Talentnet - Emergenetics Event: Profound Insights Into The Future

On 24th August, 2018, Talentnet welcomed Dr. Geil Browning, Founder and CEO of Emergenetics International, as a keynote speaker at our exclusive workshop: “How to Create and Sustain a Positive Workplace Culture”. Understanding the increasing need to understand leadership communication and engagement amongst Vietnamese enterprises, the event introduced the Emergenetics profiling tools, which helps businesses foster leadership collaboration and development. With the participation and contribution of more than 50 HR practitioners from major companies, we believe that people development is now considered as the leading edge of any business strategy in the market.

“Diversity goes beyond skin colours and nationality”

Originating from an education background, Dr. Geil Browning, CEO of Emergenetics International, wished to understand how her students preferred to think and behave. Years later, she developed the Emergenetics Profile – a behavioural profiling tool which not only maps an individual in terms of thinking and behavioural attributes, but also compares that individual with a worldwide database.

Within a team, there may be individuals with completely different profiles. Those who are more analytical, those who prefer structure over creativity, or those who are more assertive and expressive. This is explained as the concept of cognitive diversity – the differences in thinking and behavioural preferences amongst people. While having a range of different personalities may provide fresh ideas and initiatives, in an environment where people who have different preferences are not aligned, conflict may arise.

So how can this profile be utilised within the workplace in order to align these different individuals and encourage collaboration?

Dr. Browning explained the 7 principles of which a leader can use to leverage these differences. The first three focuses on oneself. Understanding yourself, knowing your comfort zone, and consciously controlling your usage of words will help individuals open themselves up to their team. The next two focuses on the work environment – it is important to foster a cognitively collaborative workplace through the understanding of each other in order to unleash the team’s potential. And once the team solidifies, it is important for the leader to build an environment where his team can live to work, rather than work to live. Caring about your people is key to building intrinsic motivation.

“Today is not enough”

In his section, Mr. Terence Quek, CEO of Emergenetics International – Asia Pacific discussed how disruption is now the new norm, and as such, leaders must understand the importance of agility and flexibility in the way that we work. “By 2020, 50% of the workforce will be millennials,” he commented, “As such, the way we treat our employees will be vastly different from what it was 5, 10 years ago; what they want is completely different from their parents, and this will change again in the near future”.

Some implications of this include how businesses should orient themselves to build culture and potential amongst workforce, teams and leaders. It is important to turn away from competition, and instead focus on collaboration – across teams, businesses, even sectors.

In addition, he stresses the importance of turning diversity into opportunities for collaboration, ultimately creating strategic management direction. He notes: no matter what type of company you are in, be it from the government sector, non-profit sector, or commercial sector, all businesses have one thing in common: a desired result – how they can benefit their stakeholders. Leaders can then orient their teams based on this desired result, and take advantage of their differences to boost team efficiency and effectiveness.

Overall, he placed emphasis on the conscious understanding of oneself, and understanding one’s team. Creating this common ground will turn individuals from “ME” to “WE”, thus ultimately build and sustain a positive workplace.