377 Leadership Lessons from Cyrus the Great: Timeless Principles for Modern Leaders with Darius Lahoutifard

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Mahan Tavakoli: . [00:00:00] Darius Lahoutifard, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

Darius Lahoutifard: Thank you very much, Mohan, for having me. 

Mahan Tavakoli: Darius, I can't wait to talk about leadership by Cyrus the Great, unlocking Xenophon's Syrupedia.

Before we do that, we'd love to know a little bit more about you. Whereabouts did you grow up and how has your upbringing impacted who you've become, Darius? 

Darius Lahoutifard: Fantastic. I was born in Iran and raised in a Catholic school. So very international from my childhood, even though I was in a secular very laic family, no religion involved.

And my education was not Catholic at all. It's not religious at all, but the school was where in Tehran, a lot of different ethnicities and religions expats. I was lucky enough to be very international. And then due to those [00:01:00] big changes in Iran in the late 70s. I had to leave the country move to France, happened that although I was bilingual English at age 17 for a lot of reasons, mostly political I ended up in France and made my life there, went to engineering school, and then Married kids business in tech running subsidiaries of U.

S. companies interacting a lot with the U. S., and founded several companies failed twice, exited twice. Dealing in tech. I lived a short year in the nineties in the Bay Area. Then I discovered the Southern California and said, next time I want to start a company, it's going to be , in the warm beaches in the Southern California.

Where I moved to and that's where I'm talking to you from. I moved here 15 years ago. 

Mahan Tavakoli: Fantastic. Now, Darius, you've had a lot of business success and [00:02:00] experience. What got you to want to write about. Cyclopedia. And Cyrus the Great. 

Darius Lahoutifard: Cyclopedia, I heard first time about it like 20 years ago.

And I actually bought this book which is the original with the Greek and the translation from the 18th century I was amazed because being an Iranian born in Iran I'd never heard of Syropedia, a Greek philosopher and historian writing and admiring Cyrus the Great, the enemy.

How come? And how come I was not aware of this thing? So I was very intrigued and then I immediately bought it and started reading it and said, Jeez, I can't read this thing. It was really hard to read. It's in Old English. It has no chapter, there is no table of content so you are like, walking into this cave and [00:03:00] putting about the web and not seeing the light.

It passed, but it was there and I was trying hard to learn more. Many years later came across this edition by an amazing gentleman Larry Hedrick a former U. S. military who edited Syropedia, rewrote it in a more modern language. And noted some leadership context.

So he put titles in the sections. That helped a lot to understand what we're talking about. So I went back and forth with Larry Hedrick's edition and Syropedia to better understand. And then , I founded a company called Medic Academy, so I'm teaching sales.

I'm lucky somehow we have all top 10 SaaS and technology vendors using somehow our methodology and I have trained them directly in [00:04:00] person or through our videos. And this year I started to get more interested in the leadership part because I'm seeing a lot of leaders due to the activity with Medic Academy who need help.

So I started developing leadership courses and then I connected the dots with Syropedia and and old an ancient view off leadership. By the way, I need to open a parenthesis here. I'm a big believer that human sciences and soft skills. Unlike hard skills cannot be transferred from parents or others to new people.

Let me explain. We obviously develop mobile technology because we reach the level of maturity of Hardware, software, communication. So [00:05:00] these technology knowledge and understanding and mastering during the history of human civilization stack up when we start  as a child or when we go to school or when you go to university, we don't.

Start from scratch. Obviously, we built upon what our previous generation has built. But that doesn't work for human sciences. That doesn't work for relationship building. That doesn't work for communication skills. And the best example is the obvious example is that when you have a kid, the kid needs to be at least one year old before they can walk or before they can talk, or before they can learn, before they can express themselves, it takes approximately one year old, 18 months old.

It's that now. It was the same thing a hundred years ago. It was the same thing a thousand years ago. So it [00:06:00] doesn't matter how much we had smart parents and grandparents and ancestors. We still need to learn those things ourselves. Okay, now that we have made this observation, then it means that if we want to know who are the masters from whom we can learn these things, For hard skills for computers, the guy needs to be from this era because the computer science of 30 years ago is useless.

But for soft skills, communication, art of persuasion, Aristotle or leadership, Cyrus the Great,   that make sense?   

Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding perspective, Darius.

I love the way you put it. If we wanted to rewind 50 years ago or 100 years ago, we would not rely [00:07:00] on the technological competence or thinking of people back then. If anything, even the smartest person technologically 100 years ago would be absolutely irrelevant. today as compared to the average individual.

