Joanne Giang: A People-Oriented Leader Augmenting People-Culture on a Global Scale

Let’s meet a dynamic and persistent leader, Joanne Giang. She started Braindom LLC with a unique vision that fulfills a purpose-driven approach and focuses on people-centric culture. Learn more about her fantastic journey ahead.

The Jumping-off Point in the life of Joanne Giang

Joanne Giang made it right up to the senior management position during her corporate years. The company culture and supportive colleagues contributed to her accelerated growth. The training and support she received from her HR business partners were invaluable. It was the result of an organizational effort that she was able to overcome her cultural barriers and achieve 10% profitability for two consecutive years. This experience showed her that organizations can grow their bottom line when they focus on growing their people.

To bridge the respective gaps, Joanne Giang started Braindom LLC to equip HR and organizations with tools and resources to build a people-centric culture to grow the business in a sustainable and scalable way. When she started the company in 2017, it offered HR compliance, benefits, and a focus on training and development. Its mission has always been to shift workforce culture to be more people-centric. In its experience, workplace benefits can attract good talent, but career development training will keep the good talent and grow with the organization.

In the last couple of years, Brandom has had over a thousand people from small to large Fortune 500 companies go through its Leadership Program. The personal growth and achievements of individuals include promotions, the confidence to voice their opinions, and bringing their best to teams that value their authentic voice. These achievements are motivating me to keep doing what I do, and to build more workplace culture that invests in its people. 

Be the Face of Change

As a holistic HR consulting company, Braindom LLC is shifting the workforce culture to be more people-centric. In the last couple of years, its HR partners have expressed the challenges they navigate regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and overseeing the DEI / ERG Committees.

At Braindom LLC, the core mission is to help leaders and HR be the leaders of change. As the conversation around diversity and inclusion continues, it has tailored its inclusive leadership program for DEI and ERG leaders by equipping them with tools and techniques to have and facilitate difficult conversations and build trust for change. The organization is building catalysts to support a culture of prioritizing people in the workplace.

“For the People, Of the People” is the Greatest Accomplishment

Braindom LLC’s business is built from the main mission of shifting the mindset of organizations to focus more on people and how to best serve the people to build loyalty. Joanne Giang remembers some people thought it was wishful thinking and this mission would be realistic during our generation. She has seen organizations that align business and people strategies overcome challenges that revealed gaps within the organization. When the pandemic hit, the organization took a little pause to assess the best ways to serve its community and clients would be.

The team organized monthly workshops for the community on topics that were commonly faced in organizations, such as Hosting Effective Meetings and Team Culture or Understanding your Leadership Baseline.

Joanne’s accomplishment that she feels proud of is seeing the team’s potential to care for its clients and community and retaining these great people through the pandemic. With such excellent and dedicated team members, Braindom LLC is known as a company that shifts workforce culture to be more people-centric.

Challenges are Opportunities in Disguise

Joanne Giang sees challenges as opportunities to grow and upskill. Over time, she has learned that challenges are part of the journey and the best one can prepare is to work on how to react and behave in these situations. 

Change is inevitable and we want to anticipate the potential impact that the change will have to adjust how we serve our clients and communities. In a challenging and all-consuming environment, I would aim to stay positive, and open-minded, evolve our strategies and deploy the necessary resources to best augment, compensate, or otherwise adjust for changes and new challenges. 

Joanne Giang Secret Sauce

Words are subjective, so these are the 5 that have gotten Joanne Giang success this far and the significance they hold:

1. Self-awareness- Learning to know your strengths and weaknesses. It all starts here.
2. Emotional intelligence- It’s said emotions don’t mix with business. Learn to properly convey how you feel professionally, and learn to read and respect others’
3. Compassion- The world is not all evil or bad. When you can help in any way, small or big, it promotes a less combative environment in the workplace. Who wouldn’t want a positive and compassionate culture in the workplace? Additionally, I believe every leader should have compassion. We may never understand what someone else is going through, but as a leader, we can respectfully listen and respond to empower others.
4. Multiplying Leader- Work on yourself to be the leader worth following so you can build a team worth being a part of.
5. Deep Listener- Listen for verbal and non-verbal messages. You will understand how to treat others the way they want to be treated, not the way we want to be treated.

