In this bonus episode, Łukasz Szóstek interviews Aga about her second book, Leadership by Design — a 12-week self-reflective course that helps leaders build a conscious, personal leadership practice. Unlike the thousands of books that present a single leadership model to emulate, this one starts from a different premise: there is no ideal leader, only the leader you need to become in your specific context, with your specific people.
The book was inspired by Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way — a weekly course structured around reflection and practical experiments rather than theory. Aga spent four to five months on the first draft, testing each chapter with a group of guinea pigs in leadership roles across different organisations, from corporate managers to freelancers and project leads. The feedback loop shaped the book significantly before it was published.
The structure is twelve chapters, each covering one week. The first four are inward-facing: how you see yourself as a leader, what beliefs you hold, how you approach self-development. The remaining eight apply that self-knowledge outward — to building trust, embracing diversity, making decisions, setting rhythm, and empowering a team. Aga estimates an hour a day is enough, though the commitment matters more than the schedule.
The conversation includes vivid examples from people who followed the course. One leader cleared his calendar of all meetings not involving his direct team, realising his job was to enable the team — not attend every decision. Another, a woman in tech, received a promotion after following the book, partly because she used it to examine whether she actually wanted that promotion — and why. A Spanish freelancer found it reshaped not just his consulting work but his relationship with his teenage sons.
The book is illustrated by Weronika Marianna in the tradition of the Polish school of poster design — intentionally spacious and gender-neutral so readers can project themselves into the imagery. It was co-developed with Philip Collins, a leadership coach and AltMBA fellow, who served as Aga's own accountability partner throughout the writing process.
Leadership by Design
A 12-week course in designing your personal leadership practice. For leaders at any stage — whether just starting out or looking to reflect more consciously on years of experience.
Aga Szóstek is a strategic experience designer who helps organisations develop and implement differentiated customer and employee experience strategies. She works with companies large and small — from Google, Samsung and Microsoft to Polish banks, telecoms and retailers — to create the stories their customers tell about them.
Alongside her consulting work, Aga designs and runs leadership programmes that help leaders build their own conscious practice. She is the author of two books: The Umami Strategy (2020) and Leadership by Design (2022/2023).
Lukasz: So you wrote another book.
Aga: Yeah, I did.
Lukasz: Why did you write a book on leadership? You always said you don't want to be a manager. Well, leadership is a wider concept than management. But you wrote a practical book on leadership slash management.
Aga: I've been working with a lot of leaders and many of them came to me and started asking me questions whether they could use my previous book, The Umami Strategy, as a guide to design their leadership. So The Umami Strategy was already on the market. And at some point, this book, Leadership by Design, because that's the title of it, started figuratively knocking at my door. And I didn't want to write it.
Lukasz: The door was on the inside, right?
Aga: Yes. Yeah, indeed. For a moment, I was rejecting the idea that I'm to write a book about leadership. However, I remember that I was making notes just to see where it gets me. And at some point, this book got so persistent. That it wanted to be written, that basically it wouldn't let me go about my life if I didn't write at least some part of it.
