Episodes

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 recognized AI and data strategist, founder of the AI Foundations Grou...

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...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Gustavo Razzetti, workplace culture strategist, founder of Fearless Culture, and author of Forward Talk: The Bold New Method for Getting Teams Unstuck. Gustavo shares why many leadership teams struggle not because they lack talent or commitment, but because they accumulate “conversational debt,” the cost of the conversations they avoid. Gustavo explains why silence in organizations doesn’t always mean agreement. While leaders o...

What does it take to see opportunity where everyone else sees a commodity? In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Monica Nassif, founder of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day and author of I Bottled My Mother: Grit, Grime, and Growing a Business, The Mrs. Meyer’s Story , about building a category-defining brand by challenging the assumptions everyone else accepted. Monica shares the leadership lessons behind transforming household cleaning from a purely functional category into...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli speaks with David Gardner—legendary investor, co-founder of The Motley Fool, and author of Rule Breaker Investing . Over the past three decades, David has not only beaten the market—he’s reshaped how long-term investing is understood and practiced. David’s track record is extraordinary: He recommended Amazon in 1997 (up 86,000% since) Tesla in 2012 (up 80,000%) Netflix in 2004 (up 937,000%) And NVIDIA in 2005 (up a staggering 1.2 million ...

David Grossman joins Mahan Tavakoli on this episode of Partnering Leadership to explore one of the most uncomfortable truths in leadership today: the biggest threat to organizations is often not bad leadership. It is “good enough” leadership that quietly creates complacency, disengagement, and organizational drift beneath the surface. David is the founder and CEO of The Grossman Group and the author of The Heart Work of Modern Leadership: Six Differentiators of Exceptional Leaders. Drawing on or...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , futurists Bob Johansen and Jamais Cascio join the conversation to explore the ideas behind their new book, The Age of Chaos: A Sense-Making Guide to a BANI World That Doesn’t Make Sense . Both guests bring decades of deep foresight work, scenario planning, and leadership insight—Bob through more than 50 years with the Institute for the Future, and Jamais as the originator of the BANI framework (“brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible”). Their com...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Sangeet Paul Choudary, one of the world’s leading thinkers on digital strategy, platforms, and the future of value creation. Sangeet is the author of the acclaimed new book Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Transforms the Knowledge Economy , a work that reframes how leaders must think about artificial intelligence—not as a tool for faster workflows, but as a force that will rewrite the foundations of competition. Across the conve...

Marcus East has spent his career inside some of the world’s most recognized organizations, including Apple, Google, IBM, National Geographic, and Marks & Spencer. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, he joins Mahan Tavakoli to discuss the ideas behind his book, Working with Dinosaurs: How to Lead Technological Evolution from the C-Suite. The conversation goes far beyond technology. It gets to the heart of why successful organizations often struggle to adapt even when smart leaders can clear...

What makes a great CEO today won’t be enough tomorrow. In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Carolyn Dewar, McKinsey Senior Partner and coauthor of A CEO for All Seasons —a practical, research-backed roadmap for leaders navigating the full arc of CEO leadership. Building on her global work advising top executives and the success of her previous bestseller CEO Excellence , Carolyn offers a candid, timely, and deeply strategic perspective on how CEOs can lead—and le...

Executive presence is one of those concepts every leader knows matters, yet very few can clearly define or develop. In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Alexa Chilcutt and Carl DuPont, co-authors of The Presence Principle: Embodying Executive Presence to Lead with Impact . Drawing on their work in executive education at Johns Hopkins University, they unpack what presence actually looks like in practice—and why most leaders get it wrong. What makes this convers...

What does it really cost to lead when you’re expected to have all the answers, show no cracks, and carry the weight of everyone around you? In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Melissa Doman—organizational psychologist, leadership consultant, and author of Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health . Drawing on her clinical background and deep work with leaders inside organizations, Melissa challenges one of the most persistent and dam...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner, co-authors of The Octopus Organization . Drawing on decades of leadership experience across global organizations, they challenge one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in business: that organizations can still be run like machines. At the heart of the conversation is a stark contrast between what they call “tinman” organizations and “octopus” organizations. Tinman organizations are built f...

