Become a Better Leader with the Unicorn Leaders Podcast 

What makes a billion-dollar company?
Unicorn Leaders
is a podcast for managers, entrepreneurs, and other leaders who have an insatiable curiosity for creating high-performing teams while leading unicorn start-ups.

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About the show

The Unicorn Leaders podcast takes a deep dive into the world of building a billion-dollar company (a unicorn) in every episode. Join us while we explore the leadership and environments that create unicorn startups straight from those with first-hand experience (startup founders, VPs of talent, and more). 

The podcast is hosted by Fahd Alhattab, the CEO of Unicorn Labs and a millennial workplace expert who specializes in providing transformative leadership and team dynamics training for high-growth startups. Fahd has been researching what creates high-performing teams over the last five years. Join him as he asks his guests the hard questions to uncover what it means to be a leader in our fast-paced, information-based world. 

episodes

Trailer: Unicorn Leaders with Fahd Alhattab

Learn about Fahd's leadership journey, why he started the Unicorn Leaders podcast and what the future of leadership holds.

Episode 1: The Future of Leadership and Management (with Michael Johnson, President & CEO Multiview Financial Software)

In this episode, our guest Michael talks about how radical commitment to people is the foundation of a good leader and leaders need to take the wants of employees more seriously.

Episode 2: Why Your Leadership Won't be Effective Without Psychological Safety (with Craig Handy, Team Lead at Shopify, Founder of Jameson Strategies Consulting)

In this episode, our guest Craig shares why, as a manager, it’s so important to create an environment where there’s psychological safety and strategies to help you create this beneficial environment in your workplace.

Episode 3: How You Can Build a Culture of Effective Leadership at Work (with Aydin Mirzaee, Co-Founder and CEO of Fellow.APP and Creator of the SuperManagers Podcast)

In this episode, our guest Aydin walks us through how you can improve employee retention and create a more productive team by improving your workplace culture.

Episode 4: What Motivates People? Understanding Motivation in the Workplace (with Cassy Aite, Co-Founder and CEO of Hoppier)

In this episode, our guest Cassy explains the different ways employees can be motivated and how important it is to recognize their unique motivation styles.

Episode 5: Create a Compelling All-Encompassing Vision to Guide Your Company (with Sam Witherspoon, Founder and CEO of IMRSV Data Labs)

In this episode, our guest Sam tells us about how he created a vision that helped guide his company and how important it is for you to do this too.

Episode 6: Team Composition: How to Attract and Hire Stars Employees (with Amanda Gordon, Vice President People at Rewind)

In this episode, our guest Amanda shares the secrets to attracting, hiring and retaining the star employees that will bring your company from good to great.

Episode 7: How to Foster a Culture of Development to Improve Your Team’s Performance (with Brittany Forsyth, Ex-Shopify Chief Talent Officer and Founder of Backbone Angels)

In this episode, our guest Brittany shares how her leadership journey and styles grew and evolved as she rose through the ranks to eventually becoming Chief Talent Officer of Shopify. She shares her lessons along the way and how they all helped her build her leadership confidence to succeed at a unicorn level company.

Episode 8: Productive Conflict with Shawn MacDonell

In this episode Shawn MacDonell shares how his experiences have highlighted the importance of becoming comfortable with essential leadership skills like approaching a productive conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and pursuing a proactive action-oriented attitude.

Episode 9: Why Candidate Experience Matters When Building Your Team with Julia Fulton

In episode 9, Julia gives us insight into how she uses her humane recruiting approach to create a reputable employment brand that plays big dividends both inside and outside the company.

Episode: 10 How Leaders Build Company Culture with Laura Mindorff

Laura Mindorff is the brilliant COO at Wicket. Laura has developed years of experience under her belt and shares her very tactical advice on how to create effective culture through things like rituals, culture champions, and what metrics to watch out for to check-in on your progress.

Episode: 12 Finding Purpose In Your Work That Drives You with Florent Schmahl

Florent Schmahl, Chief of Staff of highly purposeful agtech company, Growcer, shares his journey and learnings along the way as he shifted his work from being focused on developing hard skills to now pursuing purposeful work. Over the years he’s has time to gather his insights on finding the work that drives you and how important it is in today’s labour market pressures.

Episode: 11 The Importance of Creating a People-First Company with Shawna Stewart

Today we have Shawna Stewart on the podcast, VP of People and Operations at Railz Financial. Shawna is truly a people-focused leader, she has extensive background in psychology and organizational behaviour and experience involving performance management, full scope operational effectiveness, succession planning, employee engagement and talent development.

Episode: 13 The Value of Vision for Employee Engagement and Success with Chris Williams

Chris Williams, former VP of HR at Microsoft has over 40 years of experience building and leading teams.

At Microsoft, he worked in product before stumbling into HR and eventually becoming VP of HR and responsible for 32,000 employees.Through it all, he’s seen his share of bad leadership and what makes teams succeed and fail. Find out what this common denominator is by listening to Chris' episode!

Episode: 14 Leading Effective Teams in a 100% Remote Environment with Natalie Furness

Natalie Furness, CEO of RevOps Automated and Revenue Operations Consultant shares her journey and learnings along the way onto remote work and falling into the world of operations.

She speaks of finding your people through value alignment for both the work you do and the work environment you prefer. She helps deep dive into whether the trust has begun to break in remote work and what questions leaders should ask themselves to help mitigate this.

Episode: 15 The Work of a Startup CEO with Kyle Racki

Kyle Racki, the co-founder and CEO of Proposify, Kyle helps thousands of businesses remove the bottleneck of proposals and get more visibility into the close. 

In episode 15, Kyle lays out the framework of the job of a CEO and some of the important pieces they’re faced with including: creating vision and auditing values, building out the executive team (title politics are real), hiring leadership contextually, having difficult conversations and holding people accountable.

Listen Now

Fellow

Rewind

Shopify

Multiview

Imrsv Data Labs

Hoppier

Fahd has spoken to 50K+ people across North America on leadership and was named a Rising Star Speaker and Most Entertaining Speaker by the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers.

He inspires audiences to become Unicorn Leaders through leadership coaching, team retreats, and keynote speeches.

e pursuit of uncovering what makes unicorn companies continues in his podcast. In each episode, you’ll find case studies, personal stories, and actionable advice for you to become a Unicorn Leader who builds unstoppable teams.🏆💪

Fahd Alhattab

CEO of Unicorn Labs, Leadership Speaker

Want to be a guest on our podcast?

Send us a message!