PA Leadership Coaching

I help Tech executives and leaders in Engineering and Product upgrade themselves, how they work, serve others, and create value in the world.

Leadership Coach

Inflow

Inflow's mission is to equip people with ADHD with the skills and support they need to reach their full potential.

I coach a number of folks across the org in their leadership development and in expanding their thinking to better cope with the complexity of day to day work.

Resident Leadership Coach

My role as Fractional CTO was focused on helping set Inflow up for success as the company grows: coaching and mentoring talented people, and to setup scalable processes across recruiting, software development process, and continuous improvement.

Fractional CTO

Hotjar

Hotjar is the Product Experience Insights software of choice for small and medium businesses.

I coach a number of engineering, product and UX leaders across the organization to be at their best when their best is needed.

Sharpist

Sharpist is the outcome-driven digital platform for people development that pays in on your KPIs by growing your employees with the power of coaching and personalized learning plans.

VP of Engineering

TourRadar

Reporting to the CEO, responsible for growing and nurturing the Engineering organization, along with its budget planning. Scaling up the company on the back of its series C round.

Doubled the team size within a year, to ~50 engineers, through a systematic, scalable and predictable hiring process, while increasing development and deployment velocity/frequency 3x.

Setting a clear direction and objectives for the team, communicating these effectively, and facilitating collaboration with different stakeholders across departments.

For a period of 4 months, led the Product org in addition to Engineering adopting a more structured, predictable and experimentation-based product development process.

VP of Engineering & Interim VP of Product

HelloFresh

(IPO: Frankfurt Stock Exchange 2017)

Responsible for driving and helping accomplish a long-term technical vision for a number of customer-facing teams. Aligning with the business and product vision of the company, empowering a fantastic and ever-growing group of engineers, and removing impediments to flow.

Heavily involved in engineering hiring, helping teams efficiently onboard new engineers, and coaching engineering managers in growing and nurturing their respective teams and individuals.

Director Of Engineering

Tasked with building a team for supporting and developing internal CRM technology. Being essentially a greenfield space at HelloFresh at the time, it led to the development of a modern event-driven architecture enabling us to tap real-time data fed into our CRM platform.

Engineering Manager

Architecting and develop a new Data Warehousing solution for the growing business. Hadoop, Apache Spark, etc.

Data Engineer

Architecting and developing the payments backend and integration with external payment service providers.

Senior Software Engineer

Sports Interactive

Portuguese localization of the market-leading football management simulation game Football Manager (formerly known as Championship Manager)

Translator

Universidade de Évora

- Backend development and maintenance of the University's Online Information System; 
- Design and implementation of integration mechanisms between the University's Online Information System and its counterpart Financial application;
- Design and implementation of public access APIs to the University's Online Information System, for use by external apps (kiosks, mobile platforms, etc) in different contexts.

Software Developer

LOUD! Magazine

Interviews, feature articles and album reviews for a leading Portuguese widespread metal music magazine.

Writer

InfluAds

Front and backend development of a PHP/Zend Framework based, MySQL/MongoDB driven, web app for use by the Influads network of publishers and advertisers.

Developer

Former VP Eng • Leadership Coach • I help you get in control of your work so it doesn’t control you.

🚀 Coach for tech leaders at all levels looking to step it up, and do well while doing good. If that's you, and you feel like someone who can expand your thinking could be handy, DM me. Let's chat!

🧠 Former engineering executive, manager and software developer, manager. Leadership, management and organizations through the lenses of complexity, systems, and how the brain works.

👹 The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world it’s either people or profit.

Paulo André

Executive & Team Coaching & Consulting - we help to drive business growth through the development of high-performing teams in everchanging environments.

Daria Rudnik Coaching & Consulting 

You don’t build a personal brand by posting.

You build it by connecting.


Yes, you can:

✔ Post on LinkedIn 
✔ Start a podcast 
✔ Write a book 
✔ Host events

But at the heart of it all is one thing: genuine connection.

How you share what you know. 
How you connect with people. 
How you learn from them.

And how—together—you create something bigger than either of you could alone.


That’s why I was excited to meet Lirone Glikman, author of The Super Connector's Playbook - a must-read for anyone building a personal brand that’s rooted in real relationships, not vanity metrics.


I also shared my own book CLICKING with her—one focused on team-level connections.

Because just like personal brands thrive on connection, so do high-performing teams.


Teams that: 

→ Trust each other 
→ Align with the wider org 
→ Deliver massive value—together


Excited to keep this conversation going at Lirone’s event Unfair Advantage: Grow With Founder-Led Branding this Thursday.


If you’ll be there—let’s connect.


