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Character Determines Performance at Work – a conversation with David Carter
12 Plays4 days ago
At the time of recording David Carter was the CEO of Entelechy Academy a company that identified the connections between the character of an individual and their performance at work. David is now leading another business.
David is a serial entrepreneur who has established and successfully exited several businesses.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, David host Michael Millward about how when he was working in venture capital, his fascination with the way similar companies develop in difference ways developed.
Michael and David successfully define character, and how individuals develop their character and how this then influences how they work.
David explains the difference between soft skills and character and the close connections between they share.
Researching this relationship led David to build an assessment tool that helps individuals identify their individual character strengths and weaknesses.
More information about David Carter and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Independent Minds'
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:22
Speaker
The Independent Minds is the podcast where we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. I
Meet the Guest: David Carter
00:00:29
Speaker
am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah.
00:00:34
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, my guest is David Carter, the founder of Enteleki. As the jingle
Podcast Production with Zencastr
00:00:42
Speaker
at the start of this podcast says, the independent minds is made on Zencastr.
00:00:47
Speaker
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms. Zencastr really does make creating content so easy.
00:00:59
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using zencastr it Zencaster, visit zencaster.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida. All the details are in the description.
00:01:11
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencaster is for creating podcasts, we should make one that will be well worth liking, downloading and subscribing to.
David Carter's Career Journey
00:01:21
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, my guest is David Carter, the founder of Enteleki.
00:01:28
Speaker
Hello, David. Good morning. hope you're well. I'm very well, thank you. On this zero degree winter day with some sun shining. It is a very cold but very sunny day, deep in ah deep in January.
00:01:42
Speaker
But it looks like it it's a cold snap which will last for a couple of days. wondered if we could please start by you explaining a little bit about your history and how you came to found Enteleki.
00:01:54
Speaker
Gosh, I'll try and make it short. I've been at work 46 years, so there's a lot of ground to cover. The first 10 years of my career, I worked for two international investment banks and was fortunate enough to work in seven countries around the world for more than a year.
00:02:11
Speaker
During that period of time, I was involved in leveraged buyouts and venture capital. My passion and interest was always around trying to figure out how if two companies started in the same town in the same year with access to the same resources, how come after 10 years, one of them was 27 times bigger than the other one? What did that company do differently or have that the other one didn't do or have that made them a sort of peak performer?
00:02:42
Speaker
I used to call it performance X factor and that essentially was the culture of the organization which was based on the organization and the individual contributor's character after 10 years of doing that i went off and did two startups in the yeah uk hospitality industry the first one i built up and sold the second one i built up and floated on the aim stock market At the end of those 10 years, i had a rather major tectonic plate shift in my personal life and I ended up being this single parent of a seven-year-old and a three-year-old.
00:03:20
Speaker
And I didn't feel I could juggle being a public company CEO and a good dad.
Creation of Enteleki Academy
00:03:27
Speaker
And so I resigned to focus on my children. and ended up attracting CEOs of initially small and medium-sized businesses who wanted to access my experience of raising money, creating a strategy, building a team, building a business, sales, marketing, product, everything.
00:03:49
Speaker
So I ended up building a career as a CEO mentor. which I did for the next 25 years. The first 15 years of that, I built up a company called Merican Co, which became the world's leading CEO mentoring business.
00:04:06
Speaker
I became known as the world's leading CEO mentor when I exited that business about 10 years ago when I wanted to democratize what we were doing beyond a small number of expensive fee-paying CEOs and democratize working on character with the whole organization.
00:04:26
Speaker
So for the last 10 years, I have been building two businesses online One sadly failed at the beginning of COVID because the fundraising market dried up. And so IntelliKey Academy is a sort of phoenix from the ashes of that business and my legacy project, which is helping the world's employers and employees understand how important developing character is to optimizing potential and outcomes.
00:04:55
Speaker
And that's where we found each other sort of thing.
Aristotle's Entelechy and Character
00:04:59
Speaker
I was attending the CIPD Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development annual conference and exhibition, and you had a presence there as well. And I was intrigued by this whole issue of character.
00:05:15
Speaker
Can we define what you mean by character? Well, the word entelechy was a coined, created by Aristotle two and a half thousand years ago.
00:05:27
Speaker
The entelechy of an acorn in is an oak tree. The entelechy of a caterpillar is a butterfly. The entelechy of Michael is the ultimate version of Michael with all of his potential fully actualized.
00:05:39
Speaker
Aristotle also went on to say that character determines destiny.
Innate Character Qualities
00:05:44
Speaker
And what he meant by that was that we all end up in life wherever we end up as a direct function of our character.
