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DAC Framework for Effective Leadership

Effective Leadership is a Social Process

A simple framework can reveal where leadership is — and isn’t — happening in your organization.

How do you define leadership?

The list of “what makes a good leader” is a long one. It’s as if we’ve taken every positive human quality and made it into a requirement for effective leadership.

But leadership isn’t actually all about individual leaders and their capabilities. Leadership happens in the interactions and exchanges among people with shared work.

We define leadership as a social process that enables individuals to work together to achieve results that they could never achieve working as individuals.

For effective leadership to happen, the interactions and exchanges among people have to create:

  • Direction: Agreement on what the group is trying to achieve together.
  • Alignment: Effective coordination and integration of the different aspects of the work so that it fits together in service of the shared direction.
  • Commitment: People who are making the success of the collective (not just their individual success) a personal priority.

These 3 outcomes — direction, alignment, and commitment (our DAC framework) — make it possible for individuals to work together willingly and effectively to realize organizational achievements.

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Upskill Your Team with Effective Leadership Skills

Achieve Better Results Through Leadership

Give your leaders the skills to work together as a cohesive group:

  • Better understand leadership as a social process.
  • Apply an effective approach to enhance leadership outcomes: Direction, Alignment, Commitment.
  • Assess how well leadership is happening in their group.
  • Identify actions they can take to improve leadership outcomes.
  • Create an action plan for improving leadership effectiveness in a specific group.

Start improving outcomes at your organization by equipping your team with these effective leadership skills. We can deliver our world-class, research-backed DAC framework content to them — or you can.

You Can Deliver Our DAC Framework Content, Or We Can

You Deliver

We can equip your facilitators to deliver a workshop or internal training on effective leadership either online or in person, whichever you prefer:

Most Turnkey

Workshop Facilitator Kit

Access everything your internal HR or team leaders need to upskill your people by holding a leadership workshop on this topic

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Most scalable

License This Content

Leverage this proven leadership program content and customize it for your own internal development initiatives

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We Deliver

Or, we can incorporate our DAC framework as part of a larger leadership development initiative for your organization:

Most Tailored

Custom Leadership Training Module

Combine with other topic modules and interactive experiences into a customized learning journey for your leaders

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Most Integrated

Leadership Programs

Our highly personalized leadership programs prepare leaders to address common challenges with effective leadership

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What Our Clients Are Saying

Organizations who have partnered with us to upskill their people’s effective leadership skills consistently tell us the same thing: their experience with CCL made a significant impact on their culture — and their bottom line.

“CCL’s Leadership Development Program helped me build up my vision and competency about leadership. Based on the models shared: DAC (Direction, Alignment, and Commitment), SBI (Situation, Behavior, and Impact) and other practices, I am able to find the most effective way to communicate with my staff and my manager. The LDP training also helped me gain a better understanding on my organization’s health and the long-term development of employees.”

Alan Bai
Chief Representative, China 
Institute of Management Accountants

“Future Generali Life partnered with CCL for Leadership Development of our C-Suite in a unique and flagship program to discover ways of being simpler, smarter, faster. The tone was set through a detailed pre-work and assessment which set the context and expectations effectively towards Direction-Alignment-Commitment (DAC). The pre work captured finer aspects of the challenges faced by the leadership team well. The leadership team felt a sense of enthusiasm, made personal commitments, and had a higher level of understanding that interdependencies go a long way in establishing alignment within the teams.”

Ruchira Bhardwaja
Chief HR Officer
Future Generali India Life Insurance

Let's Discuss Effective Leadership at Your Organization

Our experts are here to help. Let’s have a conversation about direction, alignment, and commitment at your organization and how our DAC framework could help support your development initiatives.

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Our Research-Backed Perspective on Effective Leadership

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Other Topics Related to Effective Leadership

Package our research-backed DAC framework content with other proven leadership development topics and solutions for a customized, scalable solution perfect for your organization’s unique needs, context, and culture. Related topics include:

Boundary Spanning

Psychological Safety

Collaboration & Teamwork

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