▶︎ #189 | How to Lead Engineers Who Don't Want Your Career Path?

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska takes on a question more leaders are quietly wrestling with: how do you lead engineers who don't want your career path?

The episode opens with a story from one of Alex's mentees, a director who built a strong promotion case for one of her best engineers, only to have him turn it down. Not for money, not for timing, but because he didn't want more people depending on him. Alex names this as a growing pattern across tech teams: leaders offering the only kind of growth they know (more scope, more people, more title) to engineers who are optimizing for something else entirely.

Using Contracting from her CQ Leadership Method, Alex breaks down why this disconnect happens: leaders assume a shared, universal definition of “growth” that was never actually agreed on. She applies PCM to show how the growth conversation needs to shift depending on personality base, from mastery and technical depth, to values-driven work, to variety and stimulation, rather than a single generic script.

Alex closes with a direct challenge: pick one person whose ambitions you've been assuming rather than asking about, and have the real conversation this week.

Mentioned in the episode:
"From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For":
https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/


✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #188 | From Renting Lambos for Crypto to Deterministic AI Agents: Self-Worth, Startups, and Finding the Right Co-Founder w/ Aleksandra Łoś (Founder @Relayn)

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex sits down with Aleksandra Łoś. Her path runs from management consulting in Paris and London, through a string of ventures (a sports-matching app, a startup renting luxury assets for cryptocurrency, rebuilding the original Bitcoin whitepaper for the Bitcoin Association, and TrueMe, an attempt to merge AI with personal development) to her current company, Relayn, where she and her Co-founder are building AI agents on a deterministic, non-LLM-first architecture designed to cut compute costs dramatically.

What makes this conversation stand out is Aleksandra’s honesty about the belief that quietly drove her for years: that landing the "right" job at the right company would finally prove she was good enough.

Alex and Aleksandra also dig into the mindset shift from corporate to startup life, why intuition and self-trust matter more than gathering endless data when decisions move fast, and what actually predicts whether a Co-founder relationship will work. Ola’s answer: try the person before you try the idea.

If you are weighing a leap from IC to Founder, from corporate to startup, or you are searching for the right person to build with, this is part one of a conversation you will want to finish.


✉︎ FOLLOW ALEKSANDRA ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandra-los-1423615b
Relayn: https://www.relayn.sh/

✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Get the Book! https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #187 | The Always-On Leader: You Can't Contract Boundaries You Don't Practice

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska tackles a conversation she's had for years, in corporate hallways, mentoring sessions, and now with leaders across the globe: being always on.

The episode opens with a moment from one of Alex's own mentoring sessions: a VP of Engineering spent forty minutes describing the ground rules he'd built to protect his team's focus time, then answered a Slack message at nine at night mid-session. Alex names the gap directly: it's not what you tell your team about boundaries, it's what you do when everybody's watching, because you're the one they learn from.

She unpacks three reasons leaders keep overriding their own rules: identity fusion with being reachable, the fear that something breaks if they're not there, and the quiet belief that disconnecting means losing relevance.

The episode ends with a practical, one-week challenge: write down your real contract with yourself, name the need underneath it, renegotiate one specific term, and say it out loud to someone who'll hold you to it.

Mentioned in the episode:
"From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For":
https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/


✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #186 | Imposter Syndrome, the Funding Gap, and Building the STEMinist Summit w/ AJ Lauer (Founder @Thriving Ibis Leadership Solutions) {Part 2}

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex reunites with Dr. AJ Lauer, founder of Thriving Ibis Leadership Solutions and author of "My Monster Mungo: A Story About Imposter Syndrome," for part two of their conversation. Since they last spoke, AJ broke her ankle, spent two months out of commission, and used the forced pause to realign her business around the work she cares about most: coaching and imposter syndrome.

What makes this conversation stand out is the range of perspectives on imposter syndrome the two of them bring together: from women who never felt it at all, to the research showing it often comes down to whether someone has an innate sense of "this is who I am," to AJ’s observation that it frequently is not about lacking answers but about not knowing what questions to ask in the first place.

Alex and AJ also tackle a harder, more structural conversation: female founders still receive a small fraction of available funding, and both agree the fix is not only systemic, it is also about community, visibility, and accountability. That conversation is what led the two of them to launch the STEMinist Summit together (October 15-16, 2026): two days of talks, workshops, and curated networking with speakers from companies including Intel, NVIDIA, and NASA, built around real, generation-spanning STEM stories rather than polished LinkedIn versions of them.

If you have ever felt like you do not belong in the room, or you are building something and looking for your people, this episode (and the summit it introduces) is for you.

