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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 better, he challenges a more uncomfortable question: what still belongs uniquely to human leadership when machines increasingly outperform us at speed, scale, and analysis.
Throughout the discussion, Andrea and Mahan explore why AI is not “coming for jobs,” but for tasks, and how that distinction changes the leadership equation. They examine the risks leaders face when productivity gains mask a deeper erosion of judgment, accountability, and strategic clarity. The conversation surfaces how easy it is for leaders to outsource responsibility to systems that feel objective, confident, and precise.
The episode also confronts the hidden consequences of hyper-optimization. While AI can dramatically increase control and efficiency, Andrea argues that leaders must decide where judgment, agency, and human responsibility still matter most. From decision-making and talent development to trust, empathy, and innovation, the discussion highlights the leadership work that cannot be automated without cost.
This is a thoughtful, grounded conversation for leaders who sense that AI is reshaping not just work, but the very nature of leadership itself—and who want to stay accountable, relevant, and human in the process.
Actionable Takeaways
Connect with Andrea Iorio
Andrea Iorio Website
Andrea Iorio LinkedIn
Between You and AI: Unlock the Power of Human Skills to Thrive in an AI-Driven WorldConnect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
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 as a practical leadership capability. One that becomes essential when leaders are navigating disruption, AI-driven change, anxious workforces, and expectations to have answers they simply cannot have.
A central theme of the discussion is identity. Margie challenges leaders to stop asking only “What should I do?” and instead ask, “Who do I need to be right now?” She explains why leadership effectiveness often hinges less on technical expertise and more on emotional regulation, values-based decision-making, and the ability to act even when fear is present.
The conversation also tackles topics many executives experience but rarely discuss openly, including imposter syndrome, fear of judgment, and the pressure to project certainty. Margie offers grounded insights on why these experiences are common among high performers and how leaders can work with fear rather than being constrained by it.
This episode is a thoughtful, practical exploration of what courageous leadership looks like in real organizational contexts, not in theory, but in the moments where leaders are stretched, uncomfortable, and most needed by their teams.
Actionable Takeaways
Connect with Margie Warrell
Margie Warrell Website
Margie Warrell LinkedIn
The Courage Gap: 5 Steps to Braver Action
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Mohammad Anwar, founder and CEO of Softway and co-author of the book Love as a Change Strategy. Together, they take on one of the most misunderstood ideas in leadership: whether love has any place in driving performance, innovation, and large-scale change.
Mohammad’s perspective is not theoretical. He shares a deeply personal leadership story, tracing how a fear-driven, control-oriented approach nearly destroyed his company, and how a fundamental shift in how he treated people helped turn it around. The conversation challenges the assumption that tough leadership and human leadership sit in opposition to each other.
The discussion then moves into why so many organizational change efforts fail, despite heavy investments in process, technology, and change management frameworks. Mohammad argues that most leaders don’t actually have a change management problem. They have a change strategy problem, one that overlooks how humans respond to uncertainty, fear, and loss of control.
Mahan presses on a question many CEOs wrestle with privately: if fear-based leadership can produce results, why not use it? The answer isn’t moralistic. It’s practical. They explore sustainability, commitment, and the hidden costs leaders don’t see until it’s too late.
The episode also tackles AI and transformation through a people-first lens. Rather than framing AI as a threat or a productivity shortcut, Mohammad reframes it as a test of leadership maturity and an opportunity to restore humanity to work, if leaders are willing to change themselves first.
Actionable Takeaways
Connect with Mohammad Anwar
Love As A Strategy Website
Softway
Mohammad Anwar LinkedIn
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli is joined by Greg Shove, CEO of Section and a serial entrepreneur with a deep track record of leading transformative growth. Shove’s leadership journey includes multiple successful pivots, and in this conversation, he brings a uniquely grounded perspective on how AI is fundamentally changing the role of leaders and the structure of modern organizations. From board-level decision-making to frontline productivity, he doesn’t just speculate—he shares what he’s doing inside his own company to lead through the change.
Greg originally joined Section to turn it from a media startup into a next-gen education company. But when he first used ChatGPT, he knew instantly that business education itself needed to evolve. That insight led to a bold pivot: transforming Section from an online business school into an AI-powered academy focused on accelerating performance and capability at scale. It’s a rare look at what it really takes to lead a high-velocity pivot—one grounded not in hype, but in strategy, execution, and conviction.
Throughout the conversation, Greg challenges conventional thinking on AI adoption, leadership credibility, and the future of knowledge work. He breaks down why many leaders are stuck in experimentation mode—and what it takes to move into actual transformation. CEOs and boards will find his views on performance, upskilling, and AI decision support to be especially compelling and uncomfortably timely.