However, when it comes to soft skills, leadership abilities, there have been people throughout history whose competence, whose skill level, whose understanding transfer to today. What an outstanding observation, not only for kids, not only Does the one year old go through the same thing? But we as leaders, as adults in relationships, human relationships and human skills can learn from the very best throughout history.

Darius Lahoutifard: Absolutely. Absolutely. , this was not new. I have written some articles around sales and Aristotle is the first [00:08:00] sales person with my methodology. My methodology comes from Aristotle. 

Ethos pathos and logos.

The three principles of persuasion is kinda the genes inside medic or med pick which is an acronym of my methodology. So same thing for Cyrus. And that's why leaders like Alexander actually Alexander, since we talked about Aristotle, Alexander was coached by Aristotle and Aristotle was.

Student of Xenophon and Plateau. So he explicitly used Syropedia to train Alexander. That's the first biggest student of Syropaedia in history, and then Romans, all Romans were reading this book, and then we come down to later , in history Prince of Machiavelli, which don't like necessarily [00:09:00] the interpretation of Prince, which is on the dark side and the authoritarian side of leadership, but it is part of it.

And then more recent. A couple hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. We're inspired by this and it's amazing to see how the U. S. Founders, the founding fathers of the U. S. Constitution and the U. S. Governance were smart enough to find. Syropedia for this and there are two reasons why they were interested and intrigued.

That's why they studied and then they become promoters of the book because Thomas Jefferson is saying to his grandson who informs grandpa saying, grandpa, this year we are reading Greek. And Thomas Jefferson says the first book you need to read [00:10:00] is Syropedia. Why that is because they have the same challenges.

So it is very normal that they look how Cyrus those challenges or dealt with those challenges. One of them is diversity. They were dealing with different states with different

rules and even different religions. So they wanted two things from Cyrus. One was the fact that he was totally open. He made sure that there is nothing in the constitution, even though we don't know about how formalized was the constitution, but in the book, we see how he clearly gives the rules of governance, which are very close to what we call today constitution is to make sure that religion or beliefs are not something that are related into the country. The government needs to [00:11:00] respect everyone's religion and we should be a secular government. That's number one. And the second is creating what in the Persian Empire was called satraps and they were the equivalent of the states in the United States where they have some sort of autonomy.

They have defined their own local rules. And the government doesn't interfere on anything local that is totally the vision of Cyrus. He explains this in the book. In detail why this is important while keeping the control of the unity of the empire through a central government that in the U.

S. we call federal government. And the Persians were having this in Persepolis and having this annual gatherings of different satraps by the way, it's something I say with a smile is that. There [00:12:00] was no kidding about the taxes, these satraps needed to pay their taxes. So they were bringing their gifts every year and respecting their due.

So he says clearly, explicitly, that as long as they pay their taxes and they abide by the rules, let them do Freedom of opinion, freedom of thoughts. However they want to run their business. What we are seeing in the United States today is the Iranian empires, the Persian empire that has come through the constitution and that's what we are practicing. 

Mahan Tavakoli: It is fascinating seeing some of those threads Darius including the fact that my audience would be familiar with Peter Drucker. , one of the leading management thinkers of The last century and Peter Drucker had called psychopedia, the [00:13:00] best leadership book as well.

So there is a lot in there and that's what I want to tap into some of the leadership thinking from Cyrus. The great known by. Iranians are in Farsi, Kourosh or Kourosh e Kabir. Some of those lessons that apply to us in leading our teams, organizations, and in society today. But before we do that, Want to backtrack a tiny bit.

Who was this person who eventually became known as Cyrus the great? 

Darius Lahoutifard: He was a Prince in Persia, but the Persia of his time, when he was a kid was the equivalent of maybe a state as big as Vermont, a very small state. And the fact that he declares himself in the cylinder that we discovered actually in the 19th century around [00:14:00] Babylon. He says that I am from Anshan, which is a city in southern Iran right now.

 I am son of Cambys Cambodian Persian and the grandson of Banshan and so on. So he clearly defines himself as a Persian prince and names the city, which is actually not far from Mardasht or Persepolis or Shiraz, the biggest city that , everyone can see on a map.

 His mom was a meat. The meats were another country or another ethnicity that covered today's Kurdistan. Kurdistan, mostly in Iran, their capital , called Iqbatana or Iqbatan, which is the city of Hamadan, Iran, which is exactly that location not far from Tehran.

