Episode 36: Why Growing Character is so Important to Sales Teams with David CM Carter

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So today I'm excited.

I think I say I'm excited every week, but I'm really excited because we've got a topic that we're going to talk about that's a little bit different to what you'll hear from us. And with me to talk about that, I have a man called David C.M. carter, who is a very, very experienced operator in the world of leadership and in fact is a serial entrepreneur that is sometimes known as the world's leading CEO mentor. So David's got 40 plus years track record in creating innovative businesses, mentoring leaders and influencing around the globe. So that's pretty powerful. 40 odd years. He's gone through quite a few changes in how we operate his business. Entelechy Academy is the inteleki of David's career. All right. It's his legacy project where he gathered lots of brilliant minds in education, in coaching and in professional organizations to support millions in becoming the best versions of themselves. So first of all, David, thank you very much for coming on board. I know it's early where you are in a beautiful, beautiful place called the Cotswolds, but great to have you here.

So I'd love to know a bit.

More about Mtelechi Academy. Why do you do it and why is it so successful?

Well, I'm not sure if it is successful yet because we've only just launched, but I think we've got a very good head of steam and an amazing sales pipeline. So, more why do I do it and what is it? Is that was your question?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So let's start off with the word entelechy, which is my favorite word. So Aristotle coined the phrase entelechy. Two and a half thousand years ago. And the entelechy of an acorn is an oak tree. The entelechy of a caterpillar is a butterfly. So the entelechy of Ben is. Is the ultimate version of Ben with all of his potential fully actualized. And so it's a beautiful concept to think of what is the ultimate version of a person with all of their full potential fully actualized. And Aristotle also coined another phrase, which is that character determines destiny. 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 to. Which makes total sense.

Yeah, absolutely.

But character is not something that people have ever been taught. And there's a lot of misnomers about character. People think, oh, you're born with your character, a bit like you're born a Capricorn or whatever, but that's rubbish. You can develop your character so you can develop your destiny and therefore your entelechy. And over the course of my long and varied career, one of the things that I noticed when I was mentoring CEOs was that it was never about their industry or that they really needed mentoring support. It was to help them become their entelechy. And that was done through developing their character. And so what I figured out over a long period of time was that there's a subdomain of character which has been missing from all of the education to develop people, whether it's leaders or the general workforce. And companies, for example, spend millions and millions of dollars every year sending their people on a time management course. And at the end of the course, they all score 95% in the quiz. Then people wonder why a month or three months later, none of what they were taught on the course has been applied back in the office. And so they were assessed on what they were taught, not what they've learned and applied. And often these courses teach people the benefits of time management, the theory of time management, not how to be good at it, but the subdomain of character that underpins the development of all skills has been missing. So, for example, you can't be good at time management unless you learn to become accountable, responsible, disciplined, organized, efficient, and reliable. And so what we do is help people learn those six underpinning character qualities, which means they never need to go on a time management course. And so that applies to everybody but a C suite leader, a CEO. They often needed to learn to be humble or collaborative or visionary or wise or empathetic, which aren't the sort of character qualities that you normally think that a testosterone Charlie CEO might need. But they were the character qualities that their team, perhaps in a360, fed back to them would get more out of the team. And so what I learned a long time ago was that these 54 character qualities that underpin the development of all skills in every aspect of life had been missing as a domain from our school, our college, our university life. So when young people turn up in the workplace, they might have a degree in aeronautical engineering and have all the technical skills, but they don't have the ability to be collaborative, creative, confident, organized, efficient, reliable. And lots of the other character qualities that employers assume that human beings turned up pre programmed with, but in fact, they need to learn those skills just like they needed to learn maths or English or geography.

Yeah, wow. Really impactful. So we're not talking about personality here. I'm gaining that personality and character are quite different things to you.

Well, character is a subdomain of personality. Personality, you would describe somebody else's personality or your own personality, and that is how you show up in the world. That's how people experience you. But sitting underneath your personality, you know, you could be very humble or very kind or very confident or courageous. And so actually, personality is, if you like, a combination of character qualities in terms of how you show up in the world. When one of our learner users joins the program in a company, they do a 180 and they look at the 54 character qualities and say, I'm really good at this and I'm not so good at that and I'm rubbish at this and I need to develop this one. And then they do a360 where 10 of their colleagues and their boss also tell them how they experience them. And of course, that's absolutely fascinating because, oh, I see myself as organized and reliable, but nobody else does, or everybody sees me as kind, but I don't see myself as kind. You know, it throws up lots of really interesting information. And so in many ways you could say that your personality was how you showed up to the 360 panelists. That's how they experience you. But it's really made up of the character qualities that underpin it.