Aga: So I must say that it was a little bit of a frenzy writing it in a sense that I felt pressured to write it. And you felt pressured by the book. Yes. And you know, like, this is an interesting thing, because a lot of writers talk about this thing that they are vessels for the book. So the book kind of floats through them. And it gets on paper. So they are just a tool for the book to be born. And I must say that I always romanticize that feeling. I am not romanticizing it anymore. It was not pleasant. But there was another thing to this book, because it was supposed to be practical. So I wanted to test the book with people who were in leadership positions of different sorts. So I've been writing the chapters, rewriting them right away and sending them to a bunch of people who agreed to be my guinea pigs. And then I was getting feedback from them about what they liked and disliked in the book. So all in all, it was actually quite intense period. It took me four or five months to finish the first draft. And I was so tired of this book that I just put it away. I didn't look into it for like half a year, like I just didn't touch it. And then it was towards the end of the year, I decided, okay, I'm gonna scroll through this, see how it reads, how I feel about it. And I was in a crisis. I called with the publisher of the Umami Strategy, with Bionda, who at the time ran the Beast Publishers, the publishing house that published my first book. And she asked me casually in between the different things that we've been discussing, like, "By the way, Aga, didn't you write another book?" And I was like looking at her like, "How come she knew about that?" So I said, "Yeah, I did." So she said, "Okay, send me a proposal." Okay, I sat, wrote the proposal, sent it over. We had another conversation a week later. She apologized. She apologized for the fact that she didn't read it yet. And she promised me that she's gonna read it in the coming weekend. The meeting was on Friday. And we finished the conversation. And two hours later, I'm getting a message from her saying, "I read the proposal. I love it. We publish it." And I've decided that this book has a will of its own, and it decides for itself when, how it's supposed to be born to this world.
Lukasz: So you're really just a conduit from wherever the book leads.
Aga: Absolutely yeah. I must say that this is a very strange feeling with the book because Umami Strategy feels like my book, this book feels like I've been a means to an end which was the publication of this book, not necessarily the author of it. Funny, huh.
Lukasz: Let's talk a little bit what's inside the book because you said something about people being guinea pigs that sounds more than just readers.
Aga: That's true. So the book has been inspired by The Artist's Way, a book which is a course in recovering and discovering your creativity. I did this course years earlier and I really love the whole concept of self-reflective course that guides you through your transformation, your personal transformation. It worked for me really great. I really loved how Julia Cameron created this book and how she divided it in weeks and for each week you have a topic that you reflect on and you have a bunch of exercises that you go through to make this reflection not only in your head but happening in the real world. As I've been thinking about this book I didn't want to write a theoretical book about leadership because I don't have a theory on leadership. But what I've observed with those leaders who are coming to me is that they were always struggling with an idea that there is an ideal leadership practice or an ideal leadership model and if they strive long enough they will get there. But that model would depend on which book they would read, right? Because there is a number of very specific ideas about management. Yes, there are thousands of books on leadership. And there are thousands of models of leadership. So I don't want to write another book of that sort. So I thought that actually leadership is like being a parent, right? We have a lot of friends who have more than one child and they always say that the first child is never like the second, that there is always this huge difference between how they are and their characters, their way of being, their temperament, everything. And I've been thinking that with leadership it is exactly the same. You never get the same people, you never get the same context, you yourself change because you develop and mature and you have different ideas of how the world works. So why are we trying to think that there is an ideal way of being a leader, one ideal way? I would like to underline that while for any other part of our lives we understand that this is not the case, that it all depends on the context in which we are and the people we are dealing with, be children or employees. But also we change in time, right? Absolutely. So combining these two things, The Artist's Way of Julia Cameron and this reflection that I had, I thought how about creating a similar book as what Julia Cameron created in The Artist's Way but for leaders, where you have a bunch of topics to think about and these topics are quite universal for all the leaders.
Lukasz: Can you give some examples?
Aga: Of course. It starts very simple. It starts by asking yourself what is leadership for you, what are good leaders, what are bad leaders. Then another topic is how you are in your head, like what beliefs you have, how do you approach self-reflection and self-development. The first four chapters are about yourself and how you see yourself as a leader. And then the following chapters — 12 chapters in total — are about how you apply this leadership approach that you created for yourself in the world, with your team, with your organization, with the people who surround you. So you know it starts with finding your rhythm, how do you design your day so you are not exhausted and miserable at the end of a week. It goes through building trust, embracing the diversity, building relationships, daring — all these topics are the chapters. And again, it's not like any of these chapters is a deep dive into the topic itself. It's more a reflection, a very fundamental reflection on why this is a challenge and what are the elements of this challenge. And then you've got a bunch of exercises which you do throughout the week. So the book is divided not in chapters but in weeks, and you read one chapter per week and then you do the exercises. And then your job is also to do an experiment: to take one tiny little thing that you want to change in your leadership style and just run an experiment and see what happens. So it's a practical book.
