▶︎ #179 | My Team Uses AI to Do the Work. How Do I Know If They're Actually Good at Their Job?

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska unpacks a question that's been sitting with her since a mentoring conversation a few weeks ago: if a piece of work looks correct, clean, and well structured, how do you actually know whether the person who produced it understands it?

The spark was a real story: a leader approved a pull request from one of her strongest engineers. It broke in production. When she walked through it with him afterward, he couldn't explain, ninety seconds in, why the code did what it did (not because he was hiding anything, but because he genuinely didn't know).

Alex is direct that this episode isn't "AI is bad" or a case for banning tools. It's something narrower and more urgent: leaders have lost their old visual signal for competence, and most haven't built a new one yet. She reframes the anxiety many leaders feel as a Contracting gap (almost no team has explicitly agreed on what ownership means when a tool did part of the work) and brings in the PCM layer: asking people to "explain their reasoning" lands very differently depending on personality base, and can read as an accusation if it isn't introduced as a team-wide standard set in advance.

If you've caught yourself wondering whether your team's output still tells you what it used to, this episode gives you four concrete moves to start rebuilding that signal 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/

▶︎ #178 | Female Founders, Fear of Success, and the Leadership Leap Nobody Prepares You For w/ Nita Laad (@ex-Cisco, @ex-HP, @Nexia AI)

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Nita Laad: Founder and CEO of Nexia AI, a Silicon Valley startup building an AI-native platform for product management teams. Nita brings a rare arc to this conversation - eight years writing code, then a full-stack leadership career spanning engineering, product, and go-to-market at Cisco and Hewlett Packard, and finally the leap into founding. She is also a 2025 Silicon Valley Business Journal Woman of Influence - and she is not here to make any of it sound easy.

The heart of this conversation is the gap between leading in a corporation and leading as a founder - and it is wider than most people expect. Nita is specific: in corporate, the brand, the processes, the HR department, the training programs are all already there. You execute within a system. In a startup, you are the system. Every function lands on your shoulders before you have people to delegate it to, and the iteration cycles are not quarterly - they are sometimes hourly. 

Alex brings in one of her sharpest questions - not about fear of failure, but about fear of success. The exchange that follows goes somewhere most leadership conversations avoid: self-sabotage, the risk management table the brain runs quietly when you are about to outgrow your current circle, and whether the people around you are actually positioned to help you reach the next level or quietly holding you where you are. 

There is also a sharp section on why only 2% of women-founded companies get investment, what is finally starting to shift, and what Nita would tell any woman standing at the edge of the founder decision right now. If you are in that place - or you know someone who is - this episode is worth the full listen.

✔︎ Mentioned in the episode:

"Multipliers" by Liz Wiseman"
https://nexiausa.com

✉︎ FOLLOW NITA ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @nlaad
Nexia AI: https://nexiausa.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/

▶︎ #177 | Tech Leadership Q&A: How Do I Push Back on My Manager's Unrealistic Deadline or Scope?

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska continues her Q&A series with two closely linked questions: "How do I push back on my manager's unrealistic deadline or scope?" and "Did I actually agree to this, or did I just not object?"

On pushing back, Alex reframes the entire conversation: it isn't conflict, it's renegotiating a contract that was never properly set in the first place. Her own approach is calm and practical - when a new urgent request lands, she acknowledges it, then asks what should move down the priority list to make room for it.

The second question gets at something many leaders quietly carry: the difference between actually agreeing to something and simply not objecting. Alex is blunt that silence is often treated as agreement, and staying silent to avoid friction creates confusion, wasted time, and resentment down the line.

Both questions trace back to the same root cause: gaps in contracting and unspoken beliefs about what should be "obvious." Alex's challenge for listeners: the next time a new request lands on your desk, name it out loud and ask what should give way - and the next time you feel a silent "no," say it. If this episode resonated, share the link with someone who needs to hear it.


✉︎ 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/

▶︎ #176 | From PhD to Director: What Academia Never Teaches You About Leading People w/ Quentin Reul (Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai)

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Quentin Reul: Director AI Strategy and Solutions at expert.ai, a Belgian-born computer scientist whose one-year English adventure in the UK quietly turned into a decade - a PhD in symbolic AI, a front-row seat to the academic-to-enterprise transition, and eventually a leadership path built through teams of data scientists, software engineers, knowledge engineers, and QA specialists spread across continents.

