Deafmoolah - Emerging Journey Asia Workshop on 18 March 2012

Deafmoolah Team: Selina, Carol Yip, Daphne and James

Ms Sangeeta, CEO of Emerging Journey Asia (EJA) and Carol Yip, Advisor of Deafmoolah

Earlier this year, Deafmoolah team cordially invited Ms Sangeeta Kaur, CEO of Emerging Journey Asia (EJA)to share about her company and introduce the profiling workshops to the Deaf people who joined the “Career Talk” Deafmoolah workshop on 19 February 2012. Severalpeople won lucky draw prizes of an EJA profiling workshop and a few participants also registered for theworkshop on that day. 18 March 2012 was chosen as the date for the EJA workshop date.

As part of the EJA profiling test, the participants had to fill in the Emergenetics questionnaire before attending the workshop. This would enable Emergenetics to obtain a more detailed report of their own skills & thinking patterns and help them know how they relate to work, people and the environment around them.

Finally, the day dawned! It was a bright sunny afternoon. Most of the participants turned up, and were excited to know what the workshop entailed, although some of them were worried how to communicate during the workshop (we already prepared two interpreters, Ms Lucy Lim and Mr Jonah Ong). After Ms Sangeeta introduced herself and explained what the workshop would be about (all the participants were required to write their name badges creatively), the workshop proceeded! We learnt how to build self-esteem, understand our motivational drivers for learning, and ultimately improve our performance in the workplace.

Ms Sangeeta explained that people are born with thinking and behavioural traits; the latter would be created in their own experience when they are growing up in their own environment, so each person has a different personality and behavioural traits in responding to different environments.

Ms Sangeeta and Lucy Lim, sign language interpreter

Jonas, sign language interpreter

The Deaf participants were divided into four groups for group activities.Whenever we were tired or sleepy, we did the Brain GYM - Rabbit & Gun in sign hands to help exercise our minds and keep our eyes open! We enjoyed this activity tremendously – it was definitely fun!

According to the Emergenetics’s presentation, there are subtle differences between males and females’ brains. The females’ preference to express their feeling to the person is more important to them than males. They like to be more in touch with their feelings and better able to express them, which promotes bonding with others. For example, a lady always expresses, “I love you” to her boyfriend or husband. The women are also classified as being long-term memory based on personal experiences than the guys because they excel in verbal episodic memory tasks, such as remembering words, objects, pictures or everyday events. That is a really interesting fact to know.

The males have stronger spatial abilities and perform better in physical tasks. For example, they like to focus their brains on specific tasks or activities for long periods of time without tiring. They prefer to solve problems best by thinking about one issue at a time, usually on their own so that they can approach situations with a strong desire to make decisions and take immediate action.

Time for groupwork! The groups discussed about how to enact a chosen topic as a skit in the front of the participants without using sign language. It was definitely challenging but everyone got ready. Two groups went outside to practise their acting and the other groups stayed inside the conference room to discuss via pen and paper. This groupwork shows exactly how your brain prefers to think and behave when you improve the ability to listen and communicating with others – this willempower and inspire a team more strongly. The “skits” were brilliantly done with answers being correctly given. All the participants felt that they played a significant role in contributing to the skits.

When the participants were given a question about the “Lunch” assignment, it was fascinating to watch them talking in groups, wandering around the table, being engaged in passionate conversations, standing up for no reason and then sitting down again. They were allbubbling and stewing with the heat of their ideas! Through this assignment, they learned their own preference when they are chatting with others, how to make an agreement with their partners/friends when they are discussing, and thinking indifferent ways about how go to eat lunch. This also increased their self-awareness when they got to know each other better.

Emergenetics Profile by Selina, Deafmoolah co-founder

After a short refreshment break and continuation of the presentation, each participant received his/ her own Emergenetics Profile. According to the profiling results based on the questionnaires, the participants were grouped into either Analytical, Spatial, Social, Conceptual or a combination of two or three groups. Then, Ms Sangeeta, the Deafmoolah team and participants discussed about what their profiles are and how to improve themselves. The profile shows you the big picture of how you think, behave and work, and can tell you a great deal about yourself and those around you. This recognizes how you approach new situations, how you get things done, how much you enjoy working with data, how others see you, how to enhance relationships, and how to communicate with people who are not like you. That is Emergenetics, the expression of your thoughts and behaviours as a product of both genetics and life experiences.

The profiles also help to motivate the people to make positive changes and improve their leadership, as well as understanding their current strengths and weakness and to strategically choose where to enhance the skills which they want to achieve greater productivity and success in their careers.

The workshop ended with a short Question & Answer session and photographs.

Overall, it was an eye-opener and fun workshop. Everyone came away with a better idea of their thinking and behavioural traits, and they felt they benefitted alot from the workshop. They also expressed their interest in several workshop topics that Deafmoolah would organise in the future.

Stay tuned for more news about the Deafmoolah workshops!

What is Emergenetics Profiling?

Emergenetics, a brain-based approach to personality profiling gives you need to discover your thinking style (Conceptual, Social, Analytical, or Structural) and your behavioural set points (your degree of Expressiveness, Assertiveness, and Flexibility). These insights will help you recognize how you approach new situations, how you get things done, how others see you, how to enhance relationships, and how to communicate with people who are not like you.

The four emergenetics thinking attributes can be broken down as follows. Analytical thinking, designated as blue, is our rational, factual and skeptical way of thinking. Structural thinking, designated as green, is our practical and cautious way of thinking. Social thinking, designated as red, refers to our social awareness and how we interact with other people. Conceptual thinking, designated as yellow, is our imaginative and conceptual way of thinking.

This teaches you how to enhance your self-awareness, increase your productivity, find more effective communication, and improve creativity at your workplace and communication with the hearing team. You will make optimal career decisions, boost your creativity and performance, increase profits, make better decisions, assemble "brain trust" teams, write effective performance reviews, and make presentations that appeal to everyone, sell to all kinds of customers, and motivate all kinds of employees.

So, this can help you in discovering the science behind your success using the Emergenetics Profile!

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- Selina Ooi, writer for the article, and also co-founder of DeafMoolah.

- James Chua, co-founder of DeafMoolah is the Editor for the article.

- Photos in the article are taken by Daphne Eng, co-founder of DeafMoolah

An article published by DeafMoolah - a collaborative non-profit organization envisioned to be the information centre of all pertinent financial information for the Deaf community.  It is an organization managed by the Deaf for the Deaf. DeafMoolah team is made up of Selina Ooi, Daphne Eng and James Chua with Carol Yip as Advisor.

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