So to answer your question, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'm trying to think as we talk. Clearly, character is a critical building block of life. How can businesses engage with some processes around judging character or improving character or actually rolling it into their teams to get some real benefit out of the developments that can come from a strong character?

If you like, we have a product with two phases. The first phase is two months and is called Discover, and the second phase is 12 months and is called Transform. Kind of does what it says on the tin. So the Discover process, think of it as like an MRI scan of your every individual in the organization and the whole organization, where you're looking for the character competence of each individual, each team, each division, each function. And we do that through the 180. Everyone does a 180. Everyone gets a 360 done. Everybody says what they think the company's character, quality, strengths and growth opportunities are today and what they'd like the strengths to be in a year's time. And out of all of that 15.7 million data points that come out of an organization from that Discover report, the individual gets a report which says, here's how you see yourself, here's how other people see you. Here's how you map against how everybody sees the company today and in the future. And here is our AI computed personalized learning journey to help you get from where you are today to where you and the company would like to get you to in a year's time. So that's called a character key. So that's a report that everybody gets with here's how I see myself, here's how others see me, here's how I map against the company today, company in the future, and a personalized learning journey. So it might say, in order to optimize your contribution and performance, you could work on these three character qualities over the next six months. And then the company gets what we call a kaleidoscope report where they get to see every individual they can slice and dice it by team, division, function, gender, the senior leadership team versus everybody else. And out of all of that information, we help the company craft and design the Transform journey. So let's say I showed you now the 54 character qualities and you were the C suite of a 500 employee organization. And I said to you, just choose six of these 54 character qualities that if everyone in your organization was really, really good at that, it would transform your business's performance and productivity and profitability. Just choose six?

Yeah.

And they look at the 54 and they go, oh, we'd like organized, reliable, disciplined, confident, analytical, creative, collaborative. I said, okay, well, actually that's 14, but let's stick with those 14. Let's assume in a year's time we could get every single person in your organization to be brilliant at all of those 14 character qualities. Let's call that 100%. That is peak performance. What level are you operating at today? Oh my gosh, probably about 50, 60% at best. Okay, so just by moving all of your employees from 40 or 50 or 60% of that capability to 100% in 14 of the character qualities or what's that going to do to your business? Oh, our sales will go up by 20%. We can improve our margins by 10%. We'd have get rid of all of that retention in the first year problem that we've got. Then we attribute some values to all of that and say, right, well that sounds like that is a $2 million profit enhancement. And this intervention is only going to cost you $100,000 to do for your entire organization. So you're going to get 20 times return on investment by helping your individual team members get from where they are to where you and they would like to get to. That's essentially the whole story.

So this is a great note for Salisbury's that are listening here. What we've just heard is a classical, very well thought out pitch around how any process is going to deliver value. Right. We are looking at the heart of what this is around the value that it will drive for an organization. Now that's unrelated obviously David, to what we're talking about now. But I wanted to comment on that because as salespeople we need to make sure that we actually have at the very front of our minds creating that value the whole journey.

Can I just add to that? Over the last 10 years, because of what has been called the soft skills crisis, employers just can't find people with those work ready skills that they want to need. And billions has been spent on soft skills courses that they all admit don't shift the dial at all. Like the example of time management I gave earlier. And there is no return on investment. And they end up spending money because they have to be seen to do something to develop their people. But they know it doesn't have a return on investment. And so I think that no one is going to spend money in this economic environment unless they can see the return on investment. So I think that buyers in HR, L&D, et cetera, and even the CEO, they're going to want to say, okay, if this costs $100,000 for our entire organization, what's the bottom line improvement we're going to see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how are we going to measure that? So it's funny if you asked me that question around your 6 or your 14 top skills in a business for the Next few years, resilience would be one that is right up the top of my list, particularly for the batch of first decade salespeople that are still in their first decade. I don't think they've seen those real tough environments from a selling point of view yet, but I suspect they're coming, they're certainly here already for some businesses. So I really like that approach. There's something that you mentioned that I want to zero in on and that is around the future. And I've been following you a little bit on social media and there was one post in particular that stood out for me. I'm only going to talk now about the first bit and then I'm going to throw it over to you. And that was we don't know what the future holds, so we should be training and building our teams for. And this is where I'll pass to you. What's the second part of that statement in your opinion?

