Learn to have the conversations that develop people.
Helping others learn and grow has become a core leadership skill, especially in times of AI. Many of us were never trained in it. Here you practice on your real cases (feedback talks, setbacks, development conversations), with master coaches giving you feedback. Ten live sessions over about five months, plus application in learning teams and on your own.
For leaders, coaches, mentors, teachers and anyone developing others.
Live sessions
10 × 2 hours on Zoom, and you coach in every one
AI
Use AI to grow and help others grow
German cohort
Starts January 28, 2027, taught in German
English cohort
Starts March 23, 2027
“Precisely what I needed: a fresh, ready-to-use approach. Every session added a method I could apply the next day.”
Charlotte Boujassy, Director Talent & Leadership Development Europe, Daiichi Sankyo
These are the sentences we hear before people join.
“Our best specialist was promoted, and is now a struggling manager.”
“Feedback here is polite, frequent, and changes little.”
“I develop others on instinct. When it works, I couldn't tell you why.”
“When someone on my team fails, I never know what to say.”
Developing people pays off for leaders, teams and organizations.
And the skill can be learned.
With AI, change moves faster every year, and the lasting advantage is how fast people learn and how well their leaders guide them. That takes a skill, and a skill can be learned. The same holds in every classroom: teachers develop people every day, and few were ever trained to do it with a method.
Many leaders want to develop their people. Ask when they last held a real development conversation and the answers often get vague. The reasons are familiar: little time, no clear method, a first attempt that fell flat, a culture that rewards other things. The research shows where the leverage sits.
The leader closest to the people shapes how they work, learn and stay.
The person who shapes everyday work is the direct supervisor: the team lead, the frontline manager, the immediate boss. Gallup's 2026 study of 1,214 U.S. frontline supervisors shows how much rides on this role, and how many people step into it without preparation.2 Gallup's 2020 analysis of engagement and performance adds that engaged teams are more profitable and keep more of their people.3
of the variance in team engagement is accounted for by the manager: their engagement, effectiveness and natural talents.1
of U.S. frontline supervisors have never had supervisor training.2
This program is built for that person: the one who works with people every day.
Growth is why good people stay
In LinkedIn's workplace learning research, the chance to learn and grow ranks among the strongest reasons people stay.
Training transfers through practice
Transfer-of-training research points the same way: what is taught in a classroom reaches the job when it is practiced, applied and followed up in real work.
It is a skill
Research on deliberate practice and on self-determination shows that developing others can be learned, with a method, supervised practice, and feedback specific enough to act on.
The return reaches beyond the people you develop: participants often report that they get better at their own work along the way.
Who you'll meet
The program is a qualification in developing people, designed first for leaders who are responsible for it. Specialists moving into leadership, HR and L&D professionals, coaches, teachers and mentors join them, and the mix is part of the learning.
The program takes place entirely online, so participants join from around the world. Drawing on our network built since 1999, we curate every cohort to bring together as many different worlds as possible. Past cohorts have included board members of international corporations and social workers from Nigeria, owners of family businesses and first-year founders, school principals from challenging neighborhoods in the US, directors of family offices, heads of people at technology companies, teachers, and experienced coaches.
Participants bring different levels of experience. Each person works on a real case from their own role, so everyone practices at their own level, and many learning groups keep meeting long after the program ends.
Leaders, team leads and future leaders
From start-ups, international corporations and family businesses, looking to strengthen how they lead, build teams and shape culture. Team leads and frontline managers, the people closest to the work, are at the center of the program.
Specialists moving into leadership
Excellent at the work, new to developing others. This is where the second craft gets learned, before the first year in the role teaches it the hard way.
HR and L&D professionals
Building a growth culture that does not depend on one motivated person, and carrying career development further than a form once a year.
Teachers and school leaders
Teaching is developing people every day. You get a method for the conversations around the lesson: with students who struggle, with colleagues, with parents, and in leading a class, a department or a school. We have used the ACE it! Method in schools, so you will find it at home.
Coaches, consultants and mentors
You want a proven talent-development framework inside your own practice: one clients value and you enjoy using. An optional module at the end shows you how to build your coaching practice.