P.S. Links to both books and the Unfair Advantage event are in the comments 👇

Daria Rudnik

Team Architect & Executive Leadership Coach | I help HR drive organizational success by shaping teams and leaders fit for an AI-driven world | ex-Deloitte | Author and Keynote Speaker | Founder & CEO, Aidra.ai

Most corporate burnout “solutions” are just sugarcoating the problem.


A mindfulness app.
A few extra days off.
A webinar about “self-care.”


Meanwhile, people are exhausted, cynical, and feeling like their work doesn’t matter anymore.
I work with them every day. I see it.


According to new research from MIT Sloan Management Review, burnout isn’t about being tired —
it’s a chronic workplace condition driven by unrealistic demands, lack of growth, and broken systems.


And here’s the truth:
You can’t fix burnout by asking people to “rest.”
You fix it by rebuilding how work works.


Here’s what the research (and my practice) shows actually helps 👇


1️⃣ Redesign Work for Growth — Not Just Output


High performers spend too much time executing and not enough time learning.
Without growth, performance flatlines — and burnout accelerates.



2️⃣ Recognize the Early Warning Signs


It doesn’t happen overnight.
Poor sleep, irritability, and “weekend catch-up” are early signals — not badges of honor.



3️⃣ Build Real Boundaries and Focus


MIT research highlights the biggest drivers of burnout: meeting overload, unclear goals, and “always-on” cultures.
The solution?
Fewer meetings. Clear priorities. Real disconnection.


The companies that understand this won’t just prevent burnout —
they’ll unlock sustainable, high-performing teams.


Because the cure for burnout isn’t rest.
It’s redesign.



What’s one change you could make to actually fight burnout — not just mask it?

The era of the “heroic leader” is dead.

No one person can save an organization in today’s world of relentless disruption.

Not your CEO.
Not your founder.
Not your Chief Transformation Officer.


Too much is coming from every direction:

➣ Market volatility
➣ Social expectations
➣ Employee demands
➣ Community pressure
➣ Government regulations


No single leader can handle it all. But teams can.


The future of leadership isn’t about command-and-control.
It’s about followership — and it’s time we start talking about it.

My friend, David Leitner, a leading voice on strategy and followership, shared a powerful insight:

“Followership is the decision to actively participate in manifesting someone else’s vision—and even bolster it to become more than it originally was.”


Think about that.

Followership is the glue between leadership and strategy.

And when done right, it turns team members into strategic partners — not just task-doers.

🔥 They challenge.
🔥 They contribute.
🔥 They elevate the mission.
🔥 They make leadership possible.


What happens when we treat followership as something to aspire to?

We create:

✔ Higher performance
✔ Smarter decisions
✔ Stronger teams
✔ Less burnout
✔ More buy-in


In my book CLICKING, I go deeper into David’s thinking and how organizations can embed this philosophy to build resilient, collaborative cultures.


But for now, ask yourself:

Are you creating space for strategic followership on your team?
Or are you still clinging to the myth of the lone hero at the top?


Let’s flip the script.

Leadership ≠ spotlight.
Followership ≠ silence.


Both are vital. Together, they build teams that win.


🔁 Repost if you’re ready to end the age of solo leadership.
💬 And tell me in the comments: How are you inspiring strategic followership where you work?

5 things most executives get wrong about AI 👇


❌ They think LLMs “know” things.
In reality, they predict the next word — not facts.

❌ They assume hallucinations can be eliminated.
They can’t. You can only manage them.

❌ They believe AI decisions are fully automated.
They’re not. Every “decision” involves human-built control logic.

❌ They expect consistent answers.
LLMs don’t repeat — they recreate.

❌ They think AI strategy = AI tools.
Buying the latest GenAI platform isn’t a strategy.
Without clear goals, governance, and strong data foundations, even the best tools fail to deliver value.


And that’s totally okay.
Leaders aren’t supposed to be AI engineers.
But in an AI-driven world, understanding how LLMs generate, stop, and adapt is key to managing cost, accuracy, and reliability.


These insights come from MIT Sloan’s research, which answers the Top 10 Executive Questions About AI — a must-read for every modern leader.


Check out the carousel for the key takeaways.

How LLMs Work

If you want to make the step from middle manager to executive — you need to learn this.

It’s not another certification.
It’s not more hours or harder work.
It’s learning how to navigate corporate politics — without losing your integrity.

One of my clients almost turned down a promotion because she didn’t want to “play politics.”

But what she discovered changed everything:

Politics, when done right, isn’t manipulation.

It’s aligning goals.
It’s understanding people.
It’s building trust and influence that lasts.


A few months later, she was promoted — not because she played the game, but because she changed how she saw it.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your leadership journey, this mindset shift is non-negotiable.

