Jeremy believes a key factor in his success working with businesses is that, with thirty years practical experience in business before starting as a coach, he can situate what he does in the client’s experience. He always places emotional intelligence issues in a business context making his work practical rather than academic.
He now deploys a technique which uses practices from coaching, mentoring, training, consulting, advising, counselling and (very occasionally!) telling.
After ten years in Marks and Spencer as a business analyst and manager in the IT division, and in the company’s Finance group, he spent fifteen years as a business consultant working with a wide range of, largely, corporate clients, including the BBC, Rothmans, Hewlett-Packard, EWS Railways, Boots, Harrods and many others. His primary role in these assignments was to help clients identify and define the functionality of their major IT developments.
Jeremy received full training in business coaching and in how to run a coaching business with Shirlaws.
He learnt the practical application of emotional intelligence from Psychology of Vision (PoV). He assisted with the development of the PoV UK Fundamentals of success programme for businesses and he is accredited by them to deliver this programme. He has completed the Steps to leadership programme and more than one hundred days of PoV workshops.
He has:
- completed a one year course in psychodynamic counselling on a BACP-accredited course given by Gloucestershire Counselling Services
- completed a twelve day course in cognitive behaviour therapy with UWE
- trained in positive psychology
- studied NLP up to master practitioner level and obtained his certificate with John Seymour; he assisted John with his 2006-07 practitioner course in Bristol
- read extensively on psychology, in which he has a lifelong interest, for over forty years.
He is, however, no more an NLP practitioner than he is a PoV trainer, a CBT practitioner, a psychodynamic counsellor or even a business coach. Or, is he all these things and more? ‘Integrative’ is probably the best word to describe his approach.
Jeremy has been a visiting lecturer at University College, Birmingham where he taught business skills, and a partner in Synatus, a nationwide group of some 150 senior level consultants, interim managers, coaches and trainers.
He is also:
- a partner with High Growth Knowledge Company, a consultancy which, as you might think, promotes business growth, particularly through innovation
- an associate of DISCSimple, which provides DISC-based coaching and training and is, therefore, a nice complement to emotional intelligence at work
- an associate of and facilitator/mentor with Akonia, a London-based training company which offers the GradStart programme of business and soft skills development for undergraduates and for graduate recruits.
He was a governor of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for three years and volunteered with Healthwatch Gloucestershire (HWG) for whom he reviewed documentation sent for review by health and care agencies, for example their documented procedures for complaint handling.
He has been a composer, music arranger and editor, with professional performances and a commercial CD to his credit. He has written extensively for Fanfare, the prestigious US serious music magazine: archive. He is a financial supporter of Crouch End Festival Chorus, NMC Recordings and Toccata Classics records. He is a committee member of the Havergal Brian Society, a national charity devoted to the promotion of that composer’s music, and is also a patron of the London Sinfonietta and of Kensington Symphony Orchestra.
He has also written for professional theatre performance—albeit just one ten minute monologue, so far (but zero rejection slips to date!).
His book, Network better, on business networking was published in october 2018. He is contemplating a second volume on developing referral and advocacy relationships.
He is a participant in and facilitator of various Meetup groups in Bristol.
Related material:
> Jeremy’s videos on this site
> Jeremy’s LinkedIn page
> Jeremy’s Synatus page
> About emotional intelligence at work.
“Jeremy, a very big thank you for working with me this evening. I am always amused and perplexed by your style, yet for me as a client tonight there were many moments of eye wandering comprehension as, aided by your questioning, I unpacked what was going on. I really had reached the edge, through lack of sleep or whatever. Your gentle yet firm probings really helped guide me back from there and into an empowered space. I’m even smiling as I type this!”
, NLP master practitioner
History
Having graduated with an honours degree in mathematics from the University of Kent, Jeremy spent four years with BT in the seventies, working on huge billing systems and gaining an excellent training in systems analysis.
Ten years with Marks and Spencer followed. Seven of these were in IT, in team- and project-leading and management roles. He was the project leader for the first IT system to be rolled out to all stores. He says, “I learnt then, if I hadn’t already grasped it, that having the system do what the client needs—not wants—is paramount”.
Having exhausted the possibilities within the IT division, he moved to Finance and became an IT auditor. This was a hugely beneficial preparatory experience for his next role as a business consultant.
He joined Catalyst Systems in 1989, a small IT consultancy, working with an impressive lineup of bluechip clients, including the BBC, Harrods, Littlewoods, a number of utilities including Scottish Power, but not forgetting Normans Superwarehouses.
He says, “In that time I worked with an iterative prototyping methodology which was designed to enable clients to move from a position of knowing what they, as individuals, wanted to knowing what their business needed. I still believe that getting that right, at the start of a project, is essential if the final system is going to meet the client’s needs. Plenty of contemporary high visibility system implementations appear to attest to that.”
Catalyst turned out to be unable to weather the storm of the early nineties’ recession and he moved to Admiral Management Services where he had a number of very varied consultancy assignments (with Rothmans, HP, Boots, the MoD, EWS Railways, GCHQ, more utilities, and so on) as well as the some interim management roles. Eventually AMS was taken over by CMG, itself to be swallowed shortly after by Logica.
By this time he felt he had enough of consultancy (and interim management), but was still interested in working with businesses. When the opportunity came in 2003 to join Shirlaws, an international coaching firm working in the SME sector, he readily took it. A year later, he set up his own coaching business and, after a few years, developed the emotional intelligence at work brand.
Related material:
> Jeremy’s personal Youtube channel
by Jeremy Marchant . last updated: 1 december 2020 . pictures: Nigel Hudson