If you're tired of surface-level conversations about AI and want to understand what the shift actually looks like inside a company, this episode delivers. Whether you're leading a small team or a global enterprise, Greg's insights on using AI as a leadership advantage—not just a tech upgrade—will spark new thinking and bold action.
Actionable Takeaways:
Connect with Greg Shove:
Greg Shove Website
Greg Shove LinkedIn
Section
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
Negotiation and sales are often treated as tactical skills. Something leaders do at the end of the process, armed with tricks, pressure, and leverage. In this conversation, Todd Caponi makes the case that this mindset is outdated—and increasingly damaging for leaders operating in a world of transparency, information abundance, and long-term accountability.
Todd draws on his experience as a former Chief Revenue Officer, his deep study of the history of sales and negotiation, and his latest book, Four Levers Negotiating: The Simple, Counterintuitive Way to Higher Deal Values and Lasting Trust, to challenge conventional wisdom about how deals actually get done. His core argument is simple but provocative: people don’t make decisions because they’re convinced. They decide when they can predict outcomes. And most leadership behaviors unintentionally undermine that predictability.
The conversation explores why traditional negotiation tactics—holding cards close, creating artificial urgency, treating the deal as the finish line—erode trust precisely when it matters most. Todd explains how many of these practices emerged from a very different economic era and why they fail in today’s interconnected, reputation-driven environment.
At the center of the discussion is Todd’s Four Levers framework, which reframes negotiation as a leadership system rather than a personality trait. Instead of games and pressure, the framework focuses on transparency, trade-offs, and shared understanding—creating better decisions for both sides and reducing internal friction across leadership teams.
This episode is not about becoming a better negotiator in the traditional sense. It’s about how leaders create trust, predictability, and long-term value—whether they are working with customers, boards, partners, or their own leadership teams.
Actionable Takeaways
Connect with Todd Caponi
Todd Caponi Website
Todd Caponi LinkedIn
Four Levers Negotiating: The Simple, Counterintuitive Way to Higher Deal Values and Lasting Trust
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
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 combined perspectives create a powerful lens for leaders facing a world where old assumptions and linear playbooks no longer hold.
Across the discussion, they argue that today’s disruptions are not isolated shocks. They are interconnected, compounding forces that make the environment fundamentally different from the “VUCA world” many leaders were trained for. Johansen and Cascio unpack how brittleness shows up in organizations disguised as efficiency, why anxiety has become a rational and necessary signal, and how nonlinearity rewrites traditional cause-and-effect expectations. They challenge leaders to rethink certainty, decision-making, and the stories they tell inside their organizations.
At the heart of the conversation is a clear message: leading in a BANI world requires a shift in mindset. The best leaders will cultivate clarity instead of certainty, ask better questions instead of providing fast answers, and build organizations that bend rather than break under pressure. Cascio highlights how empathy, diverse perspectives, and even “useful wrongness” serve as strategic advantages. Johansen pushes leaders to think farther into the future than they are comfortable with—then work backwards to create resilient clarity in the present.
The episode does not offer easy fixes. Instead, it gives listeners a framework for making sense of complexity, a set of practices to strengthen foresight, and a renewed understanding of the human side of leadership in chaotic times. For CEOs, board members, and senior executives navigating relentless uncertainty, this conversation provides both grounding and a challenge: to lead with more humility, more imagination, and more future-back discipline.
Actionable TakeawaysConnect with Bob Johansen and Jamais Cascio
Book Website
Institute for the Future
Jamais Cascio LinkedIn
Bob Johansen LinkedIn
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Louisa Loran, a seasoned executive advisor whose career spans legacy brands, global industrial giants, and one of the world’s most influential technology companies. Louisa brings a rare perspective shaped by leadership roles at Diageo, Maersk, and Google—giving her a front-row seat to how strategy, operating models, and leadership expectations shift across industries and eras.
The conversation centers on a hard truth many leadership teams avoid: strategy does not fail because leaders lack intelligence or effort—it fails because organizations try to adapt to a changing world without changing how they operate. Louisa challenges the assumption that transformation is about better plans or new tools. Instead, she reframes it as a question of movement, clarity, and leadership conviction in the absence of certainty.
Drawing from her book, Leadership Anatomy in Motion, Louisa explores how leaders can recognize patterns rather than chase trends, why digitizing the past rarely creates future value, and how AI often exposes deeper strategic blind spots instead of fixing them. She also addresses the uncomfortable leadership work of identity—when leaders must ask whether they are still the right person to lead the next phase of the organization.
Throughout the discussion, Mahan and Louisa examine collective intelligence, operating model shifts, succession readiness, and the real risks of mistaking activity for progress. This is not a conversation about leadership theory. It is a grounded, experience-based dialogue about what it actually takes to lead when the rules keep changing—and when the cost of waiting is higher than the cost of acting.
For CEOs, board members, and senior executives navigating uncertainty, this episode offers a candid look at the decisions, questions, and trade-offs that define effective leadership today.