And it was a larger country than Persia and they were stronger. And the king of the [00:15:00] Meads was a stronger person. Who was the grandfather of Cyrus. So Cyrus was born in a family with mom a mead and that Persian. Until around the age of 12, he was in Persia, , and at age of 12, he has an opportunity , during one summer, to go with mom to the Meads country, and meets his grandpa.

And that by itself is a very interesting and sweet story that is covered in the book 

so he connects with his grandpa and. Grandpa says let him stay with me. And he stays almost a year but then goes back to Persia. He , ends up uniting first Persian meets historians have different perspectives, but most people consider that the creation of the Iranian Empire , that still called Persian in the English language, even [00:16:00] today, started when that merger somehow happened between the Persians and the means and then that was the beginning of the expansion.

, then it went to today's Afghanistan, today's Pakistan, today's India, up to the north of former USSR countries and then to the east, it goes all the way to Syria, obviously Turkey, part of Greece Egypt, all that that's why it's the largest empire ever that we had.

Mahan Tavakoli: He was able to bring these groups together and eventually have a large empire. Much of it. Being able to lead people who wants to be led by this King of Kings. How was Cyrus able to foster a sense of belonging among all these different groups, many different languages, cultures, histories, [00:17:00] religions.

How was he able to do that and have many of them join him and want to be part of this empire voluntarily? 

Darius Lahoutifard: This is amazing. This is one of the key elements of leadership. But we see these through different examples, and there are different strategies based on where we stand. For instance, one of the very first countries that joined was Armenia and Armenia.

There was a group of rebels against the Armenian king, so he used that. Opportunity. Having an alliance. With the rebels against the king. And obviously, when he succeeded, they became the new king. So I have that , when you're in a competition, we're in a competitive market.

Look at smaller competitors to your competitors where you can have [00:18:00] alliance with them and build your alliance. Strategy based on that. That's one example. Another example is through ethics. He has in one of the conquest, a beautiful woman considered as the most beautiful woman ever.

Who could become a slave and that's not how he approaches that. He says, this woman, no one should touch her or make sure dignity is respected. We have conquered the country. We are going to have a very fair treatment of everyone.

The husband of that woman who was. The enemy's big military guy knowing and learning this, the guy switched, that military became his ally. So through ethics and good deeds, He switched a lot of his enemies into his friends and allies. That's another example of leadership through ethical practices and [00:19:00] honest approaches.

Mahan Tavakoli: There are a couple of other things I wanted to highlight and get your thoughts on Darius. One is that there was a vision or a purpose that was set beyond just the conquest. So a vision of leadership. And then the second thing I would love for you to talk about is that when I do these episodes, whether in conversations with thought leaders or some solo episodes, I keep talking about the fact that leadership is example.

And he seemed to embody that example, even 2, 500 years ago, whether aiding or living alongside his soldiers to build trust. So we'd love to get those two thoughts, which I believe are as relevant today as ever before one is a sense of purpose and a clarity of vision. Two leading by example.

Darius Lahoutifard: Fantastic key elements here.

Let me start with the last one. It's [00:20:00] easier. All the time, even when he became big, he was on the field. He was fighting and because Xenophon describes scenes of war and he was shoulder to shoulder with his people all the time. He was not the kind of person sitting at the back and commanding leading by example.

This example that I mentioned about Pontea, which is a little love story of Pontea who got captured and her husband is leading by example since she was the most beautiful woman ever known at the time she was actually presented to Cyrus As a gift.

And it's amazing that Cyrus doesn't look here. Cyrus never looked at Pontea and he explains that I didn't want to be in a situation where I could have personal desires, which will go beyond what we have defined at ethical [00:21:00] practices. Don't bring her to me. I don't want to see her.

Today, some of these may appear as exaggerated or whatever, but these are what history tells us. These are the examples of extreme discipline and ethical that he was applying to himself, which obviously made him credible and lovable. On the purpose, I love this one , one of the things that I do in my business a lot is that I speak at sales kickoffs for corporations mainly tech corporations and sales kickoffs.

I don't know if your audience is familiar with sales kickoffs are once a year gatherings in a nice place. Rest somewhere nice. And the idea, the goal is to pump up the sales team and what I always recommend to organizers VP of operations or CROs who are in charge of organizing these sales kickoffs is to focus on three [00:22:00] things.

