Partnering Leadership
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.
Latest Episode

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

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Recent Episodes

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
Sept. 8, 2026

471 How to Ask Better Questions and Lead Through Uncertainty with Larry Robertson

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 speaks with Larry Robertson, leadership advisor, Fulbright Scholar,
Sept. 3, 2026

470 [Thursday Refresh] Leading Change: How Leaders Create Lasting Transformation with John Kotter

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 struggles leaders and teams face when it comes to change and how to
Sept. 1, 2026

469 Why AI Adoption Is a Psychology Problem, Not a Technology Problem with Gleb Tsipursky

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 business impact, understanding those human dynamics may matter as muc
Aug. 25, 2026

468 [Leadership Reset] The Performance Paradox: When Success Gets in the Way of Growth with Eduardo Briceño

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 through and moved on from. They are the ones I returned to, wrestled with, and...

Recent Blog Posts

Sept. 22, 2026

Strategy Means Choice: Why Leadership Requires Hurting Feelings to Succeed

Strategic leadership is not about building consensus or keeping everyone happy. True strategy requires making hard choices that inevitably disappoint stakeholders, commit scarce resources under intense uncertainty, and demand personal responsibility…
Sept. 18, 2026

Decision-Making in Turbulence: Lessons on Leading When Everything Is Changing

Navigating the Fog of Uncertainty When visibility drops to zero in aviation, pilots must rely on their instruments rather than their instincts, which can easily be fooled by spatial disorientation. In business leadership, the "fog of uncertainty" c…
Sept. 15, 2026

How to Avoid the AI Tax and Stop Dummifying Executive Strategy

Enterprise leaders frequently adopt artificial intelligence to accelerate daily operations, yet many inadvertently create an administrative burden known as the AI tax. Instead of streamlining work, unchecked generative tools often multiply low-value…