It’s very tempting in that moment to try and make a wrong or right and give this young person in front of you option B, right. But if you have a high level of emotional reasoning in this situation, if you demonstrate that, then you would take account of your emotions. So your past perceived successes or failures pause it and you would ask some more specific deep dive questions to get more of the facts about this particular scenario. And then you would join them together and move on from there. If you do that, you’re demonstrating a high level of emotional reasoning, and I would say it’s one of the most difficult competencies to master as a human being, because we are led by our emotions.
Andi Simon 00:11:50 I know. But, you know, there’s, a related piece to that. and people are looking for role models that copy and paste. I love your copy and paste model. but in many ways, they have the answer. The person coming with the problem. and I learned a long time ago. Try not to answer the question, but to ask questions so they can answer the question. And I don’t know how that fits into the models that you work with. But often we come with our answers. We just want somebody to affirm them or give us the confidence to believe in them. and the last thing we want to be is a Google solution provider for every question in our organization. You know, just go ask. Ask, Andy. Well, you know, position provides all kinds of credibility about it. But you don’t need to be everyone’s answer man. So some thoughts. I mean, do we turn it back and push it back onto the individual or try and guide them?
Jeremy Williams 00:12:49 It’s a mixture that I would say there are arguments for both.
Jeremy Williams 00:12:53 what? I’m. What? I’ve been seeing a lot with these hypergrowth, these very exciting hypergrowth companies is a sense of empowerment. And I love that. I love that. So in that, to that end, what is much better is to follow something like the Pio model, rigorous thinking, which would be somebody comes to you with a challenge. What you do before that even happens is you educate your team members. So what some of my clients have been doing in how to communicate. So the Pio model in a nutshell. So it’s an acronym. So the P is proof. What proof do you have that action needs to be taken regarding this problem or this challenge okay. So we got so much data around now. You can always have a very powerful data point that will give you the proof, right? The AI. Is the impact okay. So what is impact of action as an acting on your suggestion or inaction? You can look at both prongs of this fork here. So what’s the impact? And then when you get to the ears like the energy, what is needed from me as your manager, CEO, CEO, etc., what resources are needed to realize what you’re suggesting here? Okay, so that can be formulated in many ways.
Jeremy Williams 00:14:11 And the fourth points are the oh of the model. Would how is this linked to the overall objective of the business for this quarter or this year? So if you teach your team members to think and to communicate like this when you did, you do have conversations with them many times in many situations they are a lot more efficient. So linking that back to your question, Andy, that’s how I would approach it. Yeah.
Andi Simon 00:14:39 But you know, Jeremy, the Pio, I have not heard it before, I love it. because it’s teaching, conversational intelligence about how we can solve things, and the brain much prefers we than an AI, and it really does create much more. You know, the serotonin and the oxytocin are much better hormones than the, you know, and then then the bad guys running around, they’re telling you to flee. but I’m going to remember that with some of my clients because they could use this with their employees. They are anxious to build engagement. One of the things you said you work on are engagements.
Andi Simon 00:15:18 And I share a little bit with our audience about how the approach you take improves. What is employee engagement and how are we missing? Because then I want to get to the AI world and how that is disrupting. But you know, for a moment because you’re working with some really cool methodologies here. Pio for one of them to build better communication, more conversational intelligence. And I’m hoping therefore engagement your thoughts?
Jeremy Williams 00:15:44 Yeah. So obviously it all starts off with engagement, and unless you can engage your collaborators, you’re not going to go anywhere. so the first thing for me, keying right into emotional intelligence is being present. So when you join a company, of course, you have all of the in many cases, the companies I’ve been working with. You have the values written on the wall everywhere and all the meeting rooms. There are reminders all over the place. But to really engage, you have to as well as talk the talk. You’ve got to walk the walk and you’ve got to encourage your employees.