“You never leave a session without a tool you can apply. I used to feel uneasy as a coach, holding space without contributing. The ACE it! method changed that: I now actively facilitate and solve problems without interfering with the learner’s own process.”
Thiago Prado, Transformation, Value Creation and M&A
What changes for you
Three things you do differently in your own work, in the office, with clients or in the classroom.
You hold the conversation with a method
TodayYou develop others on instinct, and when it works, you cannot say why.
After the programYou know which move you are making and why it works.
Feedback leaves a next step
TodayFeedback is polite, frequent, and changes little.
After the programYou give feedback that leaves each person with a next step of their own choosing.
A setback becomes the next chapter
TodayWhen someone on your team fails, you search for the right words.
After the programYou stay with them, read the setback together, and open the next step.
A team member's project has just failed. You listen first and let them tell it in their own words. You ask what they learned and what they want to try next. You leave with one small step they chose and a date to look back together. Five minutes, and you have moved someone forward. A teacher does the same with a student after a failed exam.
And you know how you lead, so you bring the right version of yourself into each of these conversations.
Better leadership begins with a clearer picture of yourself.
The program builds your self-understanding first. You see how you lead, how your habits land on the people around you, and what you want to be known for. Developing others is also one of the best ways to get better yourself: the best way to learn something is to teach it.
Know how you lead
Your three assessments show your preferences, your strengths and your blind spots. You learn where your strongest habits help, and where they get in the way of other people.
Learn how people develop
How adults learn, what makes development stick, and which few moves you can run in five minutes between two meetings. You practice them in every session.
Build a self-image that lasts
A clear, honest view of who you are as a leader and who you want to become. You take it into every conversation, and you keep growing it long after the program ends.
What you hold at the end
Which conversation with your people would you most like to handle better? Bring it to the call.
Book a callWhy this program
Six reasons participants choose it.
Supervision on your real cases
You coach real people on real cases in every session, and master coaches observe and give you feedback specific enough to change what you do the next morning. Many leaders and teachers were never trained in developing others; here it is the subject of every session, built step by step over about five months until it becomes a habit.
The ACE it! Method
Our signature process, built on design thinking, with the insights behind it and a toolkit of more than 20 tools. Three moves you practice in every session and take into your own work the next morning.
A network of nearly 1,000 leaders and coaches certified across our programs
You join the Autoris community: people certified across our programs, from business, coaching, schools and universities, in many countries and fields. Our presence in Europe and the US brings together people who rarely meet, and many stay in touch long after the program ends.
Assessments that make development concrete
Three signature assessments, You At Your Best, ACE Preferences and the Cultural Compass, show how you lead and learn. You also receive the right to use five assessments of your choice with your own people or clients, so your next conversation starts from data.
AI for your own development and for others
AI runs systematically through all five blocks, with Ati, the Autoris Coach. You use it to read your assessments, to prepare conversations, and to build individual learning plans for yourself and for the people you develop.
Research and insights from some of the leading institutes
We show you research from the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, from Columbia Coaching and IESE, and from the professional bodies, and turn it into practice.
The ACE it!® Method
Our method combines three things: a signature process built on design thinking, the insights behind it, and a toolkit of more than 20 tools. The process is ACE it!: understand the real issue, create options together, try a next step and learn from it. Three moves, and you practice each of them in the program. The insights come from research on learning, motivation, change and communication. The tools, from the Learning Curve and Best Work to the Wheel of Motivation and the Arrow of Success, put them to work in a few minutes. Behind them stands the theory and practice of adult learning, coaching and narrative, taught from the current evidence base. We have used the method in companies, in coaching practices and in schools.
Understand what is really going on, and name the challenge precisely enough to work on it.
Generate fast, collaborative ideas using structured brainstorming, everyone contributing.
Move into action, track what works, and scale what delivers.
And the exclamation mark? That is the part nobody can hand you: doing it. The method works when someone starts the conversation. Let's ACE it!
A large part of the program is spent on the craft of coaching to international standards: ethics, contracting, presence, questioning, feedback. You practice it under the observation of master coaches. Whether you coach professionally or lead, mentor and teach with these skills, you finish with a craft that master coaches have observed and refined.