00:05:50
Speaker
In the work I've done over the last 30 years, being intrigued by the power of character development, we have essentially isolated in a framework 54 character qualities and I'll define what a character quality is in a second, that we believe are a missing domain that underpin the development of all skills, hard skills, soft skills, human skills, technical skills.
00:06:21
Speaker
We believe that every baby born on this planet is born with the innate ability to be brilliant at all of these character qualities.
Societal Influence on Character
00:06:30
Speaker
And so these are character qualities like being organized, disciplined, reliable, resilient, adaptable, creative, collaborative, pioneering, kind, calm.
00:06:43
Speaker
Every baby is born with the innate ability to be brilliant at all of them. But, you know in the child's life, they get parented out of you, schooled out of you, churched out of you, workplaceed out of you.
00:06:55
Speaker
but everyone has the innate ability to be brilliant at all of those character qualities. what we do is help introduce people to what they're innately good at and then help them exercise the muscle to become kind, to become more calm or adaptable or collaborative or disciplined or organized or reliable or resilient or creative.
00:07:19
Speaker
So when we talk about character, what we're really talking about is the underpinning 54 character qualities. And every person, when they're born, has the ability to develop each one of those 54 to a level of good competence in applying them in the right situation.
00:07:41
Speaker
You mentioned this idea of that ability, that potential, being parented out of people, being schooled out of people. Is that because in order to survive or in order to be accepted within any particular group, we adapt to the rules of that group.
00:08:04
Speaker
So a particular type of behavior within a family or within a school or within a workplace will determine how we behave as well. We want as human beings to fit in and push the things that we really want to do to the background so that we will fit in.
00:08:21
Speaker
I think you're right. In my own personal story, I didn't discover this till my son was probably about 10 when he was diagnosed with being dyslexic that I realized that, you know I too am extremely dyslexic.
00:08:39
Speaker
but I'm also reasonably intelligent. And so when I was at school, I was accused of being thick because I couldn't write what I could speak.
00:08:52
Speaker
And I therefore didn't do well in exams, even though I understood everything and could articulate arguments for it. And so I kind of knew that the system was wrong, how it had pigeonholed me, but I had to conform, if you like, to the rules of the society that I was operating in. yeah And I think, you know, my parents would tell me off for things and punish me and discipline me for things, either that I felt I hadn't done anything wrong
00:09:27
Speaker
but I knew that if I did the same thing again in my family, I was gonna get punished. And so I avoided doing it, even though i wasn't sure that anything I was doing was wrong. So yes,
00:09:39
Speaker
You know, if you grow up in and know a Catholic family or a Hindu family or a Muslim family, there are going to be different rules and regulations in your family than there are in other families.
00:09:53
Speaker
And so you tend to conform to the rules of the society that you operate in even though instinctively you might not know if that feels completely correct. Yes.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's the, we have the potential, but our society, our environment limit our ability to fulfill our potential. It's 54 character qualities.
00:10:19
Speaker
When you listed some of those off a couple of seconds ago, some of them sound like soft skills, but they're not soft skills, are they? Soft skills are, which is a phrase I hate by the way, because it means absolutely nothing.
00:10:33
Speaker
I concur with you on that. It's a woolly phrase. Right. Okay. Well, let me explain. ah
Character vs. Soft Skills
00:10:39
Speaker
Several years ago, with all of the interest in soft skills from the World Economic Forum and Pearson and the CBI and McKinsey et al., we did extensive piece of research and asked over 300 heads HR exactly what soft skills do your employees or applicants lack that you need them to have.
00:11:01
Speaker
And the original list that came out of that research was over 800, and there was quite a bit of duplication in there. But it also included 356 soft skills, such as Excel spreadsheet modeling and PowerPoint presentation making,
00:11:18
Speaker
And my favorite was having to explain to the head of HR for one of the UK's biggest retailers that Python programming isn't it actually a soft skill. Yes. And so there was just so much rubbish talked about it. But at the end of the day, we curated that list and polished it and went back and checked it all with all of the respondents in the research. And we ended up with 77 essential soft skills that employees and applicants lack that employers want and need.
00:11:48
Speaker
But and a soft skill to us is a combination of character qualities. It's a composite skill. So, for example, one of the soft skills that employers want employees to be better at is time management.
00:12:04
Speaker
And they send people on time management courses where they teach them the theory of time management and the benefits of time management. but they don't teach people to be accountable, responsible, disciplined, organized, efficient, and reliable, which are the character qualities that underpin the soft skill of time management.
