Your First Leadership Role

Your First Leadership Role The two-day seminar for everyone leading a team for the first time: you learn how to move from colleague to leader without bending yourself, how to set goals, delegate and give feedback that arrives. By the end you have a plan for the first hundred days.

Your First Leadership Role at a glance

• Format: 2 days on site + self-learning track
• Level: basic
• Participants: max. 16 people
• Language: German (English on request)
• Certificate: AEI certificate of attendance
• Investment: €290.00 plus VAT

The hardest part of the first leadership role is not the task but the relationship. Overnight you are responsible for people you worked with as an equal yesterday. Both sides have to change, and nobody says how.

Two mistakes are typical. One: keep doing everything yourself because it is faster. The other: suddenly create distance because that is how “leadership” is understood. Both end in the same result — the team works worse than before.

This seminar works on the role, not on the theory. You clarify what you are now responsible for, how to hand over tasks without pulling them back, and how to give feedback that is understood as support. You work on your own situations.

What you take away

• Clarity on which tasks now belong to your role — and which no longer do.
• An approach to delegation in which tasks do not come back.
• A feedback pattern with observation, effect and request.
• An understanding of team stages and where your team currently stands.
• A plan for the first hundred days with three priorities.

Your learning objectives

• You name the difference between expert and leadership responsibility.
• You shape closeness and distance so that collaboration remains.
• You delegate with goal, frame and check-in point.
• You give feedback so that it is heard without damaging the relationship.
• You recognise which stage your team is in and what it needs now.

The levers at a glance

Your task is now the result of others. As long as you do the difficult parts yourself because you are better at them, the team stays where it was — and you become the bottleneck without noticing.

Delegating is not handing over and hoping. An assignment needs goal, frame, authority and a point of feedback. If one of the four is missing, the task comes back.

Distance is not created by formality. Whoever suddenly switches to formal address and appointments loses what they had. Whoever stays close and still decides wins both.

Feedback is an observation, not a verdict. “You are unmotivated” is a verdict. “In the last three meetings no feedback came from you” is an observation — and that can be discussed.

Your calendar is not your job. In the first months the calendar fills with the old work and the new one at once. Whoever does not block time for the team will spend it on the tasks they were promoted away from — and the team notices within weeks.

Who is this seminar for?

For new leaders and everyone who will become one in the coming months.

• Team leads in their first two years.
• Project owners leading people for the first time.
• Specialists who have just been promoted or are about to be.
• Experienced leaders who took over a team of former peers.

No leadership knowledge is required. The seminar assumes you work with people — not that you already lead them.

The seminar is not suitable for experienced leaders wanting advanced topics. The seminars on agile leadership and leading change are for that.

Investment and dates

Participation costs €290.00 plus VAT, including the self-learning track, materials and certificate of attendance. There are six dates per year in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and live online, plus an in-house variant for teams. You will find all dates in the list on this page.

For the exercises bring two situations of your own that currently occupy you. The more concrete, the better — we work on them, not on invented cases.

After the seminar

You keep the materials, the plan for the first hundred days and a one-pager with the four elements of an assignment. With that you can hand over the first task next week without doing it yourself.

The one-pager is deliberately short: goal, frame, authority, check-in. Whoever fills it in quickly notices which assignments were unclear before.

Mistakes belong in the process, not in the person. A team that reports errors early is more useful than one that hides them — and whether it reports depends almost entirely on how the first mistake was handled.

Two weeks after the seminar you receive a short follow-up: the task you delegated and what came back.

For teams the seminar is available as an in-house event with your own cases. The procedure stays the same, the examples come from your company.

Programme: 2 days

Day 1 – From colleague to leader

• Shaping the role change
• Distance and closeness
• Setting goals and delegating
• Giving feedback
• Understanding team stages
• Using strengths

Day 2 – Your own team

• Criticism and conflicts
• Handling mistakes
• Self-organisation and time
• Network and exchange

Both days run from 09:00 to 16:15 with breaks in the morning, at midday and in the afternoon. Short self-checks sit between the blocks so you can test where you stand before moving on.

Each day has three parts: an introduction to the pattern, an exercise on your own situation and a review in the group. At the end of day one you have formulated one assignment completely; on day two your plan for the first hundred days.

The seminar includes a self-learning track. It contains the patterns from both days as short units with examples and one self-check each. You can work through it before the date to clarify terms, or afterwards to repeat what stuck and what did not.

Our approach

We work on your situations, not on a role model. At the start of each exercise you decide which situation you want to clarify and what is holding you back; at the end stands an approach you can apply next week.

The exercises are short and repeat in variations. That is deliberate: leadership does not come from insight but from repeated practice in a setting where mistakes cost nothing.

Every block ends with a sentence you could show a colleague: which situation, which step, and what you will stop doing yourself.

We work in pairs, in small groups and in plenary, with changing partners. Every participant gets feedback on their wording, not just on their intention. Group level and participant count are deliberately limited: with 16 people no anonymous lecture is possible.