Frequently Asked Questions

General
> Who owns Character Works?
> Who owns Character Works’ concepts and intellectual property?
> What is Character Works?
> Where does The Fox Proof Chook House seminar program fit?
> Who is Character Works for?
> Is there a down side to Character Works?
> What does it mean to establish a culture of character?
> What is the relationship between character and work place problems?
> Who made Colin Pearce the King of the Character Sand Pit?
> Are there Character Works trainers I can speak with nearby?
> How did you come up with the list of character qualities you teach at Character Works?

Training
> How would I get trained to start Character Works?
> May I reproduce any of the Character Works material?

General

Who owns Character Works? (Return to top)

Character Works is a registered business and brand name of Colin Pearce and Associates Pty Ltd, an Australian company owned by Colin and Christine Pearce since June 4 1987.

Who owns Character Works’ concepts and intellectual property? (Return to top)

The intellectual property in Character Works programs and publications is owned entirely by Colin Pearce, Colin Pearce and Associates Pty Ltd and Character Works and is protected by international copyright law.

However the concept of character training is universal and has been practiced for centuries in various forms across all societies. No-one can lay claim to the ‘rights’ to character training per se.

What is Character Works? (Return to top)

Character Works is a system which offers training days, books, DVDs, CDs, workbooks, magazines, and newsletters all designed to awaken and empower individuals and people (collectively) in businesses and organizations, families and schools with the benefits of living and operating under a charter of character principles.

Where does The Fox Proof Hook House seminar program fit? (Return to top)

An organisation or individuals begin their character emphasis by participating in a ‘The Fox Proof Chook House’ seminar. These are run in-house for organizations and individuals can attend periodic public seminars. The motifs and images resurface throughout the rollout of the program.

Who is Character Works for? (Return to top)

If you want to help your people or you want to grow more as a person then Character Works is designed for you. This is not the kind of program you ‘do’ to your people in order to ‘fix’ them.

Is there a down side to Character Works? (Return to top)

None whatsoever except these…

- If your management team, board and owners don’t take their own character development seriously it will be a complete waste of time and money and could even dismantle your organisation.

- If you quit part way through the program, it will set your culture back years.

What does it mean to establish a culture of character? (Return to top)

We help you establish the TRAIT method when we teach your key leaders and supervisors how to establish a culture of character.

You also tap into our seminars, workbooks, DVDs, magazines and articles and as long as you and the leadership team set the example and stay in the race you will see a positive character shift in your culture in a very short time.

What is the relationship between character and work place problems? (Return to top)

Nearly all work place difficulties are character related.

> Bullying is a result of weak character caused by lack of generosity and compassion.
> Lateness and absenteeism have their roots in poor character.
> Carelessness and laziness with customers are a bi-product of character issues where diligence, responsibility and alertness are missing.
> Stress, accidents, and employee unrest can be traced back to character problems on someone’s part.

Who made Colin Pearce the King of the Character Sand Pit? (Return to top)

Or in other words, who appointed Colin and Christine Pearce and Character Works as the authorities on what the rest of us should believe and how we should behave?

it might look like that to some people but we didn't set ourselves up as the high priest and priestess of goodness. We're as fallible as the next person. We simply responded to what was going on around us and we are now systematizing what we have gleaned from our research.

We read the newspapers. We listened to our clients. Christine who is a professional counsellor with a Masters Degree in Social Science has deep insight into the human condition - as most counsellors and psycologists do.

For years we heard our customers and our peers in business complaining that their people had lost moral footing. We saw the crash of the entrepreneurs in the eighties and the collapse of the big financial institutions in the nineties - all through character flaws. We heard the football commentators and Olympic sports people bewailing the drop in character and values in sports - particularly in regard to sexual abuse and drug cheating. We read the Federal Government's reports on its funding for teaching values in schools.

Hey, it wasn't hard to see that this was an itch we could scratch. So we set about our ownresearch and data collection about what our countrymen and women valued in the people they valued - and now we are feeding it back.

Are there Character Works trainers nearby, with whom I can speak? (Return to top)

While Colin Pearce conducts most Character Works installations the team of associate Character Works trainers is growing. If you do not know a Character Works trainer, contact our office to register your interest and we will work with you to place you with the right choice for you.

Training

How would I get trained to start Character Works? (Return to top)

This can be worked out based on the numbers of people in your organisation. We will train you and others in your organization in-house.

May I reproduce any of the Character Works material? (Return to top)

No.

The text on our website, in our books, workbooks or newsletters or other published materials such as cartoons, puzzles or pictures cannot be reproduced anywhere in any way.

And to make it even clearer, just because you buy our materials doesn’t mean you also buy the rights to copy, lay out in a new format or to photocopy or digitize. We do not relinquish our copyright.

How did you come up with the list of character qualities you teach at Character Works? (Return to top)

Research showed us a number of systems which taught anything from 3 to 300 character qualities - or values or virtues - as they were variously called. They took anything from a few lessons to four years to get through them all. We wanted to reflect the culture and values of Australians and New Zealanders where we and the majority of our clients live but there wasnothing in the foreign systems that came close.

Thus our research started with a survey of 800 individuals in 2004 where we asked them to list the qualities they most admire in their hero figures. They submitted over 5000 words which we painstakingly entered into a database we built for the purpose.

We distilled this list first by separating out the words that related to competencies. There were only about 500 words on that list. Then using simple logic with the remaining list (which were all character based) we combined words into common groups and renamed them such as turning courage, fearlessness, boldness and guts into the most commonly used word, 'courage'. In the next step we consulted lexicons, dictionaries and thesauruses focusing particularly on the etymology of the key words to make sure that our next level of distillation was based on the most objective interpretations. That enabled us to add words like confidence to the 'courage' list. In the process it became very obvious that there were 6 major categories being highlighted with several subsets in each main category.

We then took the numerous references to vague words like 'loving' and 'caring' and 'strong' and 'leader' and distributed them by careful mathematic ratios to the words that actually pointed to measurable behaviours of a kindred nature. Applying references to key words in wider literature also added direction. For example the famous 'wedding reading' from the Bible which ascribes 16 nuances to the one word 'love' was very directive. (Without this insight and only following popular usage we would have been left wondering where to place 238 references to sex.) We then took the top 24 words by frequency and there you have the list. Our ongoing data collection from the on-site web survey supports this methodology.

We have enough data to create further word lists out of the main categories and subsets.