00:12:21
Speaker
So we've mapped the 54 character qualities against the 77 soft skills. So whatever the soft skill is that your employer is looking for, and whether it's, you know,
00:12:36
Speaker
practicing mindfulness or learning from experience or creating psychological safety or living ethically or generating engagement, holding a vision, all of those soft skills are actually underpinned by a combination of character qualities. So we help people learn to develop the character qualities And through doing by the way, the 54 show up about a dozen or so times across the 77. So if you learn to be reliable, you're actually benefiting at least a dozen or so soft skills by learning to be reliable or analytical or creative or collaborative. so
00:13:21
Speaker
if you focus on developing the 54 character qualities, you'll end up being brilliant to all of the 77 soft skills. But we believe that it's much easier to teach and learn to develop a single character quality than a composite soft skill.
00:13:38
Speaker
yes And particularly since the soft skill education omits the underpinning character qualities, which is why, the return on investment in soft skills training has been negative for the last 10 years? Yes. It sounds almost as if if you put somebody through a soft skills training program and they don't have the underpinning characteristics, character qualities that will help them to implement those soft skills.
00:14:07
Speaker
you will either end up with somebody who fails at the soft skills or will be implementing the soft skills in a way that would not be described as authentic, which may actually damage the relationship with the person they're trying to build a relationship with anyway.
00:14:24
Speaker
Because the the soft skill is running counter to the character or the way in which they have allowed the character quality to develop. It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx joke when he was asked what two qualities were the most important to to but to be successful.
00:14:45
Speaker
He said, oh, that's very simple to answer. um Authenticity and sincerity. And if you can fake those two, you've got it made. Yes, yes. And of course, very few people can fake them.
00:14:57
Speaker
They think they have, but very few people can be sincerely authentic when they're not actually sincere or authentic.
360-Degree Feedback in Character Development
00:15:07
Speaker
Exactly. It is this realization, I suppose, that that you have to think about your character, the 54 character qualities.
00:15:20
Speaker
And before you can start, I suppose you've got to be very honest with yourself as to how good you are at those different character qualities, how well you apply them in different situations. Yes, and I think the way our process works, when a learner is introduced to IntelliKey right at the beginning, they go through an interactive questionnaire, which basically ranks on a five-point scale their 180 perception of how good they are at a particular character quality. So they'll get to being reliable and they'll say, oh, no, I'll give myself a five for that or a four or three or a two or a one
00:16:05
Speaker
um and But then we get 10 of their friends, family, colleagues, their line managers to do 360.
00:16:15
Speaker
And then they can compare how they see themselves with how other people see them. yes And that is fascinating. And there's sort of four quadrants there because you could say, well, I don't think I'm particularly organized and neither does anybody else think I'm organized. So that's clearly a growth opportunity for me.
00:16:36
Speaker
I see myself as being honest and so does everybody else. So that's something I should carry on doing because that's clearly... But the other two boxes are fascinating where i don't i think I need to work on being more kind, but everybody in my team thinks I'm really kind.
00:16:53
Speaker
Or I think I need to be more accountable, but everybody already thinks I am. yes Or everybody thinks I need to work on being accountable, but I see it as a strength. you know So it's it's the the the deltas and the nuances.
00:17:13
Speaker
and And all of the 360 respondents, when they say, you know this is a strength of yours, they give an example of the behavior in action.
00:17:24
Speaker
And if they say it's a growth opportunity, they give an example of the behavior that would demonstrate to them that you were acting more aligned to that character quality.
00:17:36
Speaker
That type of feedback requires quite a lot of thought of the person providing that feedback to actually be able to define the behaviours which would demonstrate the application of the the character quality. it's its Engaging in that type of 360 feedback requires commitment.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yes, but let's say for argument's sake that you were one of my 360 respondents and you thought I wasn't very organised. you You could say the the way in which you, David, could demonstrate to me that you were more organized would be turning up to Monday morning meetings on time or sending the minutes around within 24 twenty-four hours And so you're going to give me a very specific thing, which was what triggered you to say that I wasn't very organized or reliable in the first place.
00:18:30
Speaker
But different people will see it from different angles. And so you get half a dozen or more different pieces of feedback. And most people... have a particular thing in mind that they write about, which is really helpful for the for the person being assessed because it's like, oh, okay, well, Michael would like to see me do this and Stephen would like to see me do that and Katie would like to see me do this and Mamad would like to see me do this and yeah and Amy would like to see me do this and I can do all of those. yeah And mostly it's like, thank you for telling me. Yes.
00:19:03
Speaker
I was unaware that I wasn't doing something that you'd like me to do. And now you've told me it's actually very simple for me to do it. Yes, and it's it's explaining, I suppose, as well, the impact that the behaviors that we think have no impact on other people, understanding the impact that our character qualities have through our behaviors on other people around us.
