Support as you step into greater responsibility

The First 100 Days

A protected space to shape your first hundred days deliberately, not just survive them.

Overview:

• For: stepping into a bigger role, or freshly landed in one
• What you get: a 120-minute kickoff, 6 to 8 60-minute conversations across the 100 days, short check-ins on call, email access (reply within 24 hours), a closing conversation
• Optional: preparation before day one; a Hogan assessment as a stocktake
• Where: online, or in person near Landshut (45 minutes drive from Munich)
• Investment: €5,500 plus VAT (core)

Who It's For

When the role is bigger than anything before it

You're taking on more responsibility than before, or you're about to. Perhaps it's the first role of this size. Perhaps you're moving from a mid-sized company into a corporate group, or the other way, and finding that the rules here are different. Or you're a few weeks in already and sensing it's not what you imagined.

What unites everyone: you don't want simply to get through this phase, you want to shape it deliberately. You're not after a standard onboarding or a checklist, but someone who knows the dynamics and with whom you can think calmly while a great deal happens around you at once.

WHY IT'S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

Why this phase asks more than most expect

A new, larger leadership role looks from the outside like the next logical step: more responsibility, a bigger remit, perhaps for the first time leaders who themselves lead. In truth it's often a different job. What brought you here, your depth of expertise, your grip on the detail, your reliability in delivering, is no longer what you're measured on. Your effect increasingly comes through others rather than through you, and that is what many have to learn.

At the same time the environment grows more complex. You have more stakeholders, above you, alongside you, in other areas, and dealing with them becomes more political and less directly within your control. Fewer people tell you honestly what they think. And what you do and say is read and weighed more heavily than in your old role.

The tricky part: it doesn't show at once. You run the new role for a while on your old operating system, and it works, until it doesn't. By then patterns have set, in how others see you in the role and in how you see yourself in it. That happens in the first weeks, the stretch where the most is shaped and the least time is left to think.

Most people don't realise how much this change is a personal one, not only a professional one. It isn't about learning new tasks, but about becoming, in part, someone else. Often that includes the private side: a move, the upheaval for the children, the question of how the relationship carries it. These are no smaller than the professional matters, and they run in parallel.

This is exactly where the work comes in. I give you the space the pace of the early days otherwise denies you: someone who knows the dynamics, who reflects back the patterns that are easy to miss, and with whom you can order your thoughts before you carry them outward. The aim isn't to get everything right in a hundred days, but to act from your own clarity from the start, rather than from reaction. With a considered approach you bring your strength to bear sooner, and spare yourself the mistakes that are especially costly at the beginning.

Recurring Themes

What we look at together

What matters in the first hundred days is different for everyone. A few themes recur:

• Reading the new culture. Which rules really apply here, beyond what's said officially? What does this environment respond to, and what does it not?
• Building the right relationships early. Who are your decisive stakeholders, above, alongside, in the team? Where is it worth investing in relationships before you need them?
• Acting, or understanding first. Where is a quick, visible win expected, and where would it be a mistake to change too much too soon?
• The team you inherit. What already holds, what do you want to shape, and whom can you trust with what?
• Your own role. What used to be your strength, and which part of it no longer serves? What may you let go of that brought you here?
• Clarifying expectations. What does the level above you expect, what does your team, what do you, and where do those expectations diverge?
• Your resilience. How can you take good care of yourself during this challenging time? What strategies help you stay balanced and focused? How can you involve your personal circle and loved ones?

How it Works

What the 100 days hold

Every engagement begins with a thorough kickoff conversation. In it we look at your starting point, your new role, and what matters most to you, and decide together how your support should look. The core is the work across the first hundred days. Depending on your situation, preparation beforehand or a personal stocktake may be added. What makes sense, we decide in that first conversation, not in advance.

The core: The First 100 Days (€5,500 plus VAT where applicable)

• Kickoff conversation (120 minutes). Your start. We look at your starting point, your role and your goals, and agree where to put the focus.
• 6 to 8 conversations of 60 minutes, spread across the 100 days, every 2 to 4 weeks depending on what's live.
• Short check-ins of 20 minutes on call, when something pressing can't wait for the next appointment.
• Email access between conversations, with a reply within 24 hours.
• A short note, if you'd like one, with the next steps after each conversation.
• A closing conversation (60 minutes), where we look back and look ahead.

Optional

Two things we might add

Whether either option makes sense for you isn't something you decide now. We look at it together once I know your situation.

1) Preparation before day one

If your start is still four to eight weeks off, it's worth using the time beforehand, while your head is clear and the new everyday hasn't claimed you yet. As a rule three conversations of 60 minutes, in which we:

• prepare your first days and weeks concretely,
• map your most important stakeholders in advance, so you know who matters early,
• think through the private side, since the first weeks are demanding at home too, and
• consider how to move through this phase with composure, with strategies that suit you.

2) A Hogan personality analysis as a stocktake

A scientifically grounded instrument with a 120-minute debrief and a detailed report. It shows you:

• your strengths and challenges, including and especially under stress and pressure, exactly when the new role demands most,
• your personal motivators and values, which often decide whether a new environment really suits you.

Moving into a new culture in particular, this is a valuable basis for gauging early where you'll flourish and where there will be friction.

Good to Know

The things people ask before booking

What if I'm already in the role?

Then we start where you are. The first weeks are ideal, but it's worth a considered look at what's taking shape even after that. In the kickoff we'll see what makes sense for your timing.

Do I need the Hogan assessment?

No. The core works on its own. The assessment is for those who want a grounded stocktake at the start. Whether it's worth it for you, we decide together.

Can I claim it against tax?

Where there's a professional connection this may be possible in Germany, as a work-related or business expense. Whether it applies in your case is best checked with your tax adviser.

Can my employer fund it?

Most of my clients arrange this privately, often because they want to keep this phase to themselves. That's entirely legitimate, and you needn't tell anyone.

If you are thinking of asking your employer to fund it, let me take away the worry many have: that it might look as though you aren't coping. From my time in leadership development at Lidl and Fresenius, I can tell you it comes across the opposite way. A leader who shapes their start deliberately, rather than hoping it goes well, looks assured, not unsure. Support in this phase has long been routine at senior levels. An important appointment is expensive for a company, and securing it is an obvious investment, not an admission.

Next Step

How it begins

The first step is a short introduction. We get clear on where you stand, when you start, and whether the support fits you. The exact shape we set together afterwards.

For organisations

The case for funding this

Filling a leadership position is among the most expensive and most exposed decisions in talent management. A significant share of leadership transitions fall short of expectations in the first twelve to eighteen months, or fail outright. The costs reach well beyond salary: lost time to full effectiveness, an unsettled team, trust damaged upward and downward, and in the worst case a fresh search.

Structured support across the first hundred days reduces that risk directly. It shortens the time to full performance, steadies the inherited team sooner, and gives the new leader a protected space in which to avoid the typical early mistakes before they harden.

As former head of leadership development at Lidl and Fresenius, I know the organisational side of these transitions as well as the personal one. My support combines psychological depth with a realistic sense of how effectiveness actually comes about in complex organisations.

For work with organisations I put together proposals that fit your internal processes for development measures. Get in touch for a confidential preliminary conversation.