Lukasz: And it's not so much about leading other people — from what you said, at least half of it is about dealing with yourself.
Aga: Basically I think all of it is dealing with yourself, but there are two contexts: one is dealing with just yourself, and the other is like dealing with yourself and others. And I would say that about one third is about yourself and your leadership style and the rest is about how you apply that in your environment in the place where you are.
Lukasz: And then you said that it's divided in chapters which span weeks so it's really meant to follow as a course. So suppose I buy this book — basically if I find one week to start it, it will really guide me through 12 weeks of finding my own leadership style?
Aga: Yes, exactly. So the idea is that this is a self-reflective course that helps you to come to terms that every single one of us as leaders are on a journey, and this journey — let's be honest — it never ends. So the idea is there to embrace the fact that you are an apprentice in this role of being a leader. And then you can teach yourself based on the examples from other people but also based on your own experiences. But you need to reflect on that. So it's not gonna happen if you are just reactive and not considerate about what sort of leader you are and what sort of leader you want to be.
Lukasz: So how much time would I need to spend each week? I have to make room in my calendar for this book. How prescriptive is this course?
Aga: It's not prescriptive at all. The idea is that you spend a week on one chapter. Why a week? Because you get a momentum of change. I've got a lot of people who did the course already. The book actually came out a year ago — the English version. The Polish version had a premiere a week ago, in September 2023. The official publication date was September 16, 2022, and in the US the official publication date was June 6, 2023. So I've got a bunch of people who already went through this course. Some of them went exactly like I prescribed it — they actually spent 12 weeks working with it. Some people stretched it to 24 weeks, and actually these people said that they would have preferred to have followed what I suggested. The week per chapter makes sense. It does make sense. However, it is a lot of work, so it requires a commitment and it requires making time for the exercises. And if I were to say, I would say it probably takes an hour a day to actually do. So it's not a lot.
Lukasz: Because you said it takes time but an hour a day is not impossible to fit into anyone's schedule.
Aga: Probably. That's true. However, if you are busy with your leadership work — yeah. But you said commitment, so I assume the commitment comes first. And you say like on average an hour a day suffices. It's not like I have to take half a day off on Monday.
Aga: No. Although I ran a course. When the book came out, one of my clients called me and said that they wanted to turn the book into a leadership program. It was actually for women leaders in technology. So I turned the whole book into a program. We started with two days where we were working on this idea of what sort of leader you want to be. Then there were six online modules because people were working and working remotely. So they came for two days, we were together, people bonded, and then we ran the whole course virtually. And I designed it in a way that you spent three hours on Monday discussing together the ideas of what it means for you to set the rhythm for your work, build trust, make decisions, and so on. Following the chapters. Then the participants would design an experiment for themselves. Then at the end of that week they would have an accountability session to see how the experiment was going and maybe discussing whether it should be adjusted. And then the next Thursday they would sum up the whole module and basically see what sort of change happened. And then at the end we would have another two-day offline workshop.
Lukasz: But most of the people who listen to this podcast won't have access to your course. So I hear you can do this on your own but it's always better to be in a group, at least for the accountability reasons. So if I could team up with someone, does this person have to be on the same level? Do they have to be in the same company?
Aga: I think that you touched upon the crucial thing — it should be a person you trust. It doesn't matter whether this person is further along the path of leadership or less experienced than yourself, because you always learn from the other person. And indeed this accountability aspect is super crucial. Actually there's data saying that about 20 percent of people are self-committed enough to actually follow these kind of things and the rest of us need some support. And this other person, this accountability partner, is a perfect way to actually do it.
Lukasz: When you put it like this, it is probably possible that the accountability partner doesn't have to follow this course — it could be just someone that asks you at the crucial moment: did you do what you set up to do?
