Design thinking is seen as one of the prominent popular and critical business concepts of today's modern business world. The most important reason for this is the necessity of a business understanding built on innovation and creativity in order to cope with the rapidly changing business world parameters. In addition, the attitudes and approaches of businesses on innovation and creativity are important in the acceptance of the design thinking method. Design thinking can be expressed in its most concise form as a solution development method that aims to present innovative solutions with different perspectives developed on any subject with creative methods and does this with iterative process steps. Especially with its multidisciplinary structure, design thinking is actually a radical paradigm that changes the nature of businesses and is seen as critical in the context of achieving business goals. However, its strategic positioning in the field of management does not have a very long history, but is currently seen as an area open to discovery. The design-oriented thinking process includes a mindset that requires leadership in the process beyond process management. Although there are efforts by field thinkers and researchers to develop a common understanding about design leadership, which is considered as a new leadership concept, there is confusion on this subject. In this context, considering both the managerial position and the design process leadership from a leadership perspective is valuable in terms of contributing to the fields of design and management. The study aims to examine the conceptual content of the design-oriented thinking method. In this context, first of all, the conceptual definition of the design-oriented thinking method was made and the concept was examined with the most frequently discussed process models in the literature. Then, the concept, which was addressed from a managerial perspective, was also evaluated in the context of leadership. Thus, the nature of design leadership was tried to be understood.