Also, as a leader, Joanne Giang has a servant leadership style which means she serves and supports the people and communities within a company or organization. It’s a style that fights for the highest potential in others. She believes that people strive to make a meaningful impact every day, but they may not have the guidance to lead their path. So, she supports her teams in their development and will also empower them to achieve their highest career aspirations.

Learn the Truth of Trusting in Business

Joanne’s biggest learning experience was trusting other business partners without doing her due diligence to understand their intentions. One such experience was being in conversation with the Founders of a company to acquire a TechEd company and things went well verbally each meeting, but when it came time to execute the contract, there was misalignment.

Although people may have good intentions, I learned that some people’s values may not align with mine or the way our company cares for our clients. When I encounter this situation again I would have deeper discussions to understand the intentions of my new potential business partners and after that, have written contracts in place before continuing any business conversations so I don’t waste my time, or others’. 

A mentor taught told her: You either win, or you learn. When you don’t learn is when you’ve failed.

Joanne pens a Note on Success

Success is like a continuous journey. The more I work on myself, the greater my impact, and the more growth opportunities I have to overcome. To prepare for growth, I continuously build on my inner strength to lead my teams to bring their best every day. Success to me is building self-sustaining teams to consistently live the mission for the future workforce. It’s a business success if the future workforce does not go through the same glass ceiling or injustice as the current workforce.

A personal win will be having the inner strength to reach my highest potential and bring others along with the journey. I always reflect and think about what I could have done better or what I can do to remain calm in challenging situations. I love the journey I’m on as I’m consistently increasing my self-awareness and having more understanding for others.

Integrating Ideas for a Bright Future

One idea Braindom is working on is investing more into the services and partnerships globally. It has seen increasing interest in its leadership training amongst global teams. The organization would like to implement something for all participants to stay connected. The leadership journey does not stop after its training programs, and it is thinking of ways to keep the group engaged and continue to learn together.

Workspaces that build Dream Teams and Leaders: From Joanne’s Desk

Companies have put more resources and focus on building a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment. I often ask people, what does a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment look like in the workplace? What’s interesting to me is that everyone has a different perspective of what they consider a healthy and inclusive work environment. At the end of the day, people want to align themselves with a team and company that will value their contribution and skill set. I truly do believe we can have more harmony and collaboration in any workplace, and that’s why I do what I do.

Shift Workforce Culture

My ultimate vision in life is to build harmonious and collaborative leaders with whom I can live, work, and play. It excites me to know my efforts with organizations today will provide future generations with a more diverse and inclusive workplace. They will have more opportunities to experience the value of their authentic self and the strengths they bring. If we consistently deliver to Braindom’s mission, to shift workforce culture to be more people-centric, my vision becomes my reality for my future kids.

A Golden Advice

Stress and failure are part of the journey. It prepares one for the next challenge. Joanne Giang often looks back and realizes how each time she shot for something and missed, there was a lesson. Ultimately, all “failures” are practice runs for the next, bigger, better opportunity or challenge.

The Way Ahead

Braindom believes that companies can build a sustainable process if there is a focus on developing people and the contribution they bring to the overall organization.

With the ‘Great Resignation’ continuing this year, it sees an opportunity for organizations to be the employer of choice by aligning their business and people strategies. Although companies are enhancing their benefits and implementing new recruiting and hiring workflows, employees are looking for leadership to have diverse perspectives in the decision-making process.

Building a high-performing team requires diverse voices to be heard and valued. In a global team, having a universal and common language and framework will be critical for organizational success. By marrying technology with Braindom’s facilitation, the training will align business and people strategies together. Diversity and inclusion will become the identity of the organization.