Aga: So actually there's even a small paragraph that addresses that part in the book. One of the people who contacted me after running through the course told me that his company gave him a coach. Like you said, the coach wasn't going through the program but the coach was there to ask the questions and be this partner who you have to tell what happened and what didn't happen throughout the week. This guy did another thing — it was really interesting. He told his team that he commits to doing this course, and whenever he was at the office, he would bring the book with him with a bookmark put in it to show that he's actually progressing. And people would ask him — his team would ask him — how it was going. And he felt that he had to follow through because it was for them as well as for himself.
Lukasz: Yeah, but that sounds like it was a very healthy relationship to start with, right?
Aga: Definitely. Although the interesting thing that happened there — because I asked him what was the biggest change that happened — he told me that after reading the chapter about setting the rhythm he cleared up his calendar completely from all the meetings that he had scheduled, and he only set up the meetings with his team. Because he realized that it's his team doing the job and his job is to help the team do the job. So he shouldn't be in the meetings where the team members are discussing projects or making decisions and so on and so forth, because then he creates a hierarchical structure where everybody's waiting for him to make all those decisions. But he's there to encourage and empower the people from the team to be able and be informed enough to actually make possible decisions.
Lukasz: Just to make sure — this was appropriate for him in that context, because sometimes if you have a team of juniors you have to show up and help them make decisions.
Aga: Of course. Absolutely. Another person who followed the course was a lady — she also said that she reduced the number of meetings by 50 percent. Not completely, but she said that she allowed herself to sit back in many of them, to see how the situation develops, and then talk to her team members to discuss the best possible approach, and then the team members would be prepared for that. That's a different strategy. This lady actually got a promotion after following the book. Because of the book? I don't know. However, I heard from a person from the organization that there was actually a change in her that provoked the offer. And she told me that what she loved about it was that she could reflect on why she wanted to do it — that promotion. So whether it was because of her ego, or pleasing somebody, or whether it was because she needed it or wanted it, and was it a good thing for her development or was it actually detrimental. It was very interesting to hear that. And one more story — another guy, he was a junior leader. He said that he was a leader for a few months. He told me that the biggest revelation for him was that he realized he was trying to please his team. So he wasn't leading them, he was pleasing them. And then he realized: okay, I'm not there to do that.
Lukasz: It's a book in physical form and your first book, The Umami Strategy, was really nicely designed, but this one is just gorgeous. What happened there?
Aga: I think that I got more daring with book design. I understood better how books are being designed so my imagination went wilder. But the other thing was that I was contacted by an ex-student of mine, Weronika Marianna, who is an amazing illustrator. She wrote to me at some point and said: Aga, I would love to do something with you, preferably a book project. And it was probably like three or four months before I sat and started writing Leadership by Design. I wrote to her and said: okay, you asked for it. And we had an amazing collaboration. I got the dream team both times. We agreed to two things: one, I really didn't want this book to look like it's gender-biased in any way, so I asked Weronika to design the illustrations in a way that are spacious enough for interpretation. And the other thing was that we agreed we would love to apply the very famous Polish school of poster design.
Lukasz: And if someone doesn't know — there was a Polish school of designing posters but it's older than 40 years old. You will notice something familiar and then you can learn about the Polish school of poster design.
Aga: Yeah. So the collaboration was amazing. Dominika Vesoglon, who is also my ex-student and who designed the entire Umami Strategy and also some other projects of mine, she was responsible for the graphics of the book and Weronika was making the drawings. And it was like a blast. We had so much fun making it.
Lukasz: Cool. So where can you buy this book?