STEMinist Summit: https://steministsummit.com/


✉︎ FOLLOW AJ ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: AJ Lauer, STEM Leadership Advisor
Thriving Ibis Leadership Solutions: thrivingibis.com


✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Get the Book! https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #185 | The Loneliness of the Leader: Who Do You Actually Talk To Now?

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska addresses a subject she's lived through herself and hears constantly in mentoring conversations: the loneliness of the leader.

Alex opens with a story from a mentoring session: a leader who realized she hadn't had an honest, unfiltered work conversation in months, not because of a rough patch, but because everyone below her filters what they say, and everyone at her level feels like competition. Alex names this as a structural loneliness that comes with the role itself, separate from the burnout and isolation she's covered before.

She walks through why the gap forms quietly (the peer network that used to calibrate you disappears the moment you become “the boss”) and why leaning entirely on direct reports or your own manager rarely works.

The episode includes a concrete audit: naming who you can be technically honest with, emotionally honest with, and who shows up for you without being asked, plus practical, low-lift ways to close the gap, from small peer groups to reframing your one-on-ones with your own manager.


Mentioned in the episode:
"From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For":
https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/


✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #184 | Signal vs. Noise: How to Lead with Simplicity, Vulnerability, and Radical Clarity w/ Keith Zubchevich (@ex-Cisco, @Conviva)

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Keith Zubchevich, CEO of Conviva, the company that invented video quality measurement and helped launch 12 of the 15 largest streaming apps in the world. Keith brings 35 years in technology to the conversation, having started as a market analyst and built a career defined by one constant thread: joining companies that solve real problems and leaving the rest alone.

The episode opens on the concept of simplicity, not as a personality trait but as a discipline. Keith describes his "signal reports" framework: the idea that ninety percent of everything hitting a leader each day is noise, and that the single most important skill is training yourself to hear only what actually matters. He shares how he builds quiet time into overwhelming moments, and why simplicity requires grace, specifically the willingness to let go of things that feel important but are not.

One of the most distinctive practices Keith shares is how he opens his annual leadership offsites: not with wins, not with strategy, but with two questions for every person in the room. What are you not good at? And what is your biggest insecurity? He goes first, always, and shares something real, including his own daily fear that he is not doing a good enough job as CEO. The result, as he describes it, is an instant bond that dissolves the politics, agenda, and interpersonal friction that normally slow leadership teams down. This is not a team-building exercise; it is a structural approach to building psychological safety from the top.

The conversation closes with Keith's advice for anyone standing at the crossroads of an IC-to-leader transition or a move into entrepreneurship: never take a job that doesn't scare you. If you can already do it in your sleep, it is not a growth opportunity. The whole purpose of a career, as he frames it, is not to find comfort but to keep overcoming adversity and to build the version of yourself that can rise above the noise and lead others through it.


✔︎ Mentioned in the episode:

Conviva: https://conviva.ai
"Behind Every Great Man" podcast by Jessica Zubchevich

✉︎ FOLLOW KEITH ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @keithzubchevich
Website: conviva.ai

✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #183 | Return to Office Isn't a Policy Problem. It's a Values Conflict You're Being Asked to Enforce.

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska goes deep on a subject she's been asked about constantly: how to lead your team through a change, like a return-to-office mandate, especially when you're not fully on board with it yourself.

The spark for the episode was a question from a manager during a change management workshop: "How do I communicate this with honesty when I don't agree with the decision?" Alex is candid that she's been in that exact position herself, and that most leaders treat RTO pushback as a logistics problem (commute times, desk assignments, productivity data) when what's actually being negotiated underneath is trust and autonomy.

Alex walks through the Wheel of Conflict to diagnose what's really happening (focusing on conflict of data, structure, and values) and explains why most RTO friction shows up dressed as the first two but is almost always the third, which is exactly why productivity studies never resolve it. She also brings in the PCM lens on how the same changes land as a completely different kind of loss depending on personality base, and shares the script she uses for leaders who need to defend a policy honestly without either lying to their team or undermining leadership above them.

If you're currently standing in front of your team defending a decision you didn't make, this episode gives you the language and the framework to do it without losing trust on either side.


Mentioned in the episode:
"From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For":
https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/


✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #182 | Clear Is Kind: Why Most Leaders Avoid the Conversations That Actually Matter w/ Peter Murphy @Pocket Prep

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Peter Murphy, CEO and Co-Founder of Pocket Prep, a company built to help people pass notoriously difficult certification exams. Peter's path started in aerospace manufacturing at Lockheed Martin, where he was handed leadership responsibility in his first week on the job with zero preparation for it. After failing a critical operations certification exam by a single point, twice, he turned that frustration into the idea for Pocket Prep, a company now 40 people strong, bootstrapped, and built over 12 years without outside investors.