Jeremy Williams 00:16:18 Of course, the onboarding process is another conversation. There has to be a very a very close alignment there of values. but when it comes to engaging them, I think the first thing is being present to discourage multitasking. I’m not a fan of multitasking at all. I know there are certain jobs, certain roles that that where it’s a necessity. Okay, I’ve got that. But the vast majority of roles, it’s better to have periods of very focused, productive, deep work. And so therefore, if you want to maximize engagement in a meeting, generally speaking, within a team, you’ve got to get people on the same page and focused on the moment.
Andi Simon 00:17:02 Yes.
Jeremy Williams 00:17:03 So that for me is route one. And you can actually go as granular as actually putting together some best practice, you know, how do we show up in meetings? No multitasking, silence, slack, etc., etc., etc. so we can focus on the meetings. And then as we said, with Pio encouraging or training your team members on this is how I would like you to communicate with each other.
Jeremy Williams 00:17:30 So therefore, when you do actually have meetings, rather than a default one hour with super-efficient communication and high level of engagement, probably reduce those meetings to 30 minutes. Yes.
Andi Simon 00:17:43 You know, it’s interesting your comment about multitasking. Every time I write down a note, I can’t hear what you’re saying. And I said, what an interesting illustration for me, that it’s nice to record something that I’ve just heard that I want to remember multitasking. But you can’t do both. I can either listen to Jeremy and be engaged, or I can write a note and not be engaged. And it was just a simple moment where I said, I got to remember that you cannot do two things. Well, you can do one or the other, and but you have to if you’re going to build an organization that thrives and hums, you got to focus. So this becomes really important now with the world of AI upon us. What does that do to all of these methodologies, theories and beliefs about engagement and focus on emotional intelligence?
Jeremy Williams 00:18:38 Wow, that’s a great question.
Andi Simon 00:18:40 That’s a good answer to start us with.
Jeremy Williams 00:18:42 Yeah, there are so there are so many distractions. It’s number one. It’s an amazing technology and it’s here to stay and it’s changing the world. There’s zero doubt about that. But I think there are some things we need to keep in mind. I okay, we’ve heard about reasoning more and more recently, but if you imagine Andy, imagine we are tasked with solving a problem. Okay. You have your area of expertise. You have you have your specific journey that you’ve been on from when you were born until this very moment. Me too. So the way that we will reason when it comes to dealing with this problem will be uniquely us. It’ll be our way.
Andi Simon 00:19:25 Exactly.
Jeremy Williams 00:19:27 Okay, so it’s a unique approach. Now we might come up with a similar solution. We might come up with solutions that are very, very different. So reasoning is very much an individual thing. Yes. The AI is starting to do this more, but what effectively it’s doing is pulling from huge data sets and coming up with an average.
Jeremy Williams 00:19:47 And this is what it’s important to understand with artificial intelligence, is it pulls a consensus agreement through all of the huge amounts of data that it learns from. So things like reasoning. My contention is this is uniquely human. Yes, I will start to get more involved with this particular aspect. And we’re seeing that now with many of these tools that we use. It’s telling us how it’s coming to the final suggestion. So that’s interesting. So reasoning would be one. The second is creativity. People are like oh AI is amazingly creative. No, no. As humans we have to sow the seed of the idea. The AI is fantastic when it comes to being a sparring partner. Brainstorming, you know, giving us some pretty interesting ideas and it is very good at that. But we still need to sow the seed of that creativity. So that’s one aspect of the creativity side is again, that’s uniquely individual. Like if we are both asked to create something that creates the creation that we will come up with will be very much determined by the experiences that we’ve had in our respective lives.
Jeremy Williams 00:21:02 So there’s that element. But the other one, which is, I think, really interesting as well. Many of the masterpieces that we’ve enjoyed in our lives. So I’m talking about art and music amongst others. We’re actually born of there were mistakes. I have a real problem with the word perfection because it’s so subjective. But if you think of some I mean, I’m British, so hey, I love the, you know, the British music, Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc., etc. but many of their masterpieces were actually not what they intended originally. They were effectively mistakes, or they were outcomes that were very different. So that’s very, very interesting to observe because it’s that it’s the imperfections that make it so beautiful when it comes to creations in many cases.
