Mike Vessey

I’ve spent thirty years helping leaders see something they usually can’t see on their own: that the thing getting in the way isn’t the problem in front of them, it’s the way they’re making sense of it. I find that endlessly interesting. I also find it endlessly humbling, because the moment you think you’ve got it figured out, you discover another layer.

My career started at London Underground, which is — as it turns out — a wonderful place to learn that organisations are fundamentally human systems held together by goodwill, habit, and rather a lot of improvisation. From there I moved into consultancy at SHL, eventually heading up the consultancy division, which sharpened my commercial instincts while keeping me very close to what actually matters: people doing difficult things in conditions that rarely cooperate.

I ran MDV Consulting for many years