Leman Tech Leadership Podcast

Aleksandra Lemańska
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Management

Leman Tech Leadership Podcast Welcome to the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, your ultimate guide to developing exceptional tech leadership skills. Whether you're a seasoned tech leader or just stepping into a managerial role, this podcast is designed to provide you with actionable insights and best practices to create a thriving work environment that people won't want to leave. Learn how to do it with host Aleksandra Lemańska, CQ Technology Leadership Mentor & Speaker. Founder @LemanSkills, Co-Founder & Board President @Startup Community Poznan Foundation, Host @Leman Tech Leadership Podcast. She is the creator of the CQ Leadership Method: a battle-tested framework that helps tech leaders communicate with precision and lead without burnout. Join Alex as she delves deep into the secrets of effective leadership, from mastering essential tools to implementing cutting-edge techniques. Each episode brings you invaluable knowledge, practical advice, or unique perspectives through engaging interviews with leaders who have experiences and lessons to share. Discover the dos and don’ts of tech leadership, learn about the habits that drive success, and gather strategies to foster a motivated and engaged team. Follow Alex @aleksandralemanska on LinkedIn for more inspiration and actions that you can take as a transformational leader. Check out more as well on https://lemanskills.com!  

  1. 2d ago

    #200 | From Pro Basketball to a 4,000-Venue Startup: Shameless Pivots and Betting on A-Players w/Fryderyk Szydłowski (@ Embargo)

    ▶︎ #200 | From Pro Basketball to a 4,000-Venue Startup: Resilience, Shameless Pivots, and Betting on A-Players w/ Fryderyk Szydłowski (@ Embargo) In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex sits down with Fryderyk Szydlowski, Co-founder of Embargo, the loyalty and CRM platform now used by close to 4,000 cafes, restaurants, and bakeries across the UK, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and the US. Freddie’s path runs from a professional basketball career in Poland’s top division, through London hospitality {becoming the youngest Head of Marketing in the city’s nightlife scene at 21}, a first attempt at a fashion brand, and finally Embargo: a business he nearly had to sell for survival money in the earliest days of COVID. What makes this conversation stand out is how directly Freddie ties his years as an athlete to what it takes to build a company: resilience defined not as toughness but as showing up and delivering through constant setbacks; long-term thinking held in tension with daily impatience; and what he calls a "shameless" willingness to change direction, fail, and try again, fast, because speed is a startup’s real edge over big competitors. Freddie is candid about who entrepreneurship is not for: people who need to fully switch off, who cannot tolerate rejection, or whose sense of worth depends on saying yes to every good idea. His practical rule, borrowed from a resonant read {see below}: every yes to something new is a no to something else, and learning to say no on purpose is what makes scaling possible. If you are building something from scratch, wondering whether the entrepreneurial path is for you, or trying to figure out what to say no to next, this episode is for you. Mentioned in the episode: Buy Back Your Time: by Dan Martell ✉︎ FOLLOW FREDDIE ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: Fryderyk (Frederick) Szydlowski Embargo: embargoapp.com Embargo on YouTube: youtube.com/embargoapp ✉︎ 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/

    #200 | From Pro Basketball to a 4,000-Venue Startup: Shameless Pivots and Betting on A-Players w/Fryderyk Szydłowski (@ Embargo)

  2. 4d ago

    #199 | The Leadership Skills That Actually Matter in Q4 2026

    ▶︎ #199 | The Leadership Skills That Actually Matter in Q4 2026 In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska skips the generic "top 10 leadership skills" list {the kind that could have been written in 2015} and names what’s actually changed heading into the rest of 2026: teams getting smaller relative to output because of AI tooling, decisions moving faster, and a widening gap between leaders who can personally verify the work and leaders who can’t. She walks through the four skills she sees separating leaders who are doing well right now from leaders who are quietly struggling: judgment under ambiguity (including her simple 40/70 rule for knowing when you have enough information to decide), renegotiating agreements out loud, asking real questions across an expertise gap, and naming what you’re actually for, and runs each one through PCM to show why the hardest one for you depends on your personality base. If you’re tired of skills lists that don’t reflect what your job actually looks like right now, this episode gives you four specific, practiced skills to choose from, and a way to pick the one worth focusing on this quarter. 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/

    #199 | The Leadership Skills That Actually Matter in Q4 2026

  3. Sep 24

    #198 | From Actor to AI Strategist: Red Flags, Real Feedback, and Leading Like Your Favorite Teacher w/ Sean Dagony-Clark (@Your Tech Ally)

