Partnering Leadership
Partnering Leadership is an award-winning global podcast for CEOs, board members, and senior executives who want to think more clearly about what is changing, what may be coming next, and what it means for their organizations. Hosted by Mahan Tavakoli, the podcast draws on 450+ conversations with CEOs, founders, researchers, futurists, and leading thinkers on strategy, leadership, organizational transformation, innovation, and AI. The conversations go beyond generic leadership advice. They explore the questions senior leaders increasingly need to wrestle with: What is changing that could reshape our business? Which assumptions about strategy, customers, work, and organizations may no longer hold? What will AI change beyond productivity? Where might value move next? How should organizations and leadership evolve as the answers change? Guests have included Ram Charan, John Kotter, Stephen M.R. Covey, Ajay Agrawal, Azeem Azhar, Ranjay Gulati, Sangeet Paul Choudary, David Marquet, Bob Johansen, David Rubenstein, Jean Case, Paul Daugherty, Carolyn Dewar, Whitney Johnson, Ron Adner, and many others shaping how leaders think about strategy, organizations, technology, and the future of business. Mahan brings an advisor’s perspective to each conversation, pushing beyond surface-level answers to explore the choices, trade-offs, and implications that matter in the C-suite and boardroom. The result is a broader, more forward-looking perspective on the decisions leaders are making today and the ones they may need to make sooner than they think. Available on all major podcast platforms and at PartneringLeadership.com.
Episodes
What if one of the most overlooked influences on how people think, perform, and connect is the environment around them? In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli welcomes back Leidy Klotz, professor at the University of Virginia and author of In a Good Place: How the Spaces Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive. Building on their earlier conversation about his acclaimed book Subtract, Klotz explores a diff...
Senior executives can spend years thinking rigorously about strategy, talent, capital allocation, and organizational performance while giving surprisingly little strategic thought to their own careers. That gap sits at the center of this Partnering Leadership conversation with Kelly O. Kay, Managing Partner of the Global Software Practice at Heidrick & Struggles and co-author, with Jeffrey Sanders, of Show Up to Win: How to Lan...
AI is rapidly improving what people can produce. But is it also weakening the capabilities that make people valuable in the first place?
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Eric So, Stanford-trained behavioral researcher, longtime MIT professor, and author of The Collision: What AI Does to Us. Eric explores a question that sits underneath much of today’s excitement about artificial intelligence...
What separates leadership as an idea from leading as a daily practice? For Dr. Thom Mayer, the distinction matters. Leadership can become a collection of concepts, titles, and aspirations. Leading is what people actually do, especially when circumstances are uncertain, the stakes are high, and there is no playbook to follow.
Dr. Mayer has spent much of his career in precisely those environments. He served as the command physician at...
When AI can generate plausible ideas and polished content in seconds, producing more of it is not a competitive advantage. For CEOs and senior executives, the more consequential question is whether they have an idea worth advancing, an audience for whom it genuinely matters, and the credibility to influence how others think and act.
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Bill Sherman, a leading authorit...
Most leaders understand that strategy requires choices. Fewer are prepared for what follows: disappointing people, committing resources under uncertainty, and accepting responsibility when the consequences are significant. Those pressures are not unique to the battlefield. They show up whenever CEOs and senior executives must choose a direction while facing incomplete information, competing stakeholders, and no risk-free option.
In ...
What happens to the way we design organizations when intelligence is no longer scarce? That is the provocative question at the heart of this conversation with Brian Solis and Dave Wright, co-authors of Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Business Into AI-Forward Companies. Drawing on decades of experience at the intersection of technology, strategy, innovation, and enterprise transformation, Brian and Dave chall...
As uncertainty rises, people often look to leaders for greater certainty. Yet the more complex the environment becomes, the less credible it is for any one person to claim they have the answers. The leadership challenge is no longer simply making better decisions. It is creating the conditions for better questions, broader participation, and stronger collective judgment.
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speak...
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with John Kotter, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, co-founder of a management consulting firm Kotter International and a pioneer in organizational change. John Kotter is the author of 22 books on change, including his most recent book, Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile times. John Kotter talks about the st...
AI adoption is often treated as a technology challenge: choose the right tools, train people to use them, and drive implementation. Dr. Gleb Tsipursky argues that this framing misses the harder problem. Unlike previous technology shifts, AI can trigger fear about job security, challenge professional identity, and create social stigma around how work gets done. For organizations trying to move from experimentation to meaningful busi...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 the ones I rushed th...
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 with Fern Halper, internationally recogn...
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