The conversation opens with one of the most underexplored tensions in tech: what actually breaks when you move from academic research culture into enterprise delivery. Quentin is precise about it - it is not about intelligence or even drive. It is the completion mindset. Academia rewards the idea, the paper, the demonstrable prototype. Enterprise rewards the shipped thing, the SOC-compliant thing, the thing a customer can buy tomorrow. The gap between those two modes is where a lot of technically brilliant people quietly stall - and where Quentin has spent years learning to bridge it.

If you came up through a technical or research background and are now leading - or thinking about leading - people for the first time, this one will land.


✉︎ FOLLOW QUENTIN ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @unlockdatawithquentin
YouTube: Quentin Reul on YouTube

✉︎ 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/

▶︎ #175 | Tech Leadership Q&A: Why Does the Same Feedback Land for One Person and Wreck Another?

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska continues her Q&A series by tackling two questions that go hand in hand: "Why does the same piece of feedback land fine with one person and wreck another?" and "Is it normal to dread one-on-ones with certain people?"

Alex's answer centers on communication intelligence, or CQ - the core of her CQ Leadership Method, built tightly to the Process Communication Model. Feedback that doesn't land usually isn't tailored to the person receiving it; it's tailored to how the leader prefers to give and receive feedback. Since there are six personality bases, defaulting to your own style means you are statistically only speaking the language that one out of six people actually needs.

She lays out a practical starting point: map your team. List everyone you lead, make a hypothesis about each person's personality base, and note the keywords and communication channels they respond to. Then pick one person and one small adjustment - a different question, a different channel - and test it for a week. This is what builds the CQ muscle: awareness, hypothesis, reps.


✉︎ 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/

▶︎ #174 | A-Players, Task Monkeys, and the AI Reckoning w/ Francis Brero (VP AI Strategy @HG Insights)

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Francis Brero: VP of AI Strategy at HG Insights and Co-Founder of MadKudu, a French-born engineer who swapped the grandes ecoles of Paris for Silicon Valley and has spent 15 years building AI-powered systems for some of the world’s leading B2B revenue organizations. Francis brings a mathematician’s rigour and a founder’s scar tissue to every conversation about teams - and this one is no exception.


What drives this episode is Francis’s deceptively simple framework for mapping any team: the task monkey who executes, the problem-solver who adapts, the system thinker who diagnoses root causes, and the rock star who spots the problem before anyone else named it. The conversation moves fast from there - to the hidden cost of keeping “okay” players on the roster, why brilliant jerks are rarely as indispensable as they think, and why the bar for what counts as a rock star has shifted dramatically with AI. 

If you are managing a team right now and quietly wondering whether you have the right people in the right seats - or whether you yourself are operating above or below the system-thinker line - this episode will give you a sharper lens.


✔︎ Mentioned in the episode:

Radical Candor - Kim Scott
vast.ai (GPU rental platform): https://vast.ai

✉︎ FOLLOW FRANCIS ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @francisbrero
HG Insights: https://hginsights.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/

▶︎ #173 | Tech Leadership Q&A: How Do I Get My Team to Just Do Their Job Without Checking on Them Constantly?

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska continues her Q&A series with one of the most common struggles tech leaders bring to her: "How do I get this person to do their job without checking on them constantly - and how do I trust that it will be done as well as I would do it myself?"

Alex traces this straight back to contracting, specifically the contracting gap at the professional level. When scope, success criteria, decision-making authority, and ways of working were never explicitly discussed and agreed on, leaders are left guessing whether "good work" in their head matches "good work" in their team member's head. That gap, not a lack of trust, is usually the real root cause behind the urge to micromanage.

Alex’s concrete challenge for listeners is to check their own needs first, then schedule a recontracting conversation with at least one team member this week. If this question is one you - or someone you know - keeps asking, share the episode with them.


✉︎ 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/

▶︎ #172 | What Silicon Valley Taught a Tech Analyst About Marketing, Authority, and Never Burning Bridges w/ Mark Vena, @ex-Dell Technologies,  @SmartTech Research

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Mark Vena, CEO and Principal Analyst at SmartTech Research, a boutique technology research firm he founded after 25 years of senior marketing and leadership roles at companies including IBM, Dell, Compaq, Alienware, and Sling Media. For 18 of those years, Mark operated at the epicenter of innovation - seven minutes from the Apple campus in Silicon Valley - where he developed a rare ability to see through both the brilliance and the blind spots of founder culture.