Andi Simon 00:21:53 Do you from your perspective? See this? Not as I tried to know what it is. When things are sort of strange. They don’t fit in a box and humans want boxes. And I’m fascinated because it has so many different dimensions to it.
Andi Simon 00:22:14 It adds another, framework. All of the data that’s out there has very little purpose. I used to teach a course for healthcare strategists as your data talking to you. Can you hear it? because the story in your mind sort of framed what you would select, and you only saw the data that affirmed what you believed to be true. And since there’s no truth, it was very hard to see data that, you know, it didn’t fit. And I spent my days helping clients get unstuck by seeing what’s there that they can’t see. And so here we have a whole new source of analytics. You ask the right question, and you come back with an interesting answer that you like. If you ask at the wrong question, you come back with an interesting answer that may not fit but could be interesting. But I’m finding it an addition as opposed to a replacement, a way of getting access to data that you couldn’t have easily on your own. I don’t know how you could sort through the millions of data points, but why is it powerful? But my concern is, how do people belong in organizations that are migrating to use more of the insights coming from the data than just simply creating the data? It’s like a whole new culture emerging in a world where it’s not quite the Luddites, but it’s sort of like a whole new machine.
Andi Simon 00:23:33 And I’m anxious to hear your perspective, since you’re working with these young companies creating this stuff. What do you see? How do they feel So.
Jeremy Williams 00:23:42 Generally speaking, if you if you take a step back, you can look at the key technological innovations of the last few decades have had one thing in common. They’ve allowed us to speed up. They’ve allowed us to become more efficient, whatever that actually means. Yeah. So that’s another conversation, right?
Andi Simon 00:24:02 No, but it’s a true question when it’s more efficient. But we are we are it, whatever it is.
Jeremy Williams 00:24:07 Exactly. So how I see it, if you take a big step back is you’ve got life is a journey, not a destination. Yes. Same as saying, okay, I am going to take, in my view, more and more of a focus on the deliverable, on the destination. Let’s say we simply put it like that. So it’s going to get to a stage within the next 12 months where collectively it’ll be more intelligent inverted commas than humans, as in, it can do a lot of the algorithmic stuff way faster than human beings.
Jeremy Williams 00:24:39 So it’s going to become predominantly focused on the productivity side, on the deliverables, and it’s going to do very well at that. No doubt about it. So any human role at the moment that is focused on this aspect is going to change. And anybody in that type of role needs to start thinking. I think right away, you know, how is my role going to look in one, two, three, five years’ time and adjust accordingly? So it’s going to take control of this. What does that do with humans? It then brings us back to the journey. And when we look at the journey, what’s incredibly important? It’s a building, a nurturing human connection, which is emotional intelligence. So this is why I’m so passionate about emotional intelligence, because in the face of the algorithm, it is our one key differentiator as humans. So I think, you know, in answer to your question. A lot of the people that I’m working with that understand this technology, know that it’s going to boost productivity 4 or 5-fold in quite a short space of time.
Jeremy Williams 00:25:49 But what it’s doing is it’s freeing up these collaborators to focus on the building, the connections with other stakeholders internally and externally, spending quality time, building trust because business is about people. The technology comes and goes and it accelerates certain processes and it’s amazing and we must embrace it. But we must never forget that business and life is predominantly about people.
Andi Simon 00:26:17 Well, that sort of leads us to pure coaching for 60. And I didn’t want us not to have a context for discussing it, because to your point, people have a hard time. I’m talking to people, working with people, being with people, hearing themselves in a relationship, with people, Liking each other. and working well together in an organization with themselves or with their clients. I’m. I’m hoping that that’s not weird, but that’s what I find. and they live on a veneer. And so how do you how do you apply this? Perhaps a program, is one that you can describe, but I have a hunch you’ve also begun to watch people try and reframe those relationships in an age where the work they used to have to do, the expertise they used to have, isn’t needed anymore.
Andi Simon 00:27:11 Your thoughts?
