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.
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.
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Latest Episode
477 Why Your Track Record Isn’t Enough: How Senior Executives Build Career Optionality with Kelly O. Kay
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 Land the Leadership Role You Want. Drawing on decades of executive searc
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Recent Episodes
Oct. 20, 2026
477 Why Your Track Record Isn’t Enough: How Senior Executives Build Career Optionality with Kelly O. Kay
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 Land the Leadership Role You Want. Drawing on decades of executive searc
Oct. 13, 2026
476 What Happens When AI Starts Doing the Thinking? With Eric So
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: not simply what AI can do for us, but what sustained reliance on AI
Oct. 6, 2026
475 Leading Under Pressure: Lessons from 9/11, the NFL, and the World's Toughest Decisions with Thom Mayer
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 the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and is the longtime Medica
Sept. 29, 2026
474 From Expertise to Impact: How Leaders Take Ideas to Scale with Bill Sherman
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 authority on thought leadership and coauthor of The Thought Leadership
Sept. 22, 2026
473 Strategy Means Choice: What Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower Teach Us About Leadership with Matt Cavanaugh
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 this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks wi
Sept. 15, 2026
472 Beyond AI Adoption: How to Reinvent Your Organization for the Age of Abundant Intelligence with Brian Solis and Dave Wright
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 challenge executives to think beyond AI adoption and productivity gains towa
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Recent Blog Posts
Oct. 20, 2026
Why Senior Executives Fail at Career Optionality (And How to Build It)
Senior executives often spend decades refining corporate strategy, optimizing talent pipelines, and allocating capital, while giving virtually zero strategic thought to their own career trajectory. This critical blind spot leaves high-performing lea…
Oct. 13, 2026
Why AI Brain Drain is Threatening Executive Decision-Making
Enterprise leaders face a hidden productivity trap: while generative artificial intelligence makes teams faster at producing deliverables, it simultaneously encourages cognitive outsourcing that erodes deep expertise, institutional memory, and found…
Oct. 6, 2026
Influence vs Power in Executive Leadership: Lessons From the NFL and the Pentagon
Executive leadership often relies on positional authority, org charts, and formal titles to drive organizational change. However, high-stakes environments from the Pentagon to the NFL prove that lasting impact stems from influence rather than raw po…