00:19:28
Speaker
You can think you're the life and soul of the party, But you're not. You're annoying.
Peer Coaching at Enteleki
00:19:33
Speaker
In Antelikey Academy, there's like 25 of us in the UK. And every Monday at 10 o'clock, we have a half an hour team coaching session.
00:19:42
Speaker
And we get broken off into little groups of three or four or five. And we all say, right, well, this week I'm working on being purposeful or disciplined or whatever it is and say what we're doing and what the benefits we want to achieve and the outcomes. and And other people chip in and say, oh have you thought of this? or Have you thought of that? And how about this? And how about that? And I used to...
00:20:06
Speaker
do this and it worked for me. And so, you know, you get five minutes of, you know peer coaching on a character quality that you're working on. And it's in such a benign, gentle, positive ah way that you get the feedback. And then of course, a week later,
00:20:24
Speaker
Everyone says, oh, how did it go? Did did you try that out? Did it work? Oh, yes, I love that. It was brilliant. I tried this and it didn't work so well for me, but i adjusted it slightly and did it this way and that did work. And so, oh, well done, well done.
00:20:36
Speaker
um And so it's a very positive, supportive, and everybody's working on something. It's not like I'm the only one turning up working on anything. Everybody's working on something. Yes. And by the way, the one that I'm really good at already and you're working on I can support and you know be like an accountability buddy or coach for you.
00:20:57
Speaker
and vice versa, you're brilliant at one that I'm working on. Let's help each other. that Even offline, out of the meeting, we can you know chat to each other and support each other. So you must have to prepare people for this type of process.
00:21:11
Speaker
It's not just something you jump into. You have to understand how the process works, the process of coaching, supporting, mentoring other people, and ah suppose have limits, restrictions that you you work within.
00:21:24
Speaker
Actually, we don't do it like that at all, Michael. When a new person joins Zentelike, they come into the Monday morning coaching session. They ah jump in with everybody else. They're split off into their group.
00:21:36
Speaker
And maybe the first two or three weeks, they're a little bit quiet and don't say much because they observe the behaviors and they observe how safe it is. But, you know, one of the... So maybe for the first two or three weeks that they're on board, and and we don't ask them much unless they volunteer it.
00:21:54
Speaker
But we might you know the rest of the gang might say to them, you know how are you finding this, Michael? you finding it interesting, helpful? oh yes, yeah a very interesting, thank um And so you might be encouraged to think of you know a character quality for you to work on.
00:22:09
Speaker
um But there's no pressure. But actually, because it is such a safe and positive environment and with very different personalities all talking about all sorts of things, it actually creates a safe space that most people open up within a week or so.
Leadership in Character Development
00:22:27
Speaker
and really enjoy it. It's like, because all these things are on their mind, but there's no one to talk to normally, or they think there's no one to talk to. We've created the safe space for everyone. and I mean, I'm the founder and the chairman of the chief executive. And, you know, I show up in those sessions and talk about what I'm working on and where I'm struggling. And I get tips and advice from other team members and and give advice and tips to other team members. And so,
00:22:54
Speaker
I think if you show from a leadership point of view that it applies to me just as much ah as it applies to a 25 year old who joined us last Tuesday, everyone can see that we all work on developing our character qualities together and on our own.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yes, lead it from the top. We often talk about employee initiatives being led from the top, but you're actually putting it into action yourself.
00:23:22
Speaker
I was fascinated when I first saw it.
Reflections on Culture and Character
00:23:24
Speaker
I'm still fascinated and I realise that I have a lot more to learn about it as I try to implement it in my own business. I know we've only scratched the surface of what I think is a very fascinating subject and all the various different ways in which this can be applied to building, as you say, from your research and experience in the banking industry with venture capital, the difference between organisations with the similar type of resources in similar types of environments.
00:23:54
Speaker
It's about culture. It's about how the organisation is led. It's about the character of the organization. There is an awful lot more, I know, personally, for me to to learn about this. But for the moment, David, I'd just like to say thank you very much for taking the time to meet with me today and for helping me create such an interesting episode of The Independent Minds.
00:24:15
Speaker
Thank you. Michael, thank you very much for inviting me. It's been pleasure. Thank you.
Conclusion and Resources
00:24:20
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind David Carter of Entelecki.
00:24:31
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. The Zencaster system has, as always, been very efficient today, but if you're listening to the independent minds on your smartphone and experienced technical issues, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:24:52
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00:26:00
Speaker
That description is well worth reading. I'm sure that you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds as much as David and I have enjoyed making it.
00:26:11
Speaker
Please give it a like and download it. And to make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:26:26
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.