Jeremy Williams 00:27:13 Yeah. So the peer coaching was born from a series of training sessions I went through over a few years where participants were coming to these training sessions on how to show up and show brilliant empathy. For example, high level of empathy. Empathy in your particular work. so participants would come up to these company organized training sessions of maybe 30 people or so. We had obviously the content that we would roll out, and very often it was very well received and a sense that there was a, you know, it was it landed really well. But I often felt that people in these sessions, they had problems, real challenges that they wanted to share, but for whatever reason, they didn’t feel comfortable doing that. Maybe, you know, somebody involved with this particular challenge or boss or a colleague was actually in the in the room. So understandably, they weren’t comfortable candidly sharing this challenge. So it started to happen time after time after time. And I’m thinking there’s an opportunity here.
Jeremy Williams 00:28:17 People want to share. They want to share their challenges, whatever they might be. So that’s where it came from. And I thought, well, you get four people. It’s, you know, a small group. It’s pretty intimate from different areas of the business. Different companies, different sectors sometimes bring these people together. Gather, build a close connection and give each of them a session to completely focus on their challenge so that. Hence the four sessions over four weeks for four people. It’s so simple. So session one the first candidate will share for ten minutes their challenge, then ten minutes their peers will ask them some deeper dive questions. 20 minutes. We ask the candidate to close their camera and audio. So they just observe and take notes. Pen and paper. Good old-fashioned approach, but really important. Take notes and observe what their colleagues, what their peers I should say are discussing. Then we bring everybody back together and share the insight, and the candidate goes away with some things that they can work on and apply as much as they would like to.
Jeremy Williams 00:29:25 And then the next session, we turn the tables so one of their peers will come into the hot seat. So basically by the end of the cohort, everybody number one they’ve built a connection. So very often these pairs connect on LinkedIn and the community starts building. But they also they have a chance to get insight on their challenge. And also, they get a chance to sit on the other side of the table and work on things like active listening, offering feedback, showing empathy, compassion, etc. so my mission with this is to build a global support network of peers that can dip in and out of these sessions to gather insight on challenges, but also to share their expertise across sectors. So it’s a much bigger vision that I have that I’m starting to build as well.
Andi Simon 00:30:16 Sounds like you’d like to build a tribe of emotionally intelligent individuals who can help each other, be happy, enjoy every day, be positive. You know life’s a short trip. If we’re not happy and we’re not enjoying it, it makes it very unpleasant and it ends far too soon.
Andi Simon 00:30:33 But the times they are changing in, and that requires us to have some trust that somebody can give us some perspective. And sometimes things happen and we don’t quite know why. and reflection is, is not that easy. Sounds like a wonderful program. It’s really. Thank you. as you’re looking forward, you know, are you thinking about migrating the programs that you do in some fashion? to be more attuned to the impact of artificial intelligence or other technology? I mean, this the fourth industrial revolution is not just AI or machine learning or blockchain. It’s everything. But. Yeah.
Jeremy Williams 00:31:11 Absolutely. Yes. I mean, we actually we the whole idea is to help people get ready for Web3, which are some of the elements that you’ve just mentioned. So it’s going to be a world which is a lot faster than the world we’re in right now. It’s going to be a world where, as we said earlier, human connection is incredibly important, so that those moments of candid sharing when it comes to the real challenges that people are facing.
Jeremy Williams 00:31:36 But in the same breath, we actually use artificial intelligence and agent to actually follow our meetings. called Ulla, and she actually gives us a summary of what we discuss after each session. Because of course, when you’re in the moment, it’s easy to focus on some things and miss other aspects. It’s always good to have a, let’s say, an executive summary after, just to refer back to. So we leverage the AI and we will be leveraging it more. But of course, the central, you know, the vein running through it all is emotional intelligence and the time you need time to build connection with people. There’s no quick fix. There’s no app. You’ve got to spend the time. It’s the most valuable thing we have.
Andi Simon 00:32:20 Yes. And that requires us to be humble and listen carefully and to be, kind to we, to each other and to ourselves. and I, I’m smiling because I’m so glad you’re here today. I have some leadership academies, and I’m going to bring along a little bio and thinking about how we help each other thrive in fast changing times.