The conversation opens with a story about being told to quit, something Aleksandra experienced as a young violinist and Peter recognizes from the world of harsh, dismissive feedback that still shows up in entrepreneurship today. From there, the two move into one of the most honest moments of the episode: Peter's account of trying to fire an employee who had no idea anything was wrong, because Peter had never actually told them. That experience became the foundation for his approach to leadership ever since, built on the phrase “clear is kind” and the understanding that avoiding a hard conversation is not kindness; it is a failure of leadership.

For founders and early-stage leaders, Peter offers a refreshingly practical framework for hiring: identify the core functions of the business, be honest with yourself about which tasks you genuinely love versus which ones you are simply afraid to delegate, and bring in people who will care about the product, not just complete a project. He also shares why he personally answered every customer support ticket in Pocket Prep's early days, and the moment he realized that passion for a task is not the same as it being the right use of a CEO's time.

The episode closes with a candid look at what entrepreneurship actually demands: the constant mental load, the way every problem in the business ultimately lands on the founder's desk, and how to think about the decision to start something of your own versus building a career as an employee, neither of which is the wrong choice.

✔︎ Mentioned in the episode:

“The Coaching Habit” by Michael Bungay Stanier
Pocket Prep: https://www.pocketprep.com

✉︎ FOLLOW PETER ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @peterjosephmurphy

✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #181 | I Don't Have Answers (and My Team Needs Them Anyway)

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska tackles a subject listeners have been asking her about for years: what to actually say and do when your team needs answers, and you don't have them.

Reorganizations, AI-driven restructuring, rolling layoffs, hiring freezes that appear and disappear without warning (change has become constant, not a rare crisis). Alex names the two instinctive but costly patterns leaders fall into under this pressure: manufactured certainty ("everything's fine"), which quietly destroys trust the moment reality catches up, and silence, which teams read as something being hidden. Both come from the same well-meaning impulse: protecting the team from discomfort. Her reframe is the heart of the episode: that was never the job. The job is helping people hold real information, including the information you don't have yet.

Alex applies the Wheel of Conflict in a new way here, splitting uncertainty itself into a structural layer (the actual, sometimes-unknowable facts) and a relational layer (trust, anxiety, whether people feel like a priority) and shows why leaders who try to resolve the second with facts they don't have end up either overpromising or going quiet.

The episode closes with a simple three-part script listeners can use starting this week, plus a clear challenge: name the one thing you've been avoiding telling your team plainly, and say it, honestly, this week.

Mentioned in the episode:
"From Code to People: The CQ Leadership Method That Transforms Technical Experts into Leaders Teams Actually Want to Work For":
https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/


✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/

▶︎ #180 | Ditch the Shock Collar: Why Punishment-Based Leadership Fails (and What Works Instead) w/ Craig Taylor @Cyberhoot

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Craig Taylor, Co-Founder of Cyberhoot, a learning management platform built at the intersection of psychology, education, and cybersecurity. With a psychology degree and over 30 years in the industry, including two decades working with Fortune 500 companies, Craig made a pivotal career shift 12 years ago after being let go from a major corporate role. That turning point led him to co-found Cyberhoot, where he applies behavioral science to a problem the cybersecurity industry has struggled with for decades: how to actually get people to care about security.

The conversation opens with a question every tech leader has asked at some point: why do smart, successful people and organizations still treat cybersecurity as an afterthought, until something goes wrong? Craig's answer comes through a powerful analogy: the industry has been training employees like dogs with a shock collar, punishing mistakes with fear, shame, and fake phishing tests for 25 years. The result is not better security, it is apathy, disengagement, and employees who simply forward everything to IT because they were never actually taught how to recognize a threat.

The discussion broadens into one of the biggest questions facing tech leaders right now: as AI reshapes entire fields, from mathematics to medicine to engineering, will generalists or specialists come out ahead? Craig makes a clear case for the generalist, using examples ranging from Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue to a study comparing doctors who used AI as a thought partner versus those who outsourced their judgment to it entirely. He also offers a sharp warning for leaders: AI can argue a falsehood with total confidence, and the responsibility for the output still belongs to the human using it.

Whether you lead a technical team, are responsible for your organization's security culture, or simply want a better framework for building habits that actually stick, this conversation offers a refreshingly human, science-backed alternative to fear-based leadership.


✔︎ Mentioned in the episode:

“Never Lose a Customer Again” by Joey Coleman"
Cyberhoot {free individual access}: https://cyberhoot.com/individuals

✉︎ FOLLOW CRAIG ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @craigmtaylor
Website: cyberhoot.com

✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska
TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska
X: @lemanskills
Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp
www.lemanskills.com
Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/