Insights · ECA Leadership Framework®
ECA Leadership Framework: Energetic Corporate Anthropology (ECA)
A company is more than revenue, profit, structure, strategy or HR policy. There is also a field: an atmosphere, an undercurrent, a way in which energy flows, stalls or comes to life. The ECA Leadership Framework® helps leaders, leadership teams and advisers perceive that field, and work with it.
By Dirk Jan Versluis, registered psychologist (NIP). Updated 26 October 2026.
Contents
What does ECA stand for?
ECA stands for Energetic Corporate Anthropology. Corporate anthropology looks at rituals, behavior and patterns within organizations. ECA goes one layer deeper: to the field beneath them.
We look at companies not only as economic or organizational systems, but as living wholes with a body, a history, tension, culture and a movement of growth of their own. By energy we do not mean anything vague. It is the tangible reality of where things flow, where they stall and where growth is possible.
Corporate comes from corpus: body
The word corporate comes from the Latin corpus: body. A company has its own history, tension, energy, direction, blocks and growth potential. You can feel where it flows and where it does not, where there is warmth and where there is distance.
Sometimes everything adds up on paper, and yet the company does not feel free. Energy leaks away, or you sense there is more potential than currently comes out. That is where ECA begins: not as an alternative to numbers, structure or strategy, but as the layer underneath them.
What the framework looks at
With the ECA Leadership Framework® we explore what plays out beneath the visible structure of a company:
- where tension is being held;
- where growth stalls;
- where energy flows, or disappears;
- where decisions do not land;
- where leadership is not fully taken;
- where old patterns block the next phase;
- where purpose, culture and appearance no longer coincide.
This shows what the company really needs to keep growing. In a way, a company is also a patient: it can have complaints, a history that still works through, and a need to recover. Read more about entrepreneur psychology and how the psyche of the leader and the psyche of the company interact.
Not a mindset training
ECA is not a mindset training and not a spiritual exercise. It is an instrument of perception, developed by a psychologist from many years of clinical work with entrepreneurs and leaders under pressure. You learn a skill, not a belief. The core rule is simple: do not make it vaguer than it is, and do not make it more precise than it is.
Who uses the ECA Leadership Framework?
- Founders and leaders who carry responsibility for a company and want to sense what goes on beneath strategy, structure, numbers and people.
- Leadership teams who want to learn to look together at the undercurrent of their organization.
- Coaches, therapists and advisers who want to deepen their perception beyond behavior, analysis and conversation techniques.
- HR and organizational professionals working with culture, collaboration, leadership and change.
Working with ECA
At Triunify we use the framework in coaching, with leadership teams and in our Academy, where we train professionals to work with it themselves. The one-day Foundations training currently takes place in the Netherlands; for international or in-company formats, get in touch. Read more about leadership psychology.
Frequently asked questions
What is Energetic Corporate Anthropology?
An approach that looks at organizations as living systems. Where corporate anthropology studies rituals, behavior and patterns, ECA looks one layer deeper: at the field beneath them, where energy flows or stalls.
What do you mean by energy in an organization?
Nothing vague: the tangible reality of where things flow, where they stall and where growth is possible. Most people recognize it immediately, in phrases like “there is tension in the air” or “things are flowing again”.
Who developed the ECA Leadership Framework?
Dirk Jan Versluis, psychologist (NIP), together with Anne-Marie Versluis at Triunify, based on years of work with entrepreneurs, leaders and organizations.
Want to see what lives beneath your organization?
In a free 45-minute strategy session, online, we look at what is going on and whether we are a good fit. Confidential, under the professional code of the NIP.