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
480 Thursday Refresh: The Conversations Leaders Avoid and the Cost Teams Pay with Liane Davey
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. Liane explains why the biggest challenge facing many organizations is not simply the amount of work...
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Recent Episodes
Nov. 4, 2026
480 Thursday Refresh: The Conversations Leaders Avoid and the Cost Teams Pay with Liane Davey
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. Liane explains why the biggest challenge facing many organizations is not simply the amount of work...
Nov. 3, 2026
479 The Counterintuitive Psychology of Better Leadership with Sébastien Page
What happens when the qualities that helped make you successful begin working against you as a leader? Sébastien Page has spent more than 25 years in investment management and serves as Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. But his growing interest in leadership took him beyond finance and into psychology, where he spent years exploring research from sports, positive, and performance psychology. That journey became the foundation for his book, The Psychology of Leadership: Timeless Principl
Oct. 27, 2026
478 How Your Environment Shapes You Without You Realizing It with Leidy Klotz
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 different but related question: not simply how we shape the world aro
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
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Recent Blog Posts
Nov. 4, 2026
How to Reduce Team Thought Load and Stop Rewarding Toxic Busyness
Enterprise leaders often mistake constant responsiveness and overflowing inboxes for high performance, yet these activities drain human capacity and stall real organizational progress. By shifting focus from busywork and shallow productivity metrics…
Nov. 3, 2026
Goal-Induced Blindness: Why High-Performing Leaders Sacrifice Results for Metrics
Goal-induced blindness happens when executives and high-performing teams become so hyper-focused on measurable targets that they overlook critical areas like ethics, well-being, and process quality. While metrics drive alignment, neglecting the blin…
Oct. 27, 2026
How Physical Office Environments Sabotage Employee Agency and Culture
Enterprise leaders often preach empowerment and autonomy, yet their physical workspaces send the exact opposite message. When corporate real estate dictates strict attendance, rigid seating charts, and uniform desks, it strips employees of agency. D…