Here’s what clients have to say
Our R&D leadership team has been working with Dana over the last year or so to develop our leadership individually and as a team. We’ve learned so much about ourselves and each other – what energizes us, what motivates us, and what gets in our way! We’re already seeing the benefits of next-level development and next-level relatedness, and look forward to challenging and equipping ourselves to lead at a higher level, enabled by Dana’s teaching and coaching.
– Steven Hess, Sr. Director R&D, The Hershey Company
Over the course of my career, I’ve attended numerous leadership development sessions, from one hour general seminars/webinars, to long-term individual and team coaching. All have been interesting in the moment, sparking some thought and insight, but like most trainings, the binder goes on the shelf, daily life rushes back in, and the learnings fade away. One experience stands out in marked contrast – my work with Dana Carman. It has been over 20 years since Dana and I worked together, and I yet can honestly say that I continue to draw upon that work almost every day. The leadership distinctions I learned fundamentally transformed my awareness of myself as a leader, and became an intrinsic part of what I know about myself and how I navigate the world. With each passing year, and each new challenge or experience, I continue to discover new dimensions of the wisdom of this work. It is an ongoing source of insight for me and has allowed me to offer coaching for others that has been transformational in turn. I am continually and forever grateful for the gift it continues to be in my life.
– Debra Endean, Ph.D, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Vivent Health
I met Dana in the summer of 2018 when I was at a crossroads and thought I would benefit from Executive Coaching to explore what energized me and to identify what I wanted next in my career. We used the Leadership Circle 360 to assess my abilities as a leader and then got to work on mapping out my career timeline and life experiences in a two day retreat. I had worked with other executive coaches in the past but what made working with Dana different was that he not only focused on standard coaching tools such as team feedback, individual strengths and goal setting, but he also concentrated on personal values, life experiences and life goals. Many coaching relationships do not go very deep and often just focus on short term problem solving or immediate issues facing a leader. While those are important, they do not always help you evolve as a leader.
Dana did not just tell me what I wanted to hear, set career goals and move on, but instead facilitated introspection, defining purpose, and how that links to career choices. The retreat was an important way for me to detach myself from my regular environment so that I could create the space to do so. For me that resulted in a major shift in my career since it was no longer aligning with my passions and purpose.
I credit my time with Dana as the catalyst for changing my life. For the first time I began really taking charge of my own destiny and not allowing fear of judgement or uncertainty to guide my decisions. Dana takes an individualized approach knowing everyone’s path is different. His coaching skills and knowledge base are extensive. He is a very kind and authentic person, engendering trust which is core to the coaching relationship.
— Alora Brock, Former VP for Clinical Transformation, CTCA Medicine & Science at Cancer Treatment Centers of America
I’ve had the privilege of witnessing Dana’s gifts and generosity of spirit for approximately six years. In that time I have experienced him in various contexts as a facilitator, coach, collaborator and guide. Dana has the ability to skillfully create and elegantly hold spaces for deep connection, awareness and growth. He courageously surfaces and invites unspoken beliefs and assumptions into a room, balanced with compassion, empathy and humility.
Dana has a unique ability to find opportunities for clarity within a complex system or context, supporting others to do the same. This is often enhanced and supported by a number of impactful practices and frameworks that he offers in service of others. In doing so, he catalyses important shifts at an individual, collective and system level.
Dana embodies his work. He role models. He shares openly with vulnerability. He walks alongside. I’m grateful for Dana’s presence and his significant impact in my work and life in recent years.
— Matt Cesaro, Director of LeadersHP
When I first met Dana I did not know where my path was going to take me. I knew for certain that I had leadership potential but that I needed to develop that potential, and that the right coach would make a world of difference. As Vice-chief of staff of a cancer center, and medical oncologist, there was plenty of opportunity. I embarked on my leadership growth journey and at times it has been extremely humbling to say the least. But I have seen and continue to see a metamorphosis into my ideal leadership role.
The learning curve will never end, and that is the beauty of the challenge. I would not even have come close to developing and expanding a strong skill set without the honest, transparent, intelligent, and caring guidance of Dana. It has been quite transforming.
— Patricia L. Rich, MD, Director Lung Cancer Center Piedmont Health Care
I had arrived at the point in my professional career as a senior doctor, and as a clinical and organizational leader, confronting the “what next?” question. The choices that lay ahead seemed limited to a stark polarity between either treading water or inexorable decline. My fear of failure, or of being uncovered as an imposter, created an impenetrable barrier to any further personal growth and development. In many respects, the organization of which I was a co-founder, was caught in a similar place of existential angst.