I think we should actually be building our teams for now, but what we need to build into our teams is agility and, you know, resilience. I remember a number of years ago someone saying to me, oh, I don't like change, I really don't like change. And I said, oh, don't you? I love it. It's the only thing I can rely on. You know, you can guarantee that whatever the situation is today, it won't be like that tomorrow or next week or next month or next year. And so I think if you spend too much time today trying to fix what you think the problem might be in a year's time and come up with a solution, by the time you get a year down the road the problem will have actually shifted and you could have created a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. And there's a lot of companies that have created great solutions and now have to go out and find a problem to fit it to. But I think that the other point about today, focus on today is that's where perhaps the character, quality of analytical and self awareness and detached and things like that come in discerning is because actually today really isn't how people think it is. But I think in Australia and in other places around the world, including the uk, the entire population has been deceived by the government, the medical establishment, about COVID 19 and lockdowns and there's now an awful lot of stuff coming out about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines or the benefit of lockdowns or the reliability of the PCR test, which is very different. To what we were all told during the lockdowns and the pandemic. And now people are having to go, whoa, hang on a minute. I'm now learning today that I shouldn't have trusted what I was told before. And I did trust because it was the health service or the government or the president of my state or whatever. But actually it all turns out that wasn't true and I just went along with it and I acquiesced to whatever it was I was told. And actually now I realized I shouldn't have done that and I should have been more alert or detached or discerning or self awareness. And so actually often today isn't in fact what you think it is. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Actually what I'm thinking out of all of this is that one of the key skills I'd be adding to my list next to resilience is agility.

Agility in the character quality for us is adaptable.

Adaptable, perfect. Well for me, if we use that word, adaptable, I would never take to any engagement with any customer anything more than about 50% of a pre used or proven framework. The rest I will bring in will be bespoke because it will be unique to that situation. So adaptable for me is something I live and breathe every day, but something that's really close to that for me, that I really live is learning. Are you happy to share some of your learning habits, what your go tos are to keep yourself on that learning wheel?

I hate answering that question, but I will. So I am in Myers Briggs language. I am an off the charts introvert.

Right.

That's not how people would perceive me. I do podcasts and TV and all sorts of things. People think oh he's a real extrovert, but I'm not at all. And so I think because of the work I've done over the years, and particularly about character, I kind of know that the answer to any problem or situation that I'm dealing with, the solution is dialing up a couple of character qualities and you know, as simple as here on my desk I've got a pack of our 54 character quality cards or I've got the app in my phone. I might thinking about an important meeting I've got later on today. I was looking through this morning actually before we got on on the corner. Actually humorous is going to be really important in that meeting.

Yeah.

But I've also got to be assertive as well as being humorous and purposeful. And so I ended up looking through the character and I think with that personality that I'm dealing with, the deal, the complexity and his personality, I've actually got to be assertive and hold my feet firm on what it is I want, but I've also got to be humorous and, but purposeful as well, you know, get him and me both on. So my learning is very reflective. And so I have a dog and I will take her for a walk for half an hour or an hour around the fields at the back of the house and I'll think about that meeting coming up or that situation I've got to deal with. And so I will consciously process what's the problem, what's the solution, what's the process? How have I got to show up in that Now I'm very conscious, I'm a very conscious person. I think about things and put them in the washing machine overnight sometimes and amazingly a solution comes out in the morning. But I always say that the quality of my life is a direct function of the quality of the company I keep and the quality of those conversations. And so I love to learn and I love to learn by talking with intelligent people who could have a completely different point of view to me. One of my best closest friends, he and I have almost polar opposite views on net zero and the climate crisis, but we can talk for hours about it. And he's so respectful of my point of view and I'm respectful of his point of view and I learn something and I learn a lot from that other point of view. And so, yeah, so I think I like quality conversations with quality people where it's safe to disagree and in fact it's encouraged to disagree and you learn a lot about the other person and the topic.

Yeah, yeah. Having that safe space is so important. I fundamentally agree. Well, that is the first time that someone has spoken about reflective learning on this program and I really like it. Go to bed with a problem, wake up with a solution. It's sensational. I've also taken from that is I need to try and get my hands on those 54 character cards because I think that would be so beneficial to me in my role as well. So, David, Sam Carter from Ntelechi Academy, thank you very much for getting out up early today to spend some time with us. For those listening, if they'd like to know more about anything, from your character cards to intellect, the academy or perhaps your view on net zero emissions, how can they find you?

3 answers. So, David CM Carter on LinkedIn, that's the best way to get hold of me. There is also an Entelechy Academy LinkedIn account where we publish white papers and thought leadership documents and research. So that's a good way to explore more about character. But if you go to the App Store, you can download the IntelliKey Explorer app. It's free and that will show you the 54 character qualities and introduce you to them and you can have a play with them and ask yourself some reflective questions. But that's not the full app that you have to pay for. But the Intellica Explorer app is free. You can see the 54 character qualities there.

Yeah. Fantastic. Excellent. Well, thank you. I've really enjoyed today. I have learned something new and I love reflective learning and I think I'll be practicing that tonight from what we've learned. So thank you David, for everyone listening. Please keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.

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