What do you do when everything goes wrong...and everyone is looking to you for answers?

Chaim Mazal knows that feeling.

As Chief Information Security Officer at GitLab, he operates in a world where one alert can suddenly mean it’s “all hands on deck.”

In this episode of Lead The Team, Chaim shares the story of a major cybersecurity incident at a previous company where sensitive customer data was exposed. At one point, the potential impact appeared to include more than 3,000 customers.

Teams worked nights and weekends, the clock was ticking, and, as Chaim describes it, everyone was “collectively freaking out.”

His job as a leader was to remain the voice of reason.

His lesson: “It’s not what happens, it’s how you deal with it.”

Chaim and Ben also explore:

• Why resilience matters more than perfection

• How to stay calm when your team is under intense pressure

• Chaim’s daily practice of “positive projection”

• Why great leaders hire talented people and then trust them

• The three leadership traits he believes matter most in the AI era

• How Brazilian jiu-jitsu, running, and physical challenges build mental resilience

• The COVID realization that changed how he manages stress

• Why becoming a better leader starts with investing in yourself as a human being

Chaim’s career requires him to prepare for things to go wrong. Yet his leadership philosophy is rooted in optimism, trust, curiosity, and the belief that his team can find a way forward.

Whether you’re leading through a crisis, managing an ambitious team, or simply dealing with the everyday uncertainty of leadership, this conversation offers a practical reminder: you can’t control everything that happens, but you can control how you show up when it does.

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When Puneet Raj became CEO of Fieldwire after its acquisition by Hilti, he inherited a successful 250-person startup facing a pivotal transition: the founders were leaving, employees were worried about losing the startup culture, and a new leader was walking in.

Instead of arriving as the new boss with all the answers, Puneet introduced himself as an intern.

For six months, he rotated through Fieldwire’s teams, learned the business from the ground up, listened to the people who had made it successful, and even failed the company’s demo certification twice. The approach helped him earn trust, opened a direct channel with employees, and gave him a deeper understanding of the company before trying to change it.

Puneet shares what that experience taught him about humility, listening, organizational trust, leading experts, and creating alignment at scale.

He also explains why he now treats his leadership team as his most important “product”, and why leaders in the AI era need to know when NOT to use AI.

His warning: when leaders outsource their thinking to AI, they can lose the ability to debate, question, and think deeply about the decisions that matter most.

In this episode:

• Why a new CEO deliberately became an “intern”
• How listening before leading can earn trust
• Why great leaders don't need to know everything
• How to align hundreds of people around one direction
• Why your leadership team may be your most important “product”
• The danger of outsourcing critical thinking to AI

Leadership starts with learning and sometimes the best way to lead is to become a student first.

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How do you lead through uncertainty when the path forward isn’t clear?

Manoj Leelanivas has done it at extraordinary scale. Today he’s President of HP Solutions. Before HP, he helped lead a major transformation at Juniper Networks, moving into new markets, building belief across thousands of employees, and helping build a new enterprise business approaching $3B in revenue in 5 years!

In this episode, Manoj shares the leadership lessons behind that transformation, including why people don’t resist change...they resist uncertainty, how small wins can create momentum for massive change, and why speed with learning beats waiting for certainty.

He also shares the courageous question an employee asked that changed the way he leads, why he had to reinvent himself as he moved from engineer to business leader, and what he’s learning about innovation inside one of the world’s most iconic technology companies.

If you’re leading a team through change, making decisions without all the answers, or trying to turn disruption into growth, this conversation is for you.

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What happens when leaders face intense pressure to compromise short-term gains for long-term survival?

In this episode of Lead The Team, host Ben Fanning sits down with Mark Niemiec, Global Chief Revenue Officer for SAP Customer Experience.

Mark shares the story of a massive enterprise deal where his team walked away from a short-term commission boost to do the right thing for the business long-term—and why the customer’s head of procurement called days later to thank him for not "taking the bait."

