Talking to Wendy in this episode is ex-marine Jem Hills who you might find it hard to believe was affected by bullying and a lack of confidence.

As a release, Jem discovered Northern dancing and practiced as a bedroom activity that later led to an accidental release of freestyle dancing at a competition.

The dancing-built resilience and the foundations for the training to complete the Mud Run and onto his Elite Special Forces career.

The unity comes from being part of a privileged bunch of people who walk the talk, make sacrifices and put their lives on the line for Queen and country. Some stories are classified!

Listen to Jem, his experiences as a Marine, and the moment he recognized his life was going to change forever following a series of conversations…

Visit Jem's website here.

Connect with Jem on LinkedIn.

#military #antibullying #personalgrowth #classified

Your host, Wendy Harris, runs a training business and has been Making Conversations Count for over 30 years. She has a best selling book on Amazon and loves nothing better than helping others find the right people to have the right conversations with. You can find out more on her website www.wagassociates.com

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Making Conversations Count - Episode 17

February 11th 2021

Wendy Harris & Jem Hills 

 

Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction 00:04:36: No expectations 00:06:00: Marines training 00:07:33: Commando elite level training 00:08:57: Communication during training 00:10:07: Importance of building a culture within your company 00:10:29: Jem's time in the Forces 00:13:20: Jem's pivotal moment 00:17:20: Stepping out of your comfort zone 00:19:21: Madonna or Claudia Schiffer!

00:21:39: Mental and physical performance coaching

00:23:48: Final thoughts

 

Wendy Harris: Welcome to making conversations count, the podcast show that brings you business leaders to share their pivotal moments; a conversation that really caused a turning point in their life or career.  Now, today joining me, Wendy Harris, your host, I have Jem Hills, ex-special forces, now turned performance team coach.  I've had the pleasure of having a conversation with Jem before, I know that his pivotal moment is going to be inspirational and I'll just allow Jem to introduce himself.  Jem?

Jem Hill: Hi Wendy, and thank you for inviting me on here.  Just to give everybody a little bit of my background, slightly different to most.  The starting point, I was really badly bullied so a lot of people actually go through that, it was at that time where I completely lost all of my self-confidence and the worst thing was losing your self-worth.  I couldn't communicate, I couldn't hardly go out, unfortunately for me.

I managed to find my confidence again through dance.  That dance was something called Northern Soul, it was a bit of a street dance and urban culture at the time, quite a few years ago, but I saw these guys doing this dance.  I had no confidence at the time but I knew I wanted to do it.   So, I ended up going back to my safe haven which was my bedroom at the time, getting hold of some of this music and practising and practising and practising, and slowly getting better at this dance.

That gave me the confidence to go onto a dance hall and start dancing it and then on one occasion, you look back in your life as you say, pivotal moments and my earliest one, it was a Northern Soul event.  They announced a dance competition, I would not have normally gone into a dance competition, but everybody seemed to get off it, it was a really great song, everybody was on...