Over three years of video-calls, walking and meditating together, group work in my organization — underpinned by the Leadership Circle tool — Dana has helped me and the people with whom I work to break through the walls that have constrained us. His mixture of deep wisdom, compassion, curiosity and humanity has shone through everything we have done together.
My work with Dana has had an extraordinary impact on my coming out, of learning to embrace the strengths that I have as a leader, as a clinician and as a person. Above all else it has given me the power to speak out about the things that really matter, and to trust my own sense of doing the right thing. It has coincided with and helped to shape a major period of transition for my organization, to move from a founder-led model, to the emergence of a whole new leadership team, while at the same time holding on to its core purpose, values and behaviors.
Dana has walked alongside me, sometimes literally, also in a personal journey of transition, into a new self, stepping, without the previously felt dread, into a bright future as an elder.
— Peter Devlin MD, Former CEO, Co-founder and Clinical Director of Here
I serve as the Senior Vice President, Talent for Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a national network of five cancer specialty hospitals and outpatient clinics that employs 4,300 people. In my role, I am responsible for all aspects of human capital, including leadership coaching and development, total rewards, wellness and wellbeing, talent attraction and selection.
Dana serves as both my personal development coach and teacher, as a trusted advisor, coach, and thought partner to the CTCA Talent Leadership Team. The team serves as the senior governance body that oversees the vetting, development, refinement and deployment of enterprise Talent strategies and programs and as a personal coach to a number of CTCA senior executives and their respective teams.
Dana is an expert in helping companies scale leadership. It’s a journey that must begin at the individual level before you can effectively scale to teams and to the broader enterprise. For me, it started in 2016 when Dana engaged me to ask if I had an interest in pursuing individual development work. At the time, I found myself at a personal and professional crossroad. I had been with CTCA for 14 years. The company was without an enterprise CEO and had just completed a large-scale workforce reduction. And a new CEO was joining the organization. I was uncertain if I wanted to stay with CTCA or look for a new opportunity. I took Dana up on his offer and we initiated our coaching relationship at a two-day walkabout in the beautiful Cascade Mountains and the streets of Portland, OR. After our kick-off session, we met regularly via Zoom and began to integrate my personal development journey into the live-fire work that my team and I were leading—particularly in the area of performance management and leadership development.
Dana introduced me to an eye-opening array of next-level leadership development concepts, including Vertical Development, Deliberately Developmental Organizations (DDOs), Immunity to Change, Polarity Management, Creative and Reactive Tendencies and Action Logics. He also introduced me to a suite of powerful 360-degree developmental tool in the form of The Leadership Circle that allowed me to benchmark and quantify my individual leadership effectiveness and to identify specific areas that I wanted to focus on to improve my leadership effectiveness both with my team, with my executive peers and with my boss.
Once I started to internalize and practice these key developmental concepts, I naturally wanted to share the knowledge and insight with the Talent Leadership Team. Dana and I partnered to enroll the Talent Leadership Team in the vision of becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization—a team that has deep relationship, trust, respect, understanding and mutual admiration of our respective strengths, shortcomings, values and fears. This is a team that commits to pushing on our individual “development edges,” and that creates practices to nurture and support our individual development so that we can improve our collective effectiveness.
Here are the results that we produced by doing real work in new ways:
Designed, tested and implemented a new Leadership Development System, including a customized set of leadership competencies, supporting performance gradations and an enterprise Talent Review process.
Implemented an enterprise Job Architecture that defined eight discrete career paths, standardized job levels and grades and reduced titles by 68%.
Implemented a centrally coordinated Talent Attraction and Selection recruiting function to enable CTCA to leverage our recruiters as enterprise recruiting resources.
Designed and implemented a unified set of enterprise Talent Policies to enhance governance and standardize management practices.
Delivered top quartile Organizational Health scores as measured by the McKinsey Organizational Health Index (OHI) in the midst of a massive business transformation effort that touched every level of the organization.
Delivered over $19.5M in benefit plan savings over a three-year period.
Dana is the consummate integral leader. I firmly believe that Dana helped us unlock the capacity to elevate our approaches to one another and to our respective teams. I highly recommend working with him if you are committed to do the hard work of confronting your own “stuff” and the curiosity and courage to try new ways of working. Individual development is a never-ending quest. I am glad that Dana has been by my side for this part of the journey.
