> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://piotrmechlinski.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Six Bosses Who Built the Way I Lead - URL: https://piotrmechlinski.com/writing/six-bosses-who-built-how-i-lead/ - Published: 2025-12-30T23:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-08T07:54:22.000Z - Description: Six bosses taught me composure, value, team design, board preparation, negotiation and innovation. Their lessons became a deliberate leadership apprenticeship. - Author: Piotr Mechlinski - Tags: Judgment My leadership style grew through six working relationships. Each boss corrected a different instinct. I learned composure, commercial discipline, team design, board preparation, negotiation and innovation by watching those qualities under pressure. I did not recognize the curriculum at the time. I was trying to do the next job well. Years later, I can see the pattern. ## Grzegorz Wiśniewski taught me composure At Intergraph, Grzegorz showed me that manners and control are part of leadership. The Polish technology market in the late 1990s could be blunt. He stayed measured. He prepared carefully, spoke with respect and kept his standards when the room became tense. I learned that calm changes what a leader can hear. When you stop performing urgency, people reveal more of the real problem. You can choose a response instead of borrowing the room's emotion. ## Alicja Wiecka taught me value At SAS, Alicja connected effort to customer value. She was demanding about substance. A clever analysis or elegant presentation meant little unless it helped the client make a better decision. Persistence mattered because complex work rarely arrived cleanly on the first attempt. That lesson still shapes how I judge AI projects. Technical quality earns attention. Business value earns continuation. ## Andrzej Horawa taught me to build a winning team At Microsoft, Andrzej combined warmth with a strong desire to win. He paid attention to the people around the target. Who needed trust? Who needed a harder challenge? Which relationship with a partner or headquarters would decide the result months later? I learned that a high-performance culture needs both human connection and clear expectation. Warmth creates room for candour. Competition gives the work direction. ## Grzegorz Bors taught me board preparation At T-Mobile, Grzegorz changed how I entered senior meetings. I had thought the quality of the data would carry the recommendation. He taught me to prepare for the decision from each board member's perspective. Finance sees exposure. Operations sees disruption. Technology sees dependency. The chief executive sees the whole set of consequences. Good preparation respects those differences. It anticipates the objection, explains the tradeoff and makes the requested decision explicit. I use that discipline today whenever a leadership team must choose among AI investments. ## Daniel Matusiak taught me negotiation without theatre At IBM, Daniel worked on large, complex negotiations with patience. He could hold commercial ambition, client politics and delivery reality in the same conversation. He understood that pressure may produce a signature and damage the relationship needed to deliver it. From him, I learned to make room for the other side's constraints. Diplomacy does not mean surrender. It means finding the structure in which both sides can keep the commitments they make. That matters in AI work because the hardest agreements cross business, technology, risk and external partners. A promise that one party cannot deliver is only delayed conflict. ## Jakub Garszyński taught me innovation inside a large system At Deloitte, Jakub showed me how to move a new idea through an organization built to manage risk. Innovation at scale needs sponsors, delivery credibility, a route through quality controls and enough persistence to keep the work alive without hiding its weaknesses. I learned to respect the institution while challenging its habits. Jakub built sponsorship and delivery trust while he pushed against routines that held the work back. That combination moved ideas that pure rebellion or quiet conformity would have left stuck. ## The lessons need judgment These six lessons do not form a neat formula. Calm can become passivity. Commercial grit can keep a weak project alive. Competition can suppress candour. Board preparation can turn into theatre. Diplomacy can delay a necessary refusal. Respect for a large institution can protect its habits. The leader's work is to choose the quality the moment requires and notice when its strength becomes a liability. That is why apprenticeship cannot end with imitation. You borrow a practice, test it in your own context and keep responsibility for the result. The goal is a wider range of responses, guided by your values and the evidence in front of you. ## Build your own apprenticeship Senior leaders often lose access to direct correction. People edit bad news before it reaches them. Praise becomes easier to find than instruction. You can still build deliberate apprenticeship. Start with four questions: 1. **Who changed how you work?** Name the people, including those whose style differed from yours. 2. **What did you observe them do?** Record a behavior under pressure, not a flattering adjective. 3. **Where have you applied it?** Find one decision, conversation or habit that carries the lesson forward. 4. **Which lesson is missing now?** Choose a person who can challenge that gap and give them permission to be direct. The people around you shape your leadership whether you choose them deliberately or absorb them by accident. My six bosses gave me a working education across three decades. The useful tribute is to keep applying the lessons, correct my own version when evidence changes and pass the best of it to the people I lead. Write your list. Then call one person who still tells you the truth. Your move.