Aga: The book is available on Amazon pretty much everywhere in the world. And it can always be bought from the publisher, BIS Publishers. We will put the links in the notes. I know that it's also available in physical stores so you can check in your local bookstore. And this particular book I really recommend having in a physical form. Why? Because with the book you actually have space to make some notes. If you are the person who makes notes in a beautifully designed book. Then I would suggest to buy a notebook nonetheless, because it has exercises — it's easier just to have it open and look at the exercises in the morning or in the evening when you have the space. That also means that there is an electronic version? Not yet. So for now you just have to buy it in paper. But if you are in Poland, you can have the paper version and the ebook version in Polish.
Lukasz: But I ask you a different question: not why should you buy this book, but why shouldn't you buy this book? So who shouldn't go for it?
Aga: That's an interesting question, because some people were asking me: okay, if I'm a beginner leader should I — maybe it's not for me. If I'm an advanced leader maybe it's not for me. Actually I was at a conference recently and I gave a presentation about the journey of leadership, and there was this guy who approached me and said: you know, I'm a really seasoned leader. I've got years and years under the belt of being a leader of large organizations. I did my MBA, I did my leadership courses. I felt like I didn't need that course. It was interesting to come to your presentation but I thought the book was not for me. So he says this to me. Then: I'm ashamed to have thought that, and I'm going to buy this book and follow it. It was very interesting. And I was wondering: what did I trigger there? But then I also had people coming to me who were just leaders for a few months and they said certain things didn't resonate with them as much. Some resonated a lot, some less. But this is also very natural because they are just starting the journey, so of course not everything is top of mind for them. One of those guys also told me that he went through the entire book and said: now that I understand how I should approach my leadership, I want to do it again starting from early 2024 so I can be even more reflective. And I'm sure that I'm going to find different topics and different anchoring points in that book compared to the first time I went through it. So I would say that it's not for people who don't want to commit, who don't want to reflect on the leadership — those who wing it are probably going to find it annoying. But if you want to be a conscious leader and you want to commit yourself to become a better leader, it might be worthwhile checking.
Lukasz: All right. So just to summarize: the book should resonate with any leader whether beginning or advanced, in small and big organizations. It's a book you might be returning to. It's probably advisable to have some sort of support system — doesn't have to be someone who actually follows this course with you, just someone that you will be a little bit ashamed to say: well, this week I didn't do anything. And it's a tested program and those 12 weeks seem like a good length.
Aga: Yes, absolutely. So I would like to add one more thing: this book wouldn't have been what it is without help of my friend and AltMBA fellow from many many years ago, Philip Collins — and not the musician — Philip Collins who is a leadership coach and who was reading every single chapter and pushing me to make them better. So Phil, thank you so much for your support in writing this book and for making me keep on going when I was too tired and too annoyed with that book. He was kind of your accountability person while writing. Absolutely. He was my accountability buddy for that and without him I don't think that this book would have been what it is today. Philip is a very interesting person and we have recorded a long conversation with him — we are going to link that one. And by the way, there's one more thing I wanted to add. You said that this book is for leaders from small and large organizations but actually this testing group that I mentioned at the beginning had different people. I had a freelancer who was a leader for their clients — when you are a freelancer you are leading in a different way. I had a project leader — it was a huge huge project but you bring a bunch of organizations together and a bunch of contractors together and you have to be a leader for them. And one person told me something that was really really beautiful. He was a freelancer from Spain, Marcos. He'd been following the course starting by considering whether he wanted to stay in a consulting organization he was part of, and then quitting and starting his own freelancing job. But at the end of it when we had a summarizing conversation, he told me that apart from the fact that this book helped him to make the choices he was okay with respect to his own work and how he wanted to work, it helped him a lot to redesign the relationship with his sons. He had two teenage sons and said that this relationship wasn't really flourishing. And by following the book and experimenting also with them and asking them a lot of questions he realized that he created a relationship that benefited him at home as well as at work.
Lukasz: So leadership here means leadership in the widest possible sense of the word — that everybody is a leader in some context.
Aga: Absolutely. Great. So I hope that regardless of the fact whether you're a leader in an organization, a leader of a community, or a leader of your family, you will find something interesting there for yourself.