Andi Simon 00:32:44 And in some ways, we help each other better than anybody like me. I’m an enabler, a facilitator. I’m never the communicator I might have been. I don’t know, a while ago where I be the knowledge person, and now it’s now. How do I help you find the wisdom you need in order to have a really good place in this world, and that’s an important for us. 1 or 2 things. You want our listeners and viewers not to forget your last parting words, and then we’ll talk about how to find you.
Jeremy Williams 00:33:16 Great. Yeah. So, I mean, my parting words would be, is that this is a technology to embrace. This is an era to really, wholeheartedly embrace, because the potential that artificial intelligence and blockchain and all of this other exponential technology is going to bring is going to be amazing. I mean, many of the roles that will exist in the next five, ten, 15, 20 years do not exist today. So in the face of that amazing, you know, a paradigm shift, we need to focus on being as emotional intelligence as we can be and advocating for that, you know, within our communities.
Jeremy Williams 00:33:57 And we need to really focus on building those connections, you know, with our peers, with our colleagues, and supporting each other as we move into this era of exponential change. So it’s very exciting. Don’t be scared of it. Don’t run away from it. Learn about it, embrace it. And I think it’s going to change our world for the better.
Andi Simon 00:34:19 Well, you can think I agree, but remember that what is sort of normal. It’s not anything. You can make it happy or make it sad. Make it happy. It’s a much better place. I’ll add a little final wisdom from our perspective. We always urge our clients to say thank you. To express the gratitude, it helps you at the same time as it helps somebody else. You know, we’re connected by that feeling of appreciation. And I love to say you have to feel trusted, important, special and appreciated. And that’s not hard to do. It doesn’t require a great deal of science or technique.
Andi Simon 00:34:55 It just requires a thank you, a little gratitude and an appreciation. And those are such core to who we are as humans that don’t lose them. The AI adds another dimension to it. So does blockchain and machine learning and all of this. Enjoy it. It’s a great, great time. If they want to reach you, what’s the best way other than going to Paris? How can they find you?
Jeremy Williams 00:35:19 So I’m on LinkedIn, Jeremy Williams, you’ll find me very easily. There aren’t too many. Jeremy’s out there. Jeremy Williams is out there. And also my website just. It’s called a fluent executive. Wonder where you’ll find more out about what I’m up to.
Andi Simon 00:35:35 Well, I promise you, we’ll put it on to the, on the video and on to the blog that we write about it, and we’ll share Jeremy so that his wisdom can become part of your everyday way of waking up in the morning and feeling I’m here and stand in your own truth because I love his ideas. They are just cool.
Andi Simon 00:35:54 Jeremy, thanks so much for being here. Let me wrap up for all of you who come all the time. I think Jeremy’s going to be our 440th podcast. I think that’s seven years of podcasting, and you’ve launched us into the top 5% of global podcasts. There are only 14 million of us. But that’s perfectly wonderful. And I’m enjoying the journey with you and I love to share. Our books are here for you. They’re all designed to help you see, feel and think in new ways. On the brink. Rethink and Women Mean business. They’re all on Amazon under Andy Simon. our website is Simon Associates dot net Knit and on that you will see how we really are designed to help you get off the brink. You know, the idea is that if you get stuck or stalled, whether it’s an individual who needs some personal coaching or you’re a company that all of a sudden can see it’s way forward. All the business environment seems to be under change. And I keep hearing about deep freezes.
Andi Simon 00:36:50 They will go away. You got through the pandemic. I know you will get through this too. Just be patient and kind and a little emotional intelligence might be a really good thing to practice right now. Care about each other and enjoy the journey. Remember, my tagline is taking your observations. Turn them into innovation. And as you listen to Jeremy, he was in boats and he was in motorcycles and he was in sales. And then he had an epiphany, and he knew who he was and what he was going to do next to help others really become better people. And that’s why I’ve enjoyed having him today. Jeremy, thanks again. I appreciate you coming. Have a great day.
Jeremy Williams 00:37:27 Thank you Andy.
Speaker 3 00:37:28 Bye.
