Designing Leadership: How Service Design Thinking Shapes Collaboration in Multidisciplinary Teams
In today’s digital workplaces, effective leadership is no longer defined by authority but by the ability to listen, empathise, and co-create. This article draws on the empirical case study project conducted for my master’s thesis to explore how service design thinking and co-design can reshape teamwork and leadership in multidisciplinary product development. It reveals how design-led collaboration transforms complexity into shared understanding and turns traditional management into a culture of collective innovation.
From Designing Services to Designing Leadership
Modern product development is not only about technology but about people and collaboration. My thesis, Strategic Integration of Service Design Thinking, Co-Design, and Leadership for Advancing Multidisciplinary Software Product Design, examined how design-driven approaches enhance leadership and teamwork in complex environments. Due to confidentiality, the project name is withheld and referred to as the case study project. Serving as the empirical part of the thesis, this AI-driven staffing platform was created by a diverse team of designers, engineers, and business professionals. The study explored how human-centred design and participatory leadership can work together to strengthen collaboration, empathy, and innovation.
Design Thinking in Leadership Practice
Traditional leadership often relies on hierarchy and control, but modern teams thrive on empathy, facilitation, and shared ownership. Service design thinking introduces a human-centred mindset to leadership by emphasising understanding, iteration, and collaboration. When combined with co-design, where users and stakeholders shape outcomes together, it transforms leadership into a creative and inclusive practice. In the case study project, tools such as customer journeys, service blueprints, and value proposition maps guided decisions across teams. These visual methods connected business goals with user needs and technical realities, making leadership more transparent, evidence-based, and responsive to people’s experiences. Co-design workshops served as dynamic spaces for collaboration rather than formal meetings. Designers, developers, and business representatives worked together in digital environments like Figma and Miro to test concepts and share insights. This openness fostered trust and psychological safety, allowing participants to express ideas freely and challenge assumptions. Conflicts became opportunities for creative problem-solving. Leadership naturally shifted to those with the most relevant expertise, turning decision-making into a collective process. In this way, leadership evolved through dialogue, reflection, and mutual learning.
Building a Framework for Collaborative Leadership
The research resulted in the Strategic Co-Design Integration Framework (SCIF), which illustrates how organisations can embed service design principles into leadership and teamwork. It highlights the importance of aligning strategic goals, integrating design methods into agile processes, and establishing reflective routines that strengthen both performance and learning capacity. The framework positions leaders as facilitators who listen, synthesise, and create conditions that empower others to contribute meaningfully. When sustained across teams, these practices transform design thinking from a set of tools into a shared organisational mindset.
Leading Through Design
The case study project demonstrated that empathy can be structured, reflection can be systematic, and collaboration can be intentionally designed. Service design tools helped leaders move beyond intuition by making user needs visible and linking decisions to real experiences. Prototypes became instruments for decision-making, while regular reflection sessions nurtured continuous improvement. Leadership shifted from authority to facilitation, and the team grew more cohesive, creative, and adaptive. These findings show how service design can shape not only the product but also the leadership culture that sustains innovation. Service design and co-design do more than improve products; they redefine how teams collaborate and lead. They transform leadership from a role of command into a process of empathy, learning, and facilitation. In the case study project, design-led leadership bridged technology, business, and human experience, turning complexity into collective achievement. When empathy becomes part of an organisation’s structure and co-design part of its daily rhythm, innovation becomes a shared creation rather than an individual act. Design thinking, in this sense, not only shapes better services but also builds better leaders.
Co-design turns collaboration into co-creation, empowering teams to build ideas together. Design thinking goes beyond innovation and redefines how we lead, connect, and create impact.
Based on the thesis:
Remans, M. (2025). Strategic Integration of Service Design Thinking, Co-Design, and Leadership for Advancing Multidisciplinary Software Product Design: A Case Study. Masters' Thesis. Turku University of Applied Sciences.
Image source:
Generated by ChatGPT-5 (OpenAI, 2025). © Mohammad Remans. Referenced 29.10.2025 https://chatgpt.com/