Most people focus on two things. Education, and motivation. Actually, most people focus on motivation. Education in an easy cell, I would say. They can easily understand that it's time to educate them. Education, motivation. But most people forget purpose. Most people, especially in sales leaders are good.

The best sales leaders are good to give motivation. Motivation is what usually money for sales people are motivated by money, so they build compensation plans with good bonuses and good commission so that they get paid. Motivated for them, Motivated for them, But they forget purpose, and that makes a huge difference between two teams, one with purpose and the other without purpose.

And Cyrus, it's amazing that his very first speech, Xenophon doesn't give the [00:23:00] exact age when that was happening, but , if you put together stuff, he is between 18 or 20 years old. And he has his first speech because he's building his first army. So in that speech, he creates purpose.

He says, you guys, of course, that both our army and the Assyrian army, that was the army that they were about to fight with or fight against. He says we are all motivated. Of course, we'll have good food and bonuses and things like that. But what makes you apart, Cyrus says in his speech, what makes you apart is that you are doing this for glory and honor of your country, of your people.

You want to safeguard your culture. Your wives, your people, and you're fighting stronger [00:24:00] than them. Doesn't matter if they are three times more of us, or if they have cavalry and we don't. They were all walking at the time. It was his first army. 

And he, of course, wins despite lack of experience smaller army, non experienced army, not professional army Thanks to purpose.

The key word here is purpose as you very well. Yes. 

Mahan Tavakoli: Beautifully stated Darius. And when I think about, Simon Sinek, couple of his best books are Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last. Both of those concepts Draw heavily on this same thinking. I love a quote by Ryan Holiday, where in essence, he says, the longer a concept or a book has been around, the more value there is to it.

So if you really want to learn leadership, look at something that 20 years, 50 years, [00:25:00] 200 years. Those are the last steps. principles, going back to the first point that you made in leadership, in human connection and human relationships, that's not something that has drastically advanced. We can build on some of those same root.

which is why the stories and examples you give in your book, I find very relevant to leadership today. I know that was your intention and it comes across where there is a beautiful element of history, but there is the relevance to today. I do want to touch on a couple of other. Relevant points on the historical front.

Cyrus's conquest of Babylon was a defining moment in his leadership. What happened then and what can we learn from that lesson? 

Darius Lahoutifard: Amazing. . Babylon is important because Babylon in terms of [00:26:00] progress was the most advanced, the most civilized city on earth. And Babylon was a fort. It was very protected with high walls and and army around protecting them, shooting everyone who would get close.

So he and his army get close and observe that there is no way they can get in and if they do a big fight, It will be a bloodbath. So what they did, they built temporary towers first in order to be able to observe what's going on in this city understanding so that's those towers, temporary towers of observation.

And then he had a strategy. The strategy was that there is this. A branch of your fraud, which is a river still existing in the Baghdad region going [00:27:00] through this city. It was entering the city and going out of the city. The strategy was that if the level of water in Euphrates could be much lower, then his army could walk inside the riverbed and penetrate into the city.

So what he did, he digs all around the city so that the water. Is partially diverted around the city. So the level of the water goes down and he does this on a night where there's a festival inside the city and an evening where there's a festival. That worked perfectly.

They penetrated. And the Babylonian army was not ready to react. So they yielded, basically and no bloodbath, and they conquered. [00:28:00] And of course it's very important what happened after that several things. There were 40, 000 Jews and other slaves that he freed and he let them and actually accompanied the Jews to Jerusalem and help them build a temple.

But The key here is that he freed those slaves, and that's where he writes the cylinder which is in the British Museum today, in which he writes about the fact that when we entered Babylon, we didn't kill all , we brought freedom and we respected their cultures, we respected their gods, we respected their beliefs.

And one thing that I really find amazing, both for Cyrus and for Darius uh, and other, and other Ashemenid kings, is the fact [00:29:00] that they have written this about themselves. Mahan, one thing is to do something which is exceptional. And the other thing is to be aware that what I'm doing right now is exceptional.

For instance , in Persepolis there are written documents , on stone obviously. Where they say, we paid our workers, and they had days off they had pregnancy off periods . So they were progressive, and they knew that they are living in a non progressive area, which is worth writing it so that the history knows it.

They were proud of that. 

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely incredible. Now you mentioned the cylinder a couple of times, a replica of it is also at the United Nations, religious tolerance, human rights, as a part of the That statement that [00:30:00] Cyrus had put out. Another thing that I think relates very well, Darius, to today's leadership challenges is the balance between trust and oversight, where you have to be able to, and willing to delegate a certain level of authority, , how was Cyrus able to approach that balance of trust and oversight?

