Learning can be transformational and inspiring once more, as business leaders are given the best tools to stimulate potential.

Entelechy Academy aims to change the way companies and learning providers prepare employees for work.

David CM Carter, Founder & CEO of Entelechy Academy, has more than 40 years’ experience in coaching and mentoring other CEOs. Carter is determined to democratise his model, believing everybody deserves an opportunity to practice those behaviours that help us evolve from good to great. Carter first wrote it in his bestselling book, Breakthrough, and spoke about it repeatedly in his international book tour. Now, in his legacy project, he hopes to realise a lifetime’s experience in an affordable app.

Character-based

While learning and development in business have moved towards soft skills, Entelechy Academy asks leaders to make a more significant shift in thought. Underpinning the pedagogy of Entelechy Academy is the codification of character, which underpin the soft skills required for work-readiness.

To maximise potential, leaders need to help workers be better to do better.

Actionable learning

The desire to disrupt runs deep in this start-up. Underpinning the structure of this learning model is a belief in the need to act. Learning, in theory, develops understanding but does not encourage application. The basis of the Entelechy pedagogy is practical experimentation to anchor new concepts and promote real-world action.

David Carter explains, “The learner may be inspired by the content, but learning happens when there is a commitment to try out ideas in context and reflect on the outcomes.”

Learning beyond the textbook has been a theme in education for decades but without any real-life application. Entelechy has systemised the action, reflect, course-correct model of personal development that has been used by coaches and mentors to help business leaders excel.

Owning transformation

Disrupting attitudes to learning is something of a mission for the team at Entelechy.

Racheal Smith, Head of Learning, notes, “For too long education has been done to students; it is time that learning is undertaken by the individual.” As a teacher of 20 years and as a Chief Examiner, Racheal Smith has worked within the current system. Seeing the weaknesses in the way things have always been done drives an ambition to do something different.

“If lifelong learning is to be a reality, there needs to an approach to learning that values self-awareness and self-reflection.”

Smith is clear that personalisation of the learning journey is central to the success of the Entelechy model. On the Entelechy platform, there are more ways to navigate character-based development than there are people on the planet. The individual can chart their curriculum and shape the actions that will help them transform. The learner is asked to consider where they are now and where they would like to be. They then choose the Character Qualities or desired outcomes that may offer fundamental transformation in work and life. Questions help the learner shape the experiment and take it into their selected context to see if it provides positive change.

Leveraging experience

There is the focus on character, the way we show up in the world. Then, there is the belief that actionable learning is the route to development. There is a focus on reflection and course correction, seeking that transformational moment where it all makes sense because experience proves it to be so.

What is most challenging to the way education has always been done is that it asks its community to live and learn in tandem. The old model of learning and then living is archaic; there needs to be an emphasis on the lifelong endeavour of the individual reaching their potential.

Entelechy has recognised the need to show up and be better. By focusing on actionable learning, reflection, and course correction, learners are invited to undertake small acts of learning every day to become their best self.

You may also like