I break it down in my Forbes article 👇

This article was originally published on Forbes CouncilThis article was originally published on Forbes CouncilIvy, one of my coaching clients, shared 

Open article: How To Navigate Corporate Politics Without Selling Your Soul by Daria Rudnik • 4 min read

How To Navigate Corporate Politics Without Selling Your Soul

What if your organization had no managers?

The era of heroic leadership is over.
This is the time for empowered teams.


Veiko Valkiainen — a leadership coach and researcher on self-managed organizations — once said something that stuck with me:

“People often think they know their roles. But ask a few deeper questions, and the edges start to blur.”

What exactly do they own?
Where does their responsibility end?
Where does someone else’s begin?


Most teams carry around a lot of unspoken assumptions.
Everything seems fine…

Until it isn’t.

Until something slips.
Or two people double up.
Or no one steps in at all.


High-performing teams don’t wait for that moment.

They make responsibilities visible.
They talk openly about ownership.
They adjust regularly as the work evolves.


I'm not talking about job descriptions.
I'm talking about clarity in motion — keeping everyone aligned as reality changes.


I explore it deeply in my new book CLICKING — a guide to building truly self-managed, adaptive teams that thrive without traditional hierarchy.



Because the future of leadership isn’t about control.

It’s about collective clarity.


Get your copy of my book CLICKING here - https://lnkd.in/d8PTqYHN

For the first time in history, technology isn’t just changing what we do — it’s changing how we grow.


A recent Harvard Business School study found that developers using GitHub Copilot coded more, needed fewer check-ins, and required less oversight.


It means that AI is making individuals more autonomous—and forcing managers to evolve.


The old “control and supervise” model is dying.
The new era of management is about:

→ Strategic guidance
→ Client-facing problem-solving
→ Building human connection in hybrid human-AI teams


But this shift raises some tough questions for every HR leader:
💭 Do job levels still matter when AI flattens hierarchies?
💭 How do we measure growth when “junior work” disappears?
💭 How do we evaluate performance when AI blurs the line between effort and output?


These are the questions I’ll be diving into at AI At Every Level event hosted by Lepaya — October 14th, 10:00–10:45 CEST.


We’ll explore:

✅ How AI is transforming roles from entry-level to executive
✅ How to redesign career paths for leaner, AI-powered organizations
✅ How to evolve performance reviews to measure collaboration, not control


If you’re a people leader, HR professional, or team builder—this session is for you.


Join me to explore how AI is redefining management, career growth, and what it truly means to lead in this new world of work - https://lnkd.in/ei_dYeUS

When teams rely too heavily on AI, something important starts to fade.

↳ Engagement decreases, motivation weakens, and people slowly stop thinking critically.


In my work with leaders and teams across six continents, I’ve seen that the most successful ones don’t try to hand over their thinking to technology. Instead, they learn how to truly partner with it.


That idea is at the heart of my upcoming keynote at HR Week 2025 conference:
“Partnering with AI: Building Future-Ready Teams.”


During the session, I’ll share real examples of how organizations are learning to use AI as a partner rather than a crutch. We’ll look at what it takes to build teams that stay resilient, self-sufficient, and human while embracing technology as a tool for growth and creativity.


My goal is to help leaders move from simply managing tasks to creating environments where people and AI work together in a way that strengthens both.


If you want to explore how to help your teams grow alongside AI without losing their human edge, I would love for you to join me.


Follow HR Week and register for the event!

There’s no such thing as “people management.”

It’s a myth.


You can’t even manage yourself.

→ You can’t stop doom-scrolling.
→ You can’t break a bad habit.
→ You can’t build a good one consistently.

So how do you expect to manage other people?

You can’t.


After 15+ years of being an executive leader—and coaching leaders at every level—I’ve seen this play out over and over again:

People management doesn’t work.
System design does.


✔ You can manage processes.
✔ You can design environments.
✔ You can build systems where motivation and engagement become natural outputs—not forced inputs.


You can’t manage people into greatness.
But you can design teams that unlock it.

You can’t control collaboration.
But you can build organizations that encourage it.

So stop chasing control.
Start building clarity.


The future isn’t about managing people.
It’s about enabling them.

Courage in leadership doesn’t have to be loud.
Sometimes, it’s quiet.


And if you think it’s easy—it’s not.
It’s one of the toughest skills my executive clients struggle to master.


It’s the choice not to answer every question.
The pause before you jump in—so someone else can.
The discipline to sit with discomfort, and still choose trust.


If you’ve built your leadership identity around being reliable, responsive, and in control…

Letting go can feel risky. Even wrong.


But here’s what I’ve learned through my own executive experience:
Your value doesn’t come from being everywhere at once.
It comes from building a team that can stand on its own.