• Don't Take the Bait: Why holding the line under extreme pressure builds enduring businesses.
• "Down and Out" Leadership: A game-changing framework learned at Cisco on pushing decision-making power to the front-line teams closest to the customer.
• Intellectual Honesty: The importance of holding "strong opinions, loosely held" and letting go of ideas when better facts arrive.
• The Premium on Judgment: Why high-level judgment and context are becoming the ultimate executive skills in the era of AI.
• Lead Through Influence: How to navigate culture and lead large teams without relying on command-and-control hierarchy.

• 00:00 – "Don't Take the Bait": The Deal That Missed the Quarter
• 00:34 – Intro: Mark Niemiec (Global CRO, SAP Customer Experience)
• 01:32 – Discovering "Down & Out Leadership" at Cisco
• 03:36 – Front-Line Empowerment vs. Centralized Control
• 06:58 – The High-Stakes Deal: Choosing Long-Term Survival Over Short-Term Cash
• 08:30 – "You Didn't Take the Bait": The Call from Procurement
• 10:35 – Lessons from a $20/hr Temp Job: Making an Impact Fast
• 13:18 – The #1 Trait Every Leader Needs: Intellectual Honesty
• 14:20 – Strong Opinions, Loosely Held
• 17:10 – What to Do When the Playbook Fails
• 19:02 – Yoga, Solitude, and Stoicism for Better Decision-Making
• 21:34 – Leading Through Influence at SAP
• 23:53 – AI & The Future of Leadership: Why Judgment is at a Premium
• 27:05 – Stoic Philosophy in Modern Business

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What does it really mean to take ownership as a leader?

In this episode of Lead the Team, Ben Fanning sits down with Tony Ball, CEO of Entrust, to explore the leadership lessons that shaped his career—from working alongside Intel during one of the most demanding periods in technology history to leading a global cybersecurity company with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Tony shares how one defining experience taught him a principle he still lives by today:

Ben and Tony discuss:

• Why ownership is the foundation of great leadership
• Leading under intense pressure and scrutiny
• Building trust with customers and teams
• Why listening is a leader's greatest advantage
• Empowering teams through accountability
• Reverse mentoring and staying ahead in the AI era
• How setbacks and career pivots can become your greatest opportunities

Whether you're leading a team, building a business, or navigating your own career, this conversation offers practical insights on trust, ownership, resilience, and leading through change.

About Tony Ball

Tony Ball is the CEO of Entrust, a global leader in digital identity and cybersecurity serving organizations in more than 150 countries. With more than 25 years of leadership experience, Tony has built a career helping organizations earn trust, navigate disruption, and lead through transformational change.

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What do you do when you inherit a problem everyone else has given up on?

Before helping build Grafana Labs into one of the world's leading infrastructure software companies, Anthony Woods inherited enterprise software that had already cost millions of dollars—and concluded it was never going to work. Instead of accepting it, he spent one weekend building a better solution. That single decision became the turning point that ultimately led him to co-found Grafana Labs, now a company valued in the billions.

In this episode of Lead the Team, Anthony shares the leadership lessons behind innovation, confidence, and building organizations where great people do their best work.

You'll learn:

• Why your biggest career opportunity may be hiding inside your biggest problem.
• How one manager's belief can change someone's entire career.
• Why the best leaders create environments where people are encouraged to experiment and fail.
• How Grafana built a thriving remote-first culture across the globe.
• Why solving problems—not titles—is the fastest path to leadership.

Whether you're leading a team, building a business, or looking for the confidence to take your next bold step, Anthony's story is a reminder that extraordinary careers often begin with one decision to solve a problem no one else will.

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When Phong Nguyen stepped into the CEO role at Modus—a technology platform processing over $2 Billion annually in driver reimbursements—he skipped the victory lap and did something his team was terrified to arrange: he got on a call with one of their biggest, angriest ex-customers.

The client "ripped them a new one," exposing a hard reality: Modus had lost its innovation edge and treated them transactionally. But instead of getting defensive, Fong took a walk to cool down, gathered his leadership team, and used that uncomfortable call to recalibrate the company’s "true north". Within 12 months, they won that customer back.