Darius Lahoutifard: That's amazing. We can talk about trust versus authority and he clearly mentions both and He is not saying, trust your people, let them do, and it all would be good.

He says, trust and watch. Trust and watch. 

Every night, during the day battles, there was a camp and every evening at the camp, there were a few things which were happening all the time. One is obviously his speech, that motivational speech and reminder of the purpose and in [00:31:00] different ways, he speaks a lot. 

Mahan Tavakoli: I just want to highlight.

There are so many gems you are sharing that are relevant to. Today's leadership. One of the things when I work with CEOs, I tell them that they are chief repeating officers in that when you're talking about the purpose, it doesn't matter if you've said it before, doesn't matter if you're tired of it, you find ways to communicate, re communicate that message.

So I just wanted to highlight that a lot of what you're mentioning These are not just some far fetched concepts about a Persian king 2, 500 years ago, this is what it takes to lead an organization today. , you were saying he was showing up every night, talking about that purpose to his troops  

Darius Lahoutifard: exactly. And during that night, he was also reviewing what happened today during that battle on the field. And he was saying, this guy, you [00:32:00] were. Too much scared, you didn't fight enough and You can't repeat this. If you repeat this, you're off. You cannot be part of such a glorious army.

So he was punishing, clearly, someone who was not delivering. And on the flip side, he was saying, this guy, I want everyone to recognize, it was naming him, Abradadas, whatever a name was, I want everyone to recognize his achievements. He did this, he did that, and by the way, he's promoted. Now he is a higher ranked person.

So meritocracy leadership by Making people responsible and another similar thing. And that's why I was referring to some modern leaders, especially in the past two decades. Many people bring the diversity as we know as. Something extremely [00:33:00] important. Cyrus is known for respecting diversity. He has no boundary in terms of ethnicity, religion. He doesn't care about anything.

He is totally results oriented. It's not that you should choose between diversity and meritocracy. You can respect diversity, but be inflexible on meritocracy. It doesn't matter your background. We need results. And that was Cyrus approach , which is totally modern.  

Mahan Tavakoli: So we've touched on a lot of different issues. Would love to get your thoughts, on

what makes Cyrus's leadership principles in your view so relevant as we are living in 2025 artificial intelligence, exponential change, lots of chaos in the world. What makes those principles valid and relevant today? 

Darius Lahoutifard: Because they [00:34:00] are foundational because they are fundamentals. Every now and then we need to get back to basics and understand what makes people move.

 For instance, you mentioned purpose. If you have built that purpose in your people, they will be loyal. They will follow you. They will do this with love. Many people including myself, we have worked hard to have the freedom of choosing to monetize what we love.

That's what I'm doing basically, and that's what a leader needs to help everyone achieve. Whether within their teams, hopefully to be good enough to convince them to develop themselves and realize themselves achieve what they want within their team. Or if not, as a human being, get that become a better person by [00:35:00] understanding themselves, knowing themselves, become aware of their own self and going towards their purpose and live with Their purpose, that's what we need to go back to very often.

So AI or not AI 20 years old technology of today or thousands of years ago, these were the principles we need to remind them all the time, as you mentioned. 

Mahan Tavakoli: Those human principles are valid. And if anything, in an age where technology and AI can do a lot of non human things for us, it requires us to double up on our humanity and understand some of the core principles it takes to lead others more effectively, learning, From lessons, including historical examples, such as Cyrus the Great and learning from you, Darius, where can the [00:36:00] audience find out more about you, your book and follow your work?

Darius Lahoutifard: Absolutely. 

It can be purchased on Amazon leadership by Cyrus the Great. I'm also very happy and proud that my community responded positively because for several days it was ranked first in all three categories that Amazon was ranking it.

Darius Lahoutifard: So it's already a bestseller book. And it is available in three formats very inexpensive Kindle it's a very high quality book, coffee table decoration for Nowruz whatever pleases you, but that definitely has that function as well. 

Mahan Tavakoli: There are a lot of brilliant insights in there. However, you want to consume it, understanding the leadership principles through the stories and examples of this historical figure, Cyrus the great, 

and I appreciate your book, [00:37:00] Leadership by Cyrus the Great, Unlocking Xenophon's Syropedia. Thank you so much for this conversation, Darius Lahoutifad. 

Darius Lahoutifard: Thank you very much, Moin. It was a pleasure interacting with you and chatting with you today.