Sebastian Gerhardt, Co-Founder and CEO of Flea, put it perfectly when we spoke about leadership in engineering teams:

“It’s really startling that companies hire smart people, pay them a lot of money, and then just tell them top-down what to do — instead of using the full power of the team, making them feel heard, and letting them be part of creating solutions.”


That’s the trap many leaders fall into.
They hire brilliant minds—then block them with control.

We don’t need to have all the answers to be great leaders.
But we do need to create the conditions where our people can find the answers themselves.


So next time something heavy lands on your plate, pause and ask:
👉 Is this mine to carry?
👉 Or is it time to pass it to someone else?


That’s what it means to lead with intention, not control.


Want to take this from mindset to method?
That’s exactly what my new book CLICKING helps you do—step by step.


Get your copy here - https://lnkd.in/d8PTqYHN

AI is killing productivity. Yes, you read that right.

Harvard Business Review calls it the rise of “workslop.”


AI was supposed to save us time.
Instead, it’s making us slower.

And here’s the truth:
↳ Most teams aren’t using AI to do better work — they’re using it to look like they did.


“Workslop” = AI-generated content that masquerades as good work, but actually creates more work for everyone else.
(You’ve seen that on LinkedIn, right?)


Sound familiar? 👇

➣ Polished slides that say nothing new. (use Napkin AI and Gamma App for this)
➣ Long AI-written reports that no one can trust. (hello, Gemini DeepResearch.)
➣ Emails so vague they spawn three follow-ups. (Any AI chatbot can do that.)


Looks impressive.
Delivers nothing.


And it’s not a small issue:
→ 40% of employees say they’ve received “workslop.”
→ Each incident wastes nearly 2 hours of productivity.
→ For a company of 10,000? That’s $9M+ lost every year.


But here’s my biggest frustration:
↳  Instead of creating something brilliant, AI misuse is eroding trust.

After receiving AI slop, coworkers start seeing each other as less creative, less capable, and less intelligent.


Here’s the mindset shift leaders need to make:


❌ Don’t push “AI everywhere.”
✅ Promote intentional AI.


Teach your teams that AI isn’t a shortcut — it’s a collaborator.
It’s here to enhance human thinking, not replace it.


Because “workslop” isn’t just a workflow issue.
It’s a culture issue.


Leaders who model purposeful AI use will build teams that think deeper, create better, and move faster.


The rest?
They’ll just keep drowning in slop.

The-Hidden-Cost-of-AI-at-Work

The number 1 mistake good leaders make?

They care too much—and burn themselves out because of it.


I’ve seen it time and time again:

🔥 They take on too much.
🔥 They jump in to solve every problem.
🔥 They carry the weight their entire team should be sharing.


They are  not weak leaders.
But they haven’t been taught the real skill of leadership:

Designing teams that don’t depend on them.


When leaders overfunction, their teams underfunction.
Instead of empowering their people…
They become the bottleneck.


During the R GENERATION event last month, I spoke about this exact trap—and how to escape it.


And it’s the core idea behind my book CLICKING:
How to build high-performing, self-sufficient teams that don’t just support the leader…

They help grow the leader.


Because real leadership isn’t about doing it all.
It’s about building a system that thrives without you in the middle.


Want to become that kind of leader?

Start by asking yourself:

“Where am I needed too much—and what would it take to fix that?”

The browser war just got interesting.

I already have four browsers — and now Atlas joins them.
But I really don’t want another window to the web.

What I want is a workspace inside it.

Because everything I do — communication, collaboration, payments, creativity — already happens online.
The browser is no longer just where we browse.
It’s where we work.

That’s why OpenAI’s new agentic browser, Atlas, has my interest.

If it delivers on the promise — helping us stay faster, more focused, and less scattered — it could redefine how we work online.


And we already see the shift where the web is becoming an intelligent partner.

In a recent contribution to a Senior Executive AI Think Tank, together with other AI experts, we explored how to leverage agentic browsers at work.


Here are six principles for the next era of digital productivity 👇

1️⃣ Embrace the browser as a workspace
→ Centralize tools and workflows to reduce friction and distraction.

2️⃣ Delegate outcomes, not steps
→ Shift from manual clicks to goal-based instructions. Let AI execute.

3️⃣ Build governance into automation
→ Define ethical boundaries and accountability for AI actions.

4️⃣ Simplify learning curves
→ Empower employees to issue intent-based commands instead of mastering endless interfaces.

5️⃣ Focus on efficiency through integration
→ Connect AI agents to existing systems to streamline decision-making.

6️⃣ Transform users into directors
→ Move from doing to directing. Let AI handle execution while humans steer outcomes.

The next generation of browsers won’t just show us the internet.
They’ll help us work with it.



Have you tried Atlas? What do you think of it?

taplio

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Daria Rudnik Coaching & Consulting

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Daria Rudnik Coaching & Consulting

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