    ▶︎ #198 | From Actor to AI Strategist: Red Flags, Real Feedback, and Leading Like Your Favorite Teacher w/ Sean Dagony-Clark (@Your Tech Ally) In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex welcomes Sean Dagony-Clark: a self-described "high-tech problem solver with a high human focus" whose path runs through acting, design, and 14 years in education {including running academic technology at Riverdale Country School} before landing at coding bootcamps Flatiron School and Iron Circle {formerly Thrive DX}, and now his own consultancy, Your Tech Ally, helping small and solo businesses build AI and tech strategy. What makes this conversation stand out is how directly Sean connects his years in education to leadership: clear communication, constant feedback, and treating people like a favorite teacher would {not a taskmaster}. He is candid that most leaders learn on the job, not from studying leadership, and shares an early mistake that still guides him: lack of clarity in communication can quietly alienate the people you lead. Sean also shares why he joined the STEMinist Summit {October 15–16, 2026} as an ally: a shared thread with co-host AJ Lauer’s work on imposter syndrome, and his belief that the biggest leadership skill in the AI era is still the human one {understanding what a tool can and cannot do, and using it without over-trusting it}. If you are rethinking how you hire, give feedback, or lead through the noise of AI, this episode has practical, hard-won lessons for you. Mentioned in the episode: Turn the Ship Around!: by L. David Marquet STEMINIST SUMMIT (October 15–16, 2026): https://steministsummit.com/ ✉︎ FOLLOW SEAN ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: dagonyclark Your Tech Ally: yourtechally.net ✉︎ 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/

    #198 | From Actor to AI Strategist: Red Flags, Real Feedback, and Leading Like Your Favorite Teacher w/ Sean Dagony-Clark (@Your Tech Ally)

  4. Sep 22

    #197 | How to Speed Up Without Your Team Falling Apart

    #197 | How to Speed Up Without Your Team Falling Apart In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska starts from a sentence a founder said to her recently: "I know we need to move faster, but I’m scared that if I push even more, the whole thing falls apart." Alex pushes back on the idea that this fear is a personal weakness, and on the false choice hiding underneath it, that the only options are slow and safe or fast and fragile. She uses the Wheel of Conflict to show why accelerating teams start fighting: what looks like a relationship problem is almost always an unclear structure {who decides, what "done" means, how long to wait before shipping} finally under pressure. From there, she brings in Contracting to explain the actual fix, picking a small number of non-negotiables that stay fixed on purpose while everything else is allowed to flex. If you’re trying to accelerate right now and feel the ground getting shaky under your team, this episode gives you a concrete, three-step way to speed up without losing the trust that makes speed survivable in the first place. 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/

    #197 | How to Speed Up Without Your Team Falling Apart

  5. Sep 17

    #196 | You Are Your Own Worst Enemy: Self-Worth, Boundaries, and the Real State of Women in Tech (Part 2) w/ Aleksandra Łoś

    ▶︎ #196 | You Are Your Own Worst Enemy: Self-Worth, Boundaries, and the Real State of Women in Tech (Part 2) w/ Aleksandra Łoś In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Alex sits back down with Aleksandra for part two of their conversation. If you haven't listened to part one yet (episode #188, where Ola shares her story as a serial entrepreneur now building her fourth startup), pause here and start there, then come back. This episode picks up exactly where that one left off. This time the conversation goes deeper into the state of women in tech and STEM, then and now. Ola traces her own transition from spending fifteen years trying to compete with men on their terms (efficient, unemotional, always proving she belonged) to realizing that treating her differences as a superpower, not a liability, changed everything. She and Alex unpack imposter syndrome, the exhausting habit of chasing external validation, and why so many women (and plenty of men) are, in Ola's words, "their own worst enemy." The conversation turns practical fast: how to stop being cruel to yourself in your own head, why energy (not time) is the real currency of a leader's day, and how learning to say no is what separates a good entrepreneur from a great one. And as a bridge to close things out, Alex and Ola talk about the STEMinist Summit, a two-day virtual event for women in STEM that Alex is co-hosting with AJ this October. Ola will be joining as a speaker, sharing more of exactly what you'll hear in this episode. If this conversation moved something in you, this is where you'll find your people. Mentioned in the episode: Episode #188, Part One of this conversation: "Przejścia. Którędy do miłości?" by Natalia de Barbaro STEMinist Summit (October 15 to 16, virtual): https://steministsummit.com/ ✉︎ FOLLOW ALEKSANDRA ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: @aleksandra-los-1423615b Website: 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/

    #196 | You Are Your Own Worst Enemy: Self-Worth, Boundaries, and the Real State of Women in Tech (Part 2) w/ Aleksandra Łoś

  6. Sep 15

    #195 | Your Team Just Got a Digital Twin of You. So What Are You Actually For Now?

    #195 | Your Team Just Got a Digital Twin of You. So What Are You Actually For Now? In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska tackles a conversation that’s been sitting with her since a recent talk with a founder she mentors in Poland, someone building AI-native tools that let a leader’s "digital twin" answer questions for their team around the clock. Her first reaction was relief on behalf of every exhausted leader she knows. Her second reaction is the one this episode is built on: if a twin of you can answer the question, what exactly is your job now? Alex is clear this isn’t a hypothetical. Whether it’s a literal digital twin or just a much smarter set of internal tools, more of what used to require pulling a leader personally into a conversation no longer does, and for a lot of leaders that’s quietly triggering an identity crisis they haven’t said out loud, because on paper it looks like nothing but good news. If you’re feeling the ground shift under what makes you valuable to your team right now, this episode gives you a concrete way to do the inventory, have the conversation, and decide, on purpose, what you’re actually for. ✉︎ 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/

    #195 | Your Team Just Got a Digital Twin of You. So What Are You Actually For Now?