– Eric Magnussen, CHRO of Great Expressions Dental Centers; Former Senior VP of Talent for Cancer Treatment Centers of America
When I began working with Dana, I already had success as a surgeon, scientist, and executive but was challenged by the VUCA (Volatility Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity) that seemed to constantly face me. I was well trained to work in a complicated and ordered world but the skills needed to develop and succeed in the complex world were beyond my grasp.
During my time with Dana I’ve come to understand myself, my strengths and shadows and how to embrace the shadows. I’ve learned to be fully present and engaged in the moment and how to approach complexity with mindfulness and curiosity. Our work has allowed me to intentionally utilize conversation, the principle tool of the executive, more skillfully. I am grateful to him for his gentle but firm authenticity. Through him I have become a more integrated and developed executive leader and, as important, a more complete person.”
– George Daneker, Jr. MD, VP and Medical Director for Oncology, SSM Health Greater Midwest Region
Dana and I met around seven years ago in Australia when we co-facilitated a leadership workshop for SA Health and we’ve maintained a close bond ever since. Dana supports my leadership journey with mentoring, coaching and co-designing programs. Most importantly Dana has this innate ability to check-in at just the right moment. It is an amazing privilege to have him hold the space for our team where something truly magical happens. Deep conversations, safe spaces for vulnerability and a most amazing ability to read people. I sometimes think he is reaching into my soul. I am truly excited about the tremendous capacity and bravery being released for us as a team, it’s like the brakes are off, scary, but so much fun!
– Rebecca Graham, CEO, Barossa Hills Fleurieu LHN
As a driven perfectionist, Dana’s coaching has helped me to look inward to discover the root cause of my approach to everyday leadership challenges. Over time, increasing my self-awareness with a focus on triggers and a conscious effort to modify my historical response style, I’ve come to be more curious in my everyday leadership interactions; less reactive and more creative. This has been a powerful shift in approach with collateral impact across the spectrum of my world, benefiting all those around me!
– Marsha Suber, Associate Vice President WellStar helathSystems
Dana has been a tremendous guide on my personal journey to learn and grow as a leader, peer, and coach. I can’t thank him enough for his insights into my Leadership Circle 360 feedback and the areas of strength as well as opportunities. He highlighted the importance of both and then worked to arm me with tools and techniques for the areas I committed to enhancing, modifying, or improving. Not only am I a better listener and communicator at work but I feel like I am staying present in the moment regardless of the setting (home, socially, etc.). In thoughtful and enlightening ways, Dana has engaged me in my own self-development!
– Robert Gould, President and CEO, Cancer Treatment Centers of America - Phoenix
I first met Dana in 2014, when he presented a workshop for SA Health on leading through complexity. It was my first introduction to concepts like VUCA, the distinction between adaptive and technical challenges, the integral framework, polarity management. He has this amazing capacity to introduce new ideas that helped me to make sense of the complex, uncertain world I was trying to navigate through as a leader, and why I felt overwhelmed and in-over-my-head at times. He was inspiring, helping me to see what it might take to achieve transformative system change, how I needed to start with my own inner work.
Since then, I have been fortunate to work with Dana in a number of ways. As a participant in a leadership development program, a mentor in an ambitious system redesign collaboration, a co-designer in a project to apply the integral framework to bring our organisation’s performance framework into alignment with our strategic plan, a co-facilitator in a leadership and culture development program supporting an organisation through massive organisational change. Dana has taught me so much about what it takes to support organisations and leaders to navigate through complexity, to become deliberately developmental and lean into opportunities for deep transformation. He has been the catalyst and guiding light for so much of my personal growth and career development over the past 8 years, and I am incredibly grateful today to call him friend.
- Tanya Lehmann, Leadership, Culture & Change Consultant, Aurora Meliora
I had the good fortune of getting to work with Dana as part of a 360-degree leadership process. I am forever grateful for Dana's insights that he was quickly able to point to and that helped me reflect on and unearth a deep truth about a mental model that was holding me back. Unlike most insights, this one was timely, actionable and embodied, and has helped me on a daily basis to lead in the midst of the complex challenges we are all facing this year. I wholeheartedly recommend Dana without hesitation!
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Sally Kingston, Chief Officer of Research and Development, PBLWorks