In this episode of Lead The Team, host Ben Fanning sits down with Phong Nguyen to discuss:

• The Ex-Customer Playbook: Why calling lost accounts yields the rawest, most valuable strategic data.
• Customer Centricity vs. Customer Success: Why true customer focus is a business strategy, not a metrics-driven department.
• Leading Through Perspective: How growing up as a Vietnamese refugee shaped his long-term view on work ethic, discipline, and opportunity.
• "Liked vs. Respected": The screaming match early in his career that forced him to develop his own philosophy on modern management.
• Uncovering Hidden Signals: Moving past surface-level KPIs to align with actual customer business outcomes.

Resources & Links

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Every leader eventually faces a moment when the numbers stop making sense.

For Amit Bendov, Co-Founder and CEO of Gong, that moment came during what he calls "the quarter from hell." Sales were collapsing, investors were asking tough questions, and every report looked normal. The CRM had data—but none of the answers.

That painful experience sparked an idea that would become Gong, one of the world's leading AI-powered revenue platforms, now generating more than $500 million in annual recurring revenue.

In this episode of Lead the Team, Amit shares the leadership lessons behind that defining moment and explains how AI is changing the way leaders understand customers, coach teams, and make better decisions.

• Why "the quarter from hell" became the origin story of Gong
• The leadership blind spot that almost every executive faces
• Why traditional CRM systems fail when leaders need answers most
• How AI helps leaders spot problems before it's too late
• The operating rhythm used by elite sales organizations
• The hiring traits Amit looks for in future leaders
• Why ownership and curiosity separate great leaders from everyone else

Whether you're a CEO, founder, executive, sales leader, or entrepreneur, this conversation offers practical lessons on leading through uncertainty, building better teams, and using AI to create a lasting competitive advantage.

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AI isn't just transforming business—it's transforming cyberattacks.

In this episode of Lead the Team, Ben Fanning sits down with Dennis Kozak, CEO of Ivanti, to discuss why artificial intelligence is changing cybersecurity faster than most organizations can adapt. After leading companies through cloud computing, mobile, remote work, cybersecurity, and now AI, Dennis explains the leadership principles that remain constant even as technology rapidly evolves.

He shares the story of a company that unknowingly allowed attackers to remain inside its systems for more than a year—even though the security patch already existed. The lesson isn't just about technology. It's about leadership, prioritization, and preparing organizations for a future where AI accelerates both innovation and risk.

You'll also learn:

• Why AI is changing cybersecurity forever

• How executives should think about AI adoption and risk

• The leadership mistake that leaves organizations vulnerable

• Why companies fail to deploy critical security patches

• How to balance long-term strategy with constant operational fires

• What separates future executives from everyone else

• Why curiosity and adaptability matter more than expertise in the AI era

If you're a CEO, executive, technology leader, or anyone responsible for navigating AI transformation, this conversation offers practical leadership lessons for one of the fastest-changing business environments in history.

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Chris Hillabrant was only days into a new role in New York when the September 11 attacks changed everything.

As communications infrastructure across Manhattan began to fail, his team discovered they had one cell site still standing.

What happened over the next 72 hours became one of the defining leadership moments of his career. Technicians drove into the city, manually hauled thousand-pound equipment dozens of stories to triple the site's capacity, opened the network to competitors, redirected hundreds of surrounding antennas toward Manhattan, and helped provide 10,000 cell phones to first responders coordinating rescue efforts.

Now the President and CEO of Crown Castle, Chris shares the leadership lessons that crisis forged—and how they continue to shape the way he builds teams today.

In this episode, Chris discusses:

• What leading through the chaos of 9/11 taught him about communication and trust
• Why preparation is only the starting point—and adaptability wins in a crisis
• The leadership decision to help competitors when lives were on the line
• How to develop leaders who are ready before the crisis arrives
• Why the best career opportunities are often the hardest assignments
• The importance of succession planning and building a deep leadership bench
• The surprising childhood failure that taught him to obsess over customers
• Why raising your hand for difficult challenges has shaped every stage of his career

Whether you're leading a global organization or a small team, this conversation is a masterclass in leading with clarity, courage, and purpose when the stakes couldn't be higher.

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