Actionable Takeaways
Connect with Louisa Loran
Louisa Loran Website
Louisa Loran LinkedIn
Leadership Anatomy in Motion: Empowering You to Lead Through Technology and People
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli sits down with Eric Termuende, leadership thinker, speaker, and author of Rethink Work: Finding & Keeping the Right Talent, for a grounded conversation about what actually holds teams together in times of uncertainty.
Rather than focusing on trends or surface-level engagement tactics, the discussion explores why trust, clarity, and human connection remain the real differentiators for leaders trying to reduce friction and sustain performance. Eric shares practical insights drawn from his work with organizations that have stopped chasing big transformation initiatives and instead focus on small, consistent shifts that compound over time.
Mahan and Eric examine why many leadership teams feel overwhelmed despite good intentions, and how blind spots, inaction, and excessive control quietly erode trust. The conversation challenges the idea that certainty is required to lead well, replacing it with a more realistic and resilient approach rooted in direction, psychological safety, and shared responsibility.
The episode also looks at what makes teams “unwavering” when the environment around them is anything but stable. Through concrete examples and memorable stories, Eric illustrates how leaders can build trust that lasts, reduce unnecessary friction, and create conditions where people contribute their best thinking.
This conversation is especially relevant for CEOs and senior executives who sense that the way work gets done needs to change, but who want practical leadership insight rather than abstract theory.
Actionable Takeaways
Connect with Eric Termuende
Eric Termuende Website
Eric Termuende LinkedIn
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Les Csorba — senior partner at Heidrick & Struggles and author of Aware: The Power of Seeing Yourself Clearly. Drawing on decades advising CEOs, boards, and leadership teams, Les makes a compelling case that self-awareness is not a soft skill but a strategic differentiator. With leaders facing complexity, speed, and pressure unlike anything in recent memory, Les argues that the ability to see yourself clearly has become a true competitive edge.
Throughout the conversation, Les breaks down why so many successful leaders overestimate their self-awareness — and why that gap grows as they ascend into larger roles. He draws from extensive leadership assessments, behavioral research, and personal experience to show how blind spots quietly shape decisions, team dynamics, and organizational culture. His insights on the “CEO bubble,” the tension between intent and impact, and the way digital validation dulls reflection will resonate with any executive navigating today’s environment.
The discussion also explores practical ways leaders can strengthen their self-awareness without resorting to vague platitudes or one-time exercises. Les shares stories from his own leadership journey, examples from well-known CEOs, and a grounded perspective on how to build cultures that make honest feedback possible. His framing of courage, humility, and reflection feels less like theory and more like leadership discipline.
Finally, the conversation touches on timely challenges — from AI’s influence on leader behavior to the importance of understanding one’s “shadow” as a driver of organizational culture. Les brings a balanced, seasoned voice to these issues, offering clarity without overconfidence. For CEOs and senior executives committed to leading with greater impact, this episode offers a set of insights that are as practical as they are thought-provoking.
Actionable TakeawaysLes Csorba Website
Les Csorba LinkedIn
Aware: The Power of Seeing Yourself Clearly
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Dr. Bernard Harris, a leader whose extraordinary career trajectory—from physician to NASA astronaut to CEO and venture capitalist—offers rare insights into the inner work of leadership. Dr. Harris is the first African American to walk in space, and the author of Embracing Infinite Possibilities: Letting Go of Fear to Find Your Highest Potential. His unique vantage point, shaped by science, space exploration, and C-suite leadership, gives him an extraordinary lens on what really limits potential—not just for individuals, but for teams and entire organizations.
This is not a conversation about space missions. It's a candid exploration of the hidden forces that hold even the most accomplished leaders back. Dr. Harris shares how fear, false identity, and overachievement can become barriers disguised as success—and how leaders can finally begin to let go. With disarming honesty, he recounts how constant validation once drove his every move, and how shedding that need was key to unlocking deeper effectiveness and personal alignment.
What makes this episode essential for executive listeners is not just the personal story—it’s the direct application to business and leadership contexts. Dr. Harris talks about leading teams under pressure, confronting blind spots in senior leadership, and what it really takes to receive feedback at the top. His reflections offer a masterclass in self-awareness and intentional leadership, especially for those navigating high-stakes roles where perception often replaces truth.
Whether you're leading a company, serving on a board, or mentoring the next generation of executives, this episode will challenge you to rethink how you define success, strength, and growth. The conversation isn't about doing more—it’s about uncovering what’s driving your decisions, and whether it’s truly aligned with your values and long-term vision.
Actionable Takeaways:
Connect with Dr. Bernard Harris
Bernard Harris LinkedIn
Embracing Infinite Possiblities
Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:
Mahan Tavakoli Website
Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn
Partnering Leadership Website
From the publisher's feed
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…
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.