The conversation opens with a question leaders rarely ask themselves out loud: do you actually need to be an expert in a field to lead it well? Mark's answer is clear and backed by a career that started with a history degree - and led to managing engineering and marketing teams at some of the biggest names in tech.

Mark shares a Steve Jobs story you probably haven't heard - a blind audio test during the original iMac development that revealed how much the post-NeXT Jobs had changed as a leader. It's a precise illustration of something Mark returns to throughout the conversation: the ability to evolve. To separate what's worth going to war for from what simply isn't.

The episode also covers the AI revolution from a marketing analyst's perspective - and it's more concrete than most takes. Mark describes how AI is shifting the entire content creation model, why the old agency-driven marketing playbook is collapsing, and what he believes will be the signal moment that AI has fully arrived (hint: it involves a Best Picture winner).

If you lead a team, are building something, or sit at the intersection of technology and go-to-market, this is a conversation worth your full attention.


✔︎ Mentioned in the episode:

SmartTech Research podcast
TV series "John Adams" (HBO)

✉︎ FOLLOW MARK ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @markvena
X: @MarkVenaTechGuy

✉︎ 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/

▶︎ #171 | Tech Leadership Q&A: Am I Actually Good at This… or Did I Just Get Lucky?

In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska kicks off a new Q&A series, where she answers the questions tech leaders keep asking her in workshops, keynotes, and one-on-one conversations - the questions that often go unspoken. Today she tackles two that show up constantly with newer leaders: "Am I actually good at this leadership thing, or did I just get lucky?" and "Why do I miss writing code so much?"

On the first question, Alex is direct: feeling unprepared as a new leader is not a sign that you don't belong, it is a sign that you are doing a completely different job than the one you were promoted for. She shares a bold claim from her years of working with tech leaders: roughly 90% of leaders were never properly prepared for leadership, and that is a systemic failure, not a personal one. Most people get promoted into leadership as a reward for being great individual contributors, with no real training in the new skill set, mindset, and tool set that the role actually demands.

The second question - why leaders miss writing code, building, or doing the hands-on work they used to be great at - gets reframed too. According to Alex, this isn't nostalgia. It's a contracting problem, both with yourself and with your organization, because nobody has defined what "winning" looks like in your new role.

Alex closes with a concrete exercise: write down everything you were great at and got promoted for, and next to it, write down what your role actually requires of you today. Compare the two lists - they will look very different, and that difference is the real shift you are navigating. If either question hit home, share the episode with a tech leader who needs to hear it too.



✉︎ 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/

▶︎ #170 | From Startup Garage to Microsoft MVP: How Continuous Learning Builds Unbreakable Tech Leaders w/ Amit Chandak, @ex-Oracle, @Kinerika

In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Amit Chandak, CTO and Data & AI Lead at Kinerika, a Microsoft Fabric Featured Partner operating at the forefront of cloud data engineering. Amit's career spans three distinct environments: a 10-year co-founder journey building a BI tool from a two-person apartment startup to a 50-person product company, senior engineering leadership at Oracle, and now heading data and AI strategy at a fast-scaling services organization. In 2022, he became a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for his exceptional contributions to the Power BI community - a recognition earned through over 17,000 community solutions and years of relentless self-directed learning.

The episode opens with a question that shapes the entire conversation: what actually separates the leaders who compound their impact over time from those who plateau?

Amit and Aleksandra dig deep into the IC-to-leader transition - one of the most structurally underestimated challenges in tech organizations. Amit is precise about what gets lost in that shift: the identity of being the best individual performer becomes a liability when your actual job is to build an environment where the team outperforms what you ever could alone.

For anyone navigating the tension between lifelong learning and burnout, building a tech team from scratch, or making the mental shift from individual contributor to people leader - this episode delivers the kind of practical clarity that only comes from someone who has lived every stage of that journey.


✉︎ FOLLOW AMIT ON: ⤵︎
LinkedIn: @amitchandak
YouTube: Amit Chandak

✉︎ 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/