  7. Sep 10

    #194 | Why Co-Founding with Your Brother, Detaching from Your Product, and Staying in the Code Makes You a Better Leader w/ Piotr Karwatka

    ▶︎ #194 | Why Co-Founding with Your Brother, Detaching from Your Product, and Staying in the Code Makes You a Better Leader w/ Piotr Karwatka @Open Mercato In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Piotr Karwatka, Co-Founder of Open Mercato, a 100% AI-engineered open-source framework for building enterprise CRM and ERP applications. Piotr has spent 26 years in technology, starting with freeware desktop software he built with his brother Tomasz as teenagers. Together they grew Divante from a two-person company to over 300 people before a successful exit, co-created Alokai (formerly Vue Storefront), which raised the largest VC round in Poland at the time, and built Callstack, the well-known React Native contributor, which also ended in an exit. They are also business angels with over 40 portfolio companies, including ElevenLabs. The conversation opens on one of the questions founders ask most often and answer least honestly: can you really do business with family? Piotr's answer is grounded in 26 years of data. The single most important factor was not love or loyalty but culture: specifically, the decision to always treat the company as a product separate from themselves. Piotr and Aleksandra then dig into delegation, control, and the specific fear that drives most early-stage founders to micromanage: not personality, but margin. When you have no financial runway, and every client matters completely, over-controlling is not a character flaw; it is a survival response. The episode also covers the question of whether tech leaders should stay in the code, and Piotr is unambiguous: yes, and anyone who told him otherwise gave him some of the worst advice he ever received. For Piotr, staying technical is not a comfort blanket; it is the thing that keeps your judgment honest. Whether you are a tech founder, a leader trying to delegate without losing your mind, or someone figuring out how to keep both the tech and the human dimensions of leadership alive as your company grows, this conversation offers hard-won perspective from someone who has lived every stage of it. Mentioned in the episode: "Radical Candor" by Kim Scott" "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg" Open Mercato: https://www.openmercato.com AI Tech Leaders training {aihtechleaders.pl}: https://aitechleaders.pl ✉︎ FOLLOW PIOTR ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: @piotrkarwatka X: @piotrkarwatka Website: openmercato.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/

    #194 | Why Co-Founding with Your Brother, Detaching from Your Product, and Staying in the Code Makes You a Better Leader w/ Piotr Karwatka

  8. Sep 8

    #193 | You Put Psychological Safety in a Slide Deck. Your Team Still Doesn’t Feel It.

    ▶︎ #193 | You Put Psychological Safety in a Slide Deck. Your Team Still Doesn’t Feel It. In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra Lemańska takes on a phrase most tech leaders have grown allergic to: psychological safety. She names the pattern first, because it’s the one that starts almost every mentoring conversation on this subject: a leader declares: "Come to me with mistakes, come to me with bad news," everyone nods, and six months later that same leader is blindsided by a problem the team saw coming for weeks and never mentioned. Alex is direct about why this keeps happening even with leaders who genuinely mean it: psychological safety doesn’t get built by the statement; it gets built by what happens the first time someone actually tests it, and most leaders never run that test on themselves first. If you’ve ever declared an open door and privately wondered why nobody’s walking through it, this episode gives you the specific, sixty-second-level tools to actually build the trust instead of just announcing 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/

    #193 | You Put Psychological Safety in a Slide Deck. Your Team Still Doesn’t Feel It.
See All (201)

Trailer

About

Leman Tech Leadership Podcast Welcome to the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, your ultimate guide to developing exceptional tech leadership skills. Whether you're a seasoned tech leader or just stepping into a managerial role, this podcast is designed to provide you with actionable insights and best practices to create a thriving work environment that people won't want to leave. Learn how to do it with host Aleksandra Lemańska, CQ Technology Leadership Mentor & Speaker. Founder @LemanSkills, Co-Founder & Board President @Startup Community Poznan Foundation, Host @Leman Tech Leadership Podcast. She is the creator of the CQ Leadership Method: a battle-tested framework that helps tech leaders communicate with precision and lead without burnout. Join Alex as she delves deep into the secrets of effective leadership, from mastering essential tools to implementing cutting-edge techniques. Each episode brings you invaluable knowledge, practical advice, or unique perspectives through engaging interviews with leaders who have experiences and lessons to share. Discover the dos and don’ts of tech leadership, learn about the habits that drive success, and gather strategies to foster a motivated and engaged team. Follow Alex @aleksandralemanska on LinkedIn for more inspiration and actions that you can take as a transformational leader. Check out more as well on https://lemanskills.com!  

Information

  • Creator
    Aleksandra Lemańska
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    201
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Aleksandra Lemańska
  • Show Website
    Leman Tech Leadership Podcast