How I lead design teams, build trust, & create the conditions for great work.
I have spent over 14 years designing digital products, and the majority of that time has involved leading people — whether that is a team of 5 in a single office, a distributed function across two countries, or a cross-functional group of designers, engineers, and product managers who need to align around a shared direction. My leadership approach has been shaped by working across both corporate and startup environments, and by the reality that no two teams or situations require the same style.
What stays consistent is a set of principles I return to regardless of context.
Building Trust
Trust is the foundation of everything else. Without it, feedback does not land, disagreements become personal, and people protect themselves rather than doing their best work.
I build trust through consistency and transparency. My team knows what I expect, how I make decisions, and where I stand. I do not present one perspective in a 1:1 and a different one in a stakeholder meeting. When I do not have an answer, I say so. When I make a mistake, I own it publicly. These are small things, but over time they create an environment where people feel safe to take risks, challenge ideas, and be honest about what is and is not working.
In distributed teams — like the Kraków and Finland design function I led at Metso — trust has to be built more deliberately because you do not have the benefit of casual, in-person interaction. I invested in regular cross-office syncs, joint design reviews, and direct conversations when misalignment surfaced. The goal was always for both offices to feel like one team rather than two groups working in parallel, and that required consistent effort and genuine respect for the different expertise each location brought.
At Metrosoft, where I joined a small team with no established design process, trust had to be earned quickly. The team was talented but frustrated — solutions were missing the mark, clients were disputing invoices, and there was no structured way to solve problems together. Rather than arriving with a prescription, I listened first, understood the pain points, and then introduced the weekly sprint structure collaboratively. The team adopted it because they could see it was designed to help them, not control them.
Growing Designers
I take the development of the designers I lead seriously. At Metso, I ran regular 1:1s with each of my 5 Kraków-based designers, focused not just on current workload but on their longer-term growth. I matched people to workstreams where they could contribute their strongest skills while also creating deliberate stretch opportunities — whether that was a junior designer leading a piece of research for the first time, or a visual designer stepping into interaction design for a complex data platform.
Design critiques were a core part of how the team learned together. I ran these as regular sessions where designers presented work in progress and received structured feedback from the group. The emphasis was always on the work, not the person — creating a culture where critique was something people valued rather than dreaded. Over time, this raised the quality of output across the team and gave less experienced designers exposure to how senior designers think through problems.
Mentoring also extended to helping designers navigate the organisational side of their roles — how to present work to stakeholders, how to push back on requirements constructively, and how to build credibility with engineering teams. These are skills that do not always come naturally, especially for designers earlier in their careers, and I have found that investing time here pays off significantly in both confidence and output quality.
Handling Conflict
Conflict in design teams is inevitable and, when handled well, productive. Disagreements about design direction, priorities, or approach are a sign that people care about the work. The question is whether those disagreements are resolved constructively or allowed to fester.
My approach is to address conflict early and directly. At Metso, where the design team spanned two offices and multiple product workstreams, differences in opinion about priorities or design direction were common. I dealt with these through direct conversation — getting the relevant people in a room (or on a call) and working through the disagreement openly rather than letting it play out through passive decisions or avoidance.
I have found that most conflicts in design teams come down to one of two things: either people are working from different assumptions, or they are optimising for different outcomes. Surfacing which of these is at play usually resolves the tension quickly. When it is an assumption gap, aligning on the same research or user evidence clears it up. When it is a genuine difference in what to optimise for, that is a prioritisation conversation that needs to happen explicitly rather than being buried in a design debate.
At Metrosoft, the conflict was less between team members and more between the team and its clients. Solutions were being delivered that did not solve the real problems, leading to frustration on both sides and a breakdown in trust. By introducing a structured process where problems were properly defined before solutions were designed, and where clients signed off on direction before development began, I helped defuse the ongoing tension and rebuild a working relationship.
Leadership in Practice
I do not believe in a single leadership style applied uniformly. The way I lead a mature, distributed design team at a company like Metso — with established products, complex stakeholder landscapes, and a need for cross-office coordination — is different from how I lead at a smaller company like Metrosoft, where the priority was establishing foundational processes and rebuilding client confidence.
What remains constant is a commitment to clarity, honesty, and creating the conditions for people to do work they are proud of. I lead by making expectations visible, removing obstacles, and ensuring that every designer on my team understands not just what they are doing but why it matters.