Ten sessions in five blocks
The program follows the ACE it! Method in five blocks of two sessions, every two to three weeks over about five months, two hours each. Each block gives you the material and then the practice: you coach, you are coached, and you take the same move into your own work before the next session. AI runs through all five.
With your facilitators, live on Zoom: twenty hours in all.
With your learning group, at a rhythm you set together.
Further practice sessions with your own people or clients. Recommended.
Yourself – how you lead, and how you want to
Your three assessments come back: You At Your Best, ACE Preferences, the Cultural Compass. You read them together with AI: where your strongest habits help, where they get in the way, and how to widen the range. Practice: your first supervised coaching rounds, and your first conversations with Ati.
Address and Create – understanding, and ideas from the other person
How adults learn, and why good advice usually fails. Contracting, presence, listening, the questions that open a conversation instead of closing it. Structured brainstorming, working from strengths, and the tools that move a stuck conversation: Best Work, the Learning Curve, Current State / Desired State. Practice: you run the tools on a real case.
Execute – from plan to first step, and working with people unlike you
Motivation and self-determination, the Wheel of Motivation and the Arrow of Success, small steps and follow-through. You use AI to understand the people you lead and to prepare for conversations with those whose preferences differ from yours, and you start working with assessments among your own people or clients. Practice: a full ACE conversation, start to finish, and coaching outside your preference.
Rolling it out – and making it last
Building this into a team, a practice, a classroom or an organization so it lasts. Leading change, facilitating breakthroughs, learning ecosystems, ACE your AI. Practice: your case, presented together with your team.
Stories, setbacks and the masters – when development gets hard
Stories that develop people: which to use, how to hear the story behind a situation with the ABCDE of Narrative, and how to shape your own story as a leader. What helps when someone you develop stumbles, and how a fresh reading of a setback opens the next step. What master developers do, from superbosses to mentors, conductors and coaches. You use AI to prepare for hard conversations, and you see where the human conversation carries the work. Practice: supervised coaching of a real setback, with time to debrief together.
Build or further develop your coaching practice
Two optional sessions of two hours each, at the end of the program, for everyone who coaches or wants to. You see, step by step, how to shape your offer, win clients and work with them. You also receive five more assessments of your choice, so you can start using them with your clients right away. Hands-on, practical, built for use the next day.
Ask us about the coaches' module in the call.
AI is part of the work from the first session.
You learn the newest ways to use AI for self-development, together with our assessments. AI helps you see your own patterns more clearly, prepare for the people you lead, and turn assessment results into next steps.
You practice it on your own coaching cases, in every block, with feedback from master coaches. Each of the four uses below comes with a method you can apply the next morning.
Understand yourself
Use AI as a thinking partner for your own development. You ask better questions about your habits, test your blind spots, and prepare for the conversations that matter to you.
Understand others
Use AI to see a situation through another person's eyes. You prepare for a colleague whose preferences differ from yours and find the approach that fits them.
Read assessments
Bring your three assessments, You At Your Best, ACE Preferences and the Cultural Compass, into a conversation with AI. You learn to read the results, see the patterns in them, and decide what to try next.
Work with Ati, our virtual coach
Ati is Autoris's own AI coach. You practice the ACE it! Method with Ati, prepare your cases, and keep your next steps moving between the live sessions.
Your learning group and your own people
The live sessions give you the material and the supervised practice. The habit is built between them: in eight sessions of about an hour with your learning group, a small group that stays with you for the whole program, and, if you like, with the people you lead.
Four to six people
Small enough that everyone brings a real case, large enough for genuinely different perspectives. Deliberately mixed: the coach next to the plant manager next to the principal.
Coaching on real cases
You coach each other on situations you are carrying at work, using the move from the last session while it is still fresh.
Practice with your own people or clients
We recommend further practice sessions with the people you lead or coach, or with your class. They are optional, and what you learn goes back to the group.
Everyone leaves with a next step
Each meeting ends with every person knowing what they will try before the next one. The facilitators are reachable between sessions and bring difficult cases back into the plenary.
At the end you hold a way of working that runs without you thinking about it, and the evidence, from your own practice, that it works.
