The First Time Leader’s Zone

Emerging into a leadership role can be intense: new responsibilities, old relationships, team expectations, and pressure to perform. Yesterday you and your team mates were “on friendly terms,” today you’re expected to set demands while simultaneously delivering your own work. It’s natural for uncertainty, chaos, and questions about how to build authority and lead people through change to arise.

New leaders
most often face:

transitioning from an expert role to a team leader,
guiding former colleagues and setting clear expectations,
combining operational work with managerial responsibilities,
motivating and enforcing results,
delegating and developing people,
communicating with various stakeholders,
stress, conflict, and constant change.

If you recognize even a few of your challenges here, you're in the right place.

We’ve prepared a free knowledge and inspiration base, as well as tools, for you that truly help young leaders take a step forward. Use them to build effective teams, make better decisions, and positively influence the people you work with. You have the greatest daily influence on your team—and you can use this role wisely. If you’re willing, we’ll guide you along the way.

Knowledge Base

Free materials that will help you seamlessly transition into a leadership role today.

Podcast “From the Leader’s Workshop” It’s about 100 episodes of interviews with experts offering practical tips on how to become more effective and generally “get it” with leadership. Regardless of your career path, you’re sure to find something for yourself here.

Listen on:

Józef Kącki - "Motywacja miliard.0, czyli skąd się bierze ponadnaturalna motywacja i zaangażowanie."

Lekcje wyciągnięte z największej porażki liderskiej - Dawid Ostręga | #4 Talk4Recruiters

[ENG] Dare to speak - unlock your Public speaking skills | Tomasz Manugiewicz

Mobiconf 2018:
Anna Gawlikowska,
Miquido

Wojciech "Wery" Wereszko -Zbiór Indywidualności tworzących synergię - LiGHT 2018

Droga od oficera GROM Do Przedsiębiorcy. Jak Efektywnie Zmienić Ścieżkę Kariery?

Get a free workbook

Designed for aspiring leaders: “The First Five Steps in a New Role.”

If you’re taking over a team, or you’re already a leader but want to make a change, read our e-book. It’s 5 tips with exercises and inspiring recommendations. A small energy expenditure, but a lot of benefits, because each tool can be implemented at work the very next day.

A collection of tools, exercises, methods, and frameworks that you can use in your individual and team development work. Here you’ll find materials on communication, motivation, projects, teams, goal setting, and organizing effective meetings. Read, print, copy, and share.

LET'S MEET

Every two weeks, we meet for an e-coffee with one of our mentors. E-coffees are small online meetings where we discuss the real challenges of leaders – yours and ours. We meet every two weeks!

Join a community of emerging leaders. Because sometimes you learn the best things over coffee.

Leader's Foundation: Premium Leading Winning Team

– Leaders Island’s flagship educational solution that will comprehensively prepare you for your new role.

At Leaders Island, we believe that the true strength of leaders lies in conscious choices, relationships, and skills. Our training is not boring lectures filled with academic theory. Each program and workshop is an engaging development process that leads from self-discovery and team insight to real changes in daily work.

In times of intense change, uncertainty, and often volatile situations in organizations, leaders are expected to confidently and steadily lead their teams toward achieving organizational goals.

The Leader’s Foundation is more than just training – it’s an intensive, four-day boost of knowledge, practice, and inspiration that will allow you to confidently step into your new role and build a solid foundation for further managerial development.

How we helped leaders

In retrospect, the “Leader’s Foundation” training was a gateway to a different world for me, a guide on how to move away from an engineer’s “closed” approach to reality and open up to others (to change my mindset). I still use the skills I gained during the training in talking to employees about their motivations. […]

A great program! I highly recommend it. A huge dose of knowledge (and experience), a brilliant instructor, lots of real-life examples, not just theory but also practice – it’s truly worthwhile and a real-world eye-opener. I think it’s not just for aspiring leaders.

The “Leader’s Foundation” training made a huge impression on me. It highlighted the most important aspects of being a leader and provided many solutions that I’m eager to implement in my career. The training definitely met my expectations and helped me focus my efforts as a team manager. I’ve participated in several similar training courses, and I would definitely recommend this one to friends, colleagues, and companies looking to develop leadership skills.

In 2024 alone, we helped emerging leaders in 40+ organizations.

How We Work
– Leading a Winning Team

Model

Leading a Winning Team is a leadership competency model that synthesizes the extensive managerial experience of practitioners working with Leaders Island and the findings from years of research on the factors influencing leadership effectiveness.

Competencies

The competencies in this model are grouped into three key areas of leader activity (Leading, Winning, Team) and three perspectives in which every leader operates (Myself, Team, Organization). Combining these two contexts creates a clear model of competencies and skills, facilitating effective leader development and career development.

Learn more about the LWT model and develop key competencies from the very beginning of your leadership journey.

Meet our mentorsMeet our mentors

Learn from practitioners who have walked the same path as you.

Józef
Kącki

Founder and CEO of Leaders Island. He derives great satisfaction from developing others.

Dawid
Ostręga

Business Leader, Head Coach, Scout Master. A master of building winning teams.

Ania
Gawlikowska

Head of Delivery. Developing and improving the immediate environment are her superpowers.

Krzysztof
Raś

Engineer and technology leader. He uses his experience to build effective teams.

Watch and listen to webinars on topics relevant to leaders working in (to put it mildly) chaos and a multitude of responsibilities. How to take your team to the next level and stop running around empty-handed, instead of working effectively and building a winning team.

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