Fabiaan Van Vrekhem, Co-founderThis verse from a poem written by worldrenowned theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, narrates that while humans are indeed a universe of collective experiences, their individual experiences can merely be compared to a speck of sand in the vast universe. However, one cannot deny the importance of each speck of sand needed to build up this vast and ever-expanding universe.
Similarly, in the corporate realm, Fabiaan Van Vrekhem, a renowned leadership advisor, believes that it is vital for each employee to coordinate for building a vast unified ecosystem— “an organisation”. And the sustenance of such an ecosystem is critically dependent upon the degree of confluence between its employees’ personal dynamics that defines their authenticity and their ability and desire to contribute to the purpose of the organisation. And, in this unison, even one bad hire can turn into a weak link—upturning an entire business. So, driven by this understanding, during the early days of Van Vrekhem as an HR professional, a key part of his job entailed identifying those weak links and fixing them.
“I have seen many organisations fail,” says Van Vrekhem. And while people tend to look at “what makes people and organisations successful” this often set him to loom over the question “Why do people fail?”
It took Van Vrekhem three years to study different research papers published by major universities worldwide to perfectly pin down the tenets of ‘employee-job compatibility.’ He concluded that for an organisation to thrive as a “large living ecosystem,” it must dig deeper into how people feel, think, and like to act to better understand what makes them competent. We all have needs, desires, frames of reference, values, beliefs, and we all construct mental models of reality. In many ways, it defines who we are, what drives us, how we like to interact with others and what we are capable of. This in-depth understanding of people can help an organisation choose relevant peers, nurture them better, and turn them into remarkable leaders.
With this realisation, Van Vrekhem Managing Partner of Accord Group, a leadership advisory firm, created a start-up Valpeo. This company’s refreshing leadership development approach is built upon the unique insights inspired by renowned organisational, social and developmental psychologists. During a personal dynamics interview, the company looks at mental, values, and behavioural orientation. The mental orientation shows an image of the level of consciousness awareness of an individual and the size of the roles that he or she should be able to cope with autonomously both today and, in the future. The values orientation gives a picture of the primary concerns, main drivers, and the cultural context within which he or she can fully achieve his or her potential. The behavioural orientation gives an impression of the personality traits and behavioural preferences. These three orientations, on one hand, allow an organisation to describe the personal dynamics that anyone can and preferably wants to bring into reality, the added value and the possible obstacles that come with it, supplemented by development recommendations. On the other, it allows an organisation to create an image of the context in which a person can make an authentic contribution, what his or her added value can be and what may possibly hinder him or her from achieving maximal result and optimal alignment.
We thoroughly seek for the ‘why’ of an employee, and that allows us to find their ideal spot in an organisation
Such a holistic approach to hiring, talent and leadership development has enabled Valpeo through the community of accredited partners to help companies create a positive and highly-motivated workforce along with a high-performance organisational culture. By adding those success feathers to its hat, and consistently leveraging its decades of industry experience in the management consulting space, Valpeo is now poised to move forward with a bolder vision of helping to create a sense of belonging and a context in which people and organisations are enabled to unfold their authenticity and full potential. Moving ahead with such undeterred momentum, Valpeo and its community of accredited partners is undoubtedly ready to take the HR space by storm in the future.