This episode offers a different lens on leadership in a time of accelerating change. In this conversation, Mahan Tavakoli is interviewed by Vimi Appadoo and Akilesh Deerpalsingh, senior leaders working closely with CEOs and executive teams in Mauritius through their roles at Dale Carnegie Mauritius and Baker Tilly Mauritius. The discussion emerged as part of a broader set of conversations leading up to a C-suite dialogue with senior leaders in the region. The questions they explore will sound...

Most leaders don’t struggle with strategy. They struggle with how people respond to it. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Amy Jacobson, author of The Emotional Intelligence Advantage: Mastering Change and Difficult Conversations. Amy brings a practical, grounded perspective on emotional intelligence, shaped by her work with leadership teams navigating real organizational challenges, not theoretical models. The conversation goes beyond the usual discussion...

What if the “panic habits” leaders default to are the very things burning out their best people? In this Partnering Leadership episode, Mita Mallick—author of The Devil Emails at Midnight —joins Mahan to unpack practical ways senior leaders can replace performative urgency with clear operating rules that people can trust. You will hear why bad bosses are made, not born, and how pressure from markets, role models, and personal crises can turn ordinary leaders into micromanagers. Mita gets specifi...

Trust sits at the center of every meaningful leadership conversation. Yet many leaders struggle to create the conditions where people feel comfortable sharing what they really think. In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Brad Beeler, a former U.S. Secret Service agent and the author of Tell Me Everything: A Secret Service Agent’s Proven Strategies for Earning Trust, Revealing the Truth, and Communicating with Anyone . Drawing on more than two decades of experience ...

In this compelling conversation, Raj Sisodia — co-founder of Conscious Capitalism and bestselling author of Firms of Endearment — joins the podcast to discuss his newest work, Healing Leaders . Widely recognized as one of the most influential voices reshaping modern business thinking, Raj brings decades of research, lived experience, and global perspective to a topic that sits at the center of organizational performance: the inner state of the leader. Across the episode, Raj takes listeners on a...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Steve Brown, a leading AI futurist and former executive at organizations including Intel and DeepMind. Brown brings a rare combination of technical depth and leadership perspective, shaped by decades at the forefront of technological change and his work advising leaders around the world on the implications of artificial intelligence. The conversation centers on Brown’s book, The AI Ultimatum, and the core argument behind it...

Growth stalls in organizations far more often than leaders expect. Not because ambition fades, or talent disappears, but because focus drifts. In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Kevin Lawrence, a long-time advisor to CEOs and executive teams, to explore why capable organizations lose their growth orientation and how leaders can recognize the warning signs early. Kevin draws on decades of experience in boardrooms and leadership off-sites around the world, as ...

What does it take to build something that lasts—not just for years, but across generations? In this episode of Partnering Leadership , Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Alfredo De Massis, a globally recognized expert on family enterprise and author of The Family Business Book: A Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Families to Prosper Across Generations . As one of the most cited scholars in the field and a trusted advisor to multi-generational family businesses around the world, De Massis offers a rare combin...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Jen Fisher, one of the most influential voices shaping how leaders think about work, wellbeing, and human sustainability. Jen is the former Chief Wellbeing Officer at Deloitte, where she spent more than two decades helping leaders confront burnout, redesign work, and rethink what success actually means inside large, complex organizations. The conversation centers on the ideas behind Jen’s book, Hope Is the Strategy, and challe...

As AI accelerates, many leadership conversations focus on tools, efficiency, and productivity. This episode of Partnering Leadership takes a different approach. Host Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Andrea Iorio, a global AI thought leader, former senior executive at Tinder and L’Oréal, and the author of Between You and AI. Andrea brings a rare combination of global operating experience, deep technology fluency, and philosophical clarity to the conversation. Rather than asking how leaders can use AI ...

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Margie Warrell, a global leadership advisor and the author of The Courage Gap. The conversation goes beyond familiar ideas about confidence and resilience to explore what courage really looks like when leaders are facing uncertainty, fear, and high-stakes decisions. Drawing on her upbringing on a small dairy farm in Australia and decades of work with senior leaders, Margie reframes courage not as bravado or fearlessness, but a...