Partnering Leadership

Welcome to the Summer Leadership Reset on Partnering Leadership. We have more access to ideas than ever before. More books. More podcasts. More articles. More insights. The challenge isn’t finding more information. It’s spending enough time with the ideas that can change how we think, decide, and lead. I have seen this in my own life. The books and conversations that have influenced me most aren’t...

Many organizations have an AI strategy. Far fewer have built the organizational foundations needed for AI to create lasting business value. Generative AI has made it easier than ever to experiment with AI. Yet many leaders are discovering that deploying AI tools and creating meaningful business value are two very different things. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks wit...

Why do so many teams work harder than ever but still struggle to make meaningful progress? In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with organizational psychologist and bestselling author Liane Davey, author of Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work , about why leaders need to rethink how they approach priorities, productivity, and performance. L...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Gustavo Razzetti, workplace culture strategist, founder of Fearless Culture, and author of Forward Talk: The Bold New Method for Getting Teams Unstuck. Gustavo shares why many leadership teams struggle not because they lack talent or commitment, but because they accumulate “conversational debt,” the cost of the conversations they...

What does it take to see opportunity where everyone else sees a commodity? In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Monica Nassif, founder of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day and author of I Bottled My Mother: Grit, Grime, and Growing a Business, The Mrs. Meyer’s Story , about building a category-defining brand by challenging the assumptions everyone else accepted. Monica shares...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli speaks with David Gardner—legendary investor, co-founder of The Motley Fool, and author of Rule Breaker Investing . Over the past three decades, David has not only beaten the market—he’s reshaped how long-term investing is understood and practiced. David’s track record is extraordinary: He recommended Amazon in 1997 (up 86,000% since) Tesla...

David Grossman joins Mahan Tavakoli on this episode of Partnering Leadership to explore one of the most uncomfortable truths in leadership today: the biggest threat to organizations is often not bad leadership. It is “good enough” leadership that quietly creates complacency, disengagement, and organizational drift beneath the surface. David is the founder and CEO of The Grossman Group and the auth...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , futurists Bob Johansen and Jamais Cascio join the conversation to explore the ideas behind their new book, The Age of Chaos: A Sense-Making Guide to a BANI World That Doesn’t Make Sense . Both guests bring decades of deep foresight work, scenario planning, and leadership insight—Bob through more than 50 years with the Institute for the Future, and Jamais...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Sangeet Paul Choudary, one of the world’s leading thinkers on digital strategy, platforms, and the future of value creation. Sangeet is the author of the acclaimed new book Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Transforms the Knowledge Economy , a work that reframes how leaders must think about artificial intelligence—not as a tool for...

Marcus East has spent his career inside some of the world’s most recognized organizations, including Apple, Google, IBM, National Geographic, and Marks & Spencer. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, he joins Mahan Tavakoli to discuss the ideas behind his book, Working with Dinosaurs: How to Lead Technological Evolution from the C-Suite. The conversation goes far beyond technology. It get...

What makes a great CEO today won’t be enough tomorrow. In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Carolyn Dewar, McKinsey Senior Partner and coauthor of A CEO for All Seasons —a practical, research-backed roadmap for leaders navigating the full arc of CEO leadership. Building on her global work advising top executives and the success of her previous bestseller CEO Excell...

Executive presence is one of those concepts every leader knows matters, yet very few can clearly define or develop. In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Alexa Chilcutt and Carl DuPont, co-authors of The Presence Principle: Embodying Executive Presence to Lead with Impact . Drawing on their work in executive education at Johns Hopkins University, they unpack what...

What does it really cost to lead when you’re expected to have all the answers, show no cracks, and carry the weight of everyone around you? In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Melissa Doman—organizational psychologist, leadership consultant, and author of Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health . Drawing on her clinical background an...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner, co-authors of The Octopus Organization . Drawing on decades of leadership experience across global organizations, they challenge one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in business: that organizations can still be run like machines. At the heart of the conversation is a stark contrast between...

This episode offers a different lens on leadership in a time of accelerating change. In this conversation, Mahan Tavakoli is interviewed by Vimi Appadoo and Akilesh Deerpalsingh, senior leaders working closely with CEOs and executive teams in Mauritius through their roles at Dale Carnegie Mauritius and Baker Tilly Mauritius. The discussion emerged as part of a broader set of conversations leading...

Most leaders don’t struggle with strategy. They struggle with how people respond to it. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Amy Jacobson, author of The Emotional Intelligence Advantage: Mastering Change and Difficult Conversations . Amy brings a practical, grounded perspective on emotional intelligence, shaped by her work with leadership teams navigating real or...

What if the “panic habits” leaders default to are the very things burning out their best people? In this Partnering Leadership episode, Mita Mallick—author of The Devil Emails at Midnight —joins Mahan to unpack practical ways senior leaders can replace performative urgency with clear operating rules that people can trust. You will hear why bad bosses are made, not born, and how pressure from marke...

Trust sits at the center of every meaningful leadership conversation. Yet many leaders struggle to create the conditions where people feel comfortable sharing what they really think. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Brad Beeler, a former U.S. Secret Service agent and the author of Tell Me Everything: A Secret Service Agent’s Proven Strategies for Earning Trust,...

In this compelling conversation, Raj Sisodia — co-founder of Conscious Capitalism and bestselling author of Firms of Endearment — joins the podcast to discuss his newest work, Healing Leaders . Widely recognized as one of the most influential voices reshaping modern business thinking, Raj brings decades of research, lived experience, and global perspective to a topic that sits at the center of org...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Steve Brown, a leading AI futurist and former executive at organizations including Intel and DeepMind. Brown brings a rare combination of technical depth and leadership perspective, shaped by decades at the forefront of technological change and his work advising leaders around the world on the implications of artificial intel...

Growth stalls in organizations far more often than leaders expect. Not because ambition fades, or talent disappears, but because focus drifts. In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Kevin Lawrence, a long-time advisor to CEOs and executive teams, to explore why capable organizations lose their growth orientation and how leaders can recognize the warning signs earl...

What does it take to build something that lasts—not just for years, but across generations? In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Alfredo De Massis, a globally recognized expert on family enterprise and author of The Family Business Book: A Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Families to Prosper Across Generations . As one of the most cited scholars in the field and a trus...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Jen Fisher, one of the most influential voices shaping how leaders think about work, wellbeing, and human sustainability. Jen is the former Chief Wellbeing Officer at Deloitte, where she spent more than two decades helping leaders confront burnout, redesign work, and rethink what success actually means inside large, complex orga...

As AI accelerates, many leadership conversations focus on tools, efficiency, and productivity. This episode of Partnering Leadership takes a different approach. Host Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Andrea Iorio, a global AI thought leader, former senior executive at Tinder and L’Oréal, and the author of Between You and AI. Andrea brings a rare combination of global operating experience, deep technolog...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Margie Warrell, a global leadership advisor and the author of The Courage Gap. The conversation goes beyond familiar ideas about confidence and resilience to explore what courage really looks like when leaders are facing uncertainty, fear, and high-stakes decisions. Drawing on her upbringing on a small dairy farm in Australia an...