What participants say
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Who you learn from
The program is led by the two people who built and run the method, in every session and not through assistants.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Matthias Ehrhardt
Executive coach and advisor for over 20 years to founders, top executives, family businesses and global corporations.
He trains and supervises other coaches. He teaches in IESE Business School's Leadership Coaching Program and is a founding fellow of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate.
Full profile →
Verena Lauffs
Executive coach for over 10 years across learning, coaching and talent development programs, with start-ups, NGOs and large corporations worldwide.
She co-leads every session with Matthias, including the supervised practice where you coach real cases and get feedback specific enough to change what you do next. A teacher's degree in languages, social studies and psychology underpins how she builds each cohort's learning arc, and she stays close to the learning groups between the sessions.
Full profile →Nearly 1,000 leaders and coaches have been certified across our programs.
Among them a social worker from Nigeria, a start-up founder from Israel, a C-suite member of a global corporation, physicians and hospital leaders, teachers and university faculty, HR and L&D directors, consultants and executive coaches, NGO directors, family business owners and family office principals. The mix is the point, and for many participants it turns out to be one of the biggest benefits of the whole program: people they would never have met otherwise, many of whom stay friends for life.
The next cohorts
German cohort · live sessions
Taught entirely in German. Starts January 28, 2027.
Ten live sessions over about five months, every two to three weeks, two hours each, online on Zoom.
English cohort · live sessions
Taught in English. Starts March 23, 2027.
Ten live sessions over about five months, every two to three weeks, two hours each, online on Zoom.
What is included
Ten live sessions with supervised practice, eight learning group sessions of about one hour, all three assessments for yourself, the right to use five assessments of your choice with your own people or clients, Ati, the Autoris Coach, the full toolkit and handbook, and lifetime access to the content. Coaches can add two optional sessions of two hours each on building or further developing their coaching practice, with five more assessments of their choice for their clients.
Scholarships are available. Ask us in the call.
For whole teams
From twelve people we run a private cohort for your organization, on your cases and in your context.
The Making Others Great Master is a program designation awarded by the Autoris Leadership Institute. Missed a session? It can be made up in the next cohort. A case that is not ready is presented in the following cohort at no extra cost.
Bring your own cases. Leave with a craft you can use every day.
Talk to us about your leadership challenge. In a short call we see whether the program is a good fit for you. No obligation.
Places per cohort are limited. We compose every cohort deliberately, so the conversation matters more than a form.
“Best training ever. ACEs have become our second nature – I convinced my whole team of the approach.”
Mario Hempel, Business Director, Bechtle
Das Gespräch führen wir gern auf Deutsch.
Die deutsche Kohorte findet komplett auf Deutsch statt. Wähle bei der Buchung Deutsch, dann sprichst du mit einer deutschsprachigen Person.
Gespräch auf Deutsch buchen →Join the nearly 1,000 leaders and coaches certified across our programs.
Book a call1. Gallup finds that at least 70% of the variance in team-level engagement is accounted for by the manager: the manager's own engagement, effectiveness and natural talents. Gallup, When Good Frontline Workers Make Bad Supervisors (January 2026).
2. Gallup, When Good Frontline Workers Make Bad Supervisors (January 2026). Survey of 1,214 U.S. frontline supervisors in the Gallup Panel, conducted May 7 to 16, 2025 (margin of error ±4 percentage points). 65% of frontline supervisors say they got the role based on performance or years of experience in a frontline job, and 30% based on supervisory skills or supervisor experience. Supervisors promoted for frontline performance were 31% engaged, supervisors chosen for supervisory skills or experience 42%. 45% of frontline supervisors took part in supervisor training in the past year, 32% earlier, and 23% never. Supervisors trained in the past year were 79% more likely to be engaged than those who were not (a relative difference, reported as an association), 19% less likely to feel burned out often or always, and 11% less likely to be looking for a new job. Among U.S. frontline employees, 26% are engaged, compared with 32% of the workforce overall.
3. Gallup, Employee Engagement and Performance: Latest Insights From the World's Largest Study (2020). Business units in the top quartile of engagement, compared with the bottom quartile, show median differences of 18% in sales productivity (14% in production records and evaluations), 23% in profitability, and 18% (high-turnover organizations) to 43% (low-turnover organizations) in turnover.