Defence Awarding Organisation · RQF Level 5
DAO Level 5 Certificate in Leadership and Management
You don’t just earn this. You learn to use it, one-to-one, on your own real work.
- LevelRQF Level 5
- Total credits13
- Guided learning70 hours
- Units in this qualification13
Awarded by Defence Awarding Organisation · on the Ofqual register
Start here
See how this course maps onto your role
Ten quick questions, one per Future Fluency, asked against this qualification rather than a generic one.
About 5 minutes · No card · Nothing to commit to
What you’ll learn
What each unit actually teaches you to do
These are the units Defence Awarding Organisation registers against this qualification. It is a catalogue, not a syllabus. Which of them you take depends on the combination the qualification requires, and that is set by the awarding body rather than by us. Every unit here is regulated, and every one you earn is yours to keep.
Achieving Goals Through FollowershipReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the concept of followership
- Act as a role model
- Lead professionally and with integrity
- Understand the importance of being an approachable leader
- Understand the role of followers in supporting management decisions
Contemporary Issues for Managers and LeadersReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Know about the importance of health and safety in organisations
- Understand the influence on leaders and managers of ethics and morality
- Use the concepts of equality and diversity in context
- Understand specific and bespoke contemporary organisational issues
Developing Own Leadership and Management SkillsReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the concept continuing professional development (CPD)
- Plan for effective CPD
- Benefit from effective CPD
Developing Relationships through Emotional IntelligenceReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the concept of emotional intelligence
- Understand why effective emotional intelligence is important to a leader
- Use effective emotional intelligence in different situations
- Review own use of emotional intelligence to inform future behaviour
Effective CommunicationReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand a communication model
- Know why effective communication is important to leaders
- Understand different audiences and receivers
- Communicate effectively with different audiences
Managing Information for Effective DecisionsReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand sources of information
- Understand information to inform decisions
- Develop effective arguments to support decisions
- Communicate decisions verbally and in writing
Managing OperationsReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Implement resource requirements for operations
- Allocate roles and responsibilities to support operations
- Understand how to develop others to support operations
- Use a planning technique for a successful operation
Principles of Organisational ChangeReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the relationship between an organisation’s culture and the change process
- Know the difference between the management of change and the leadership of change
- Understand key drivers for change
- Use an effective approach to change in context
Principles of Organisational StrategyReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand strategy
- Understand the factors which influence strategic planning
- Understand the relationship between change and strategy
Quality ManagementReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the concept of quality management
- Understand the benefits of effective quality management
- Use quality controls
Supporting Individuals and TeamsReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Understand how to act ethically as a leader when supporting the welfare of individuals
- Understand how to support career development for others
- Understand how to support individuals to develop skills and competences
Supporting Others Through CoachingReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Know the role and responsibilities of a coach
- Understand what makes an effective coach
- Know about coaching
- Know about the costs and benefits of coaching
Supporting Others Through MentoringReal unit · Defence Awarding Organisation
What you'll be able to do
- Know the role and responsibilities of a mentor
- Understand what makes an effective mentor
- Know about mentoring
- Know about the costs and benefits of mentoring
The honest bit
You’ve started things before
Most courses were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.
There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.
And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.
Your passport
Every credit is a stamp you keep
Level 5 credits are regulated. They don’t vanish when a subscription ends or a website closes. They travel to any employer, and Zavmo keeps the map of what you’ve earned and what’s next.
Each stamp is a real unit registered against this qualification.
Who’d teach you this
The Evidence Evaluator
Assessor
Helps you show what you can actually do, gathering the evidence that proves it as you learn.
Meet all twelve tutorsWhere this connects
Where these credits take you
A qualification is never a dead end here. See the jobs its credits open, the national occupational standards its units map to, and the future skills they quietly build.
- Inform and Support Organisational Decision
- Interrogate and use management information to inform board decisions
- Lead the Delivery of the Network Infrastructure Services Support Capability and Strategy
- Manage DevOps activities
- Manage your continuing professional development
- Provide support for other coaches or mentors
- Support and challenge teams and agencies on specific aspects of their practice
- Use information for decision making
Where this can lead
Lead Operations Manager
Your journey here as a Lead Operations Manager is a critical stepping stone. We're not just offering a job; we're offering a launchpad for a significant career in operational leadership. The path is challenging, but the impact you can make is immense.
See the whole journey →Showing 6 roles, drawn from 208 job records mapped to this qualification.
Skills it covers
What the job actually needs. These are the standards the units are built against, in the words employers and awarding bodies already use for the work itself.
How you’ll actually learn this
One-to-one, on your own real work
A qualification is usually something done to you: sit the class, sit the exam, hope it sticks. Here it’s the opposite. You learn it one-to-one with a companion, on your own real work, and you keep going until you can use it, not just recall it.
Applied to your work in any of these jobs
- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Analyse
- Evaluate
- Create
Built for DAO Level 5 Certificate in Leadership and Management
13 units in this credential, in the order it lists them, awarded by Defence Awarding Organisation.
- Achieving Goals Through Followership
- Contemporary Issues for Managers and Leaders
- Developing Own Leadership and Management Skills
- Developing Relationships through Emotional Intelligence
- Effective Communication
- Managing Information for Effective Decisions
and 7 more in the full unit list below.
One to one, not one to many
No two people run this the same way
A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.
- Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
- What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
- The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
- How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
- Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.
See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.
Why it sticks
Most courses stop at remembering
There’s a well-known ladder of how deeply you learn something, called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most courses get you up the first two rungs: you remember some facts, you pass a test, you forget it. Real skill lives at the top. Judging, deciding, creating. And this isn’t a generic ladder: every rung has a named Zavmo tutor who walks you up it.
- 6CreateThe Creative Catalyst
- 5EvaluateThe Evidence Evaluator
- 4AnalyseThe Analyst
- 3ApplyThe Coach
- 2UnderstandThe Connector
- 1RememberThe Builder
Where most courses leave you Where Zavmo takes you
The value
Why the companion is worth £70 a month
You’re not paying for the units. They’re regulated, and the same wherever you earn them. You’re paying for the one thing that decides whether you actually get there: a companion that makes them stick, on your real work.
That is one-to-one on this qualification, every day, on the work you already do, for £70 a month. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it. Billed monthly, cancel any time and billing stops.
Earned on your own work, taught to the top.
Everything you just read, learned one-to-one on the job you already do. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it.
Build my plan, freeNo card. See how this qualification maps onto your role and meet the tutors who’d teach it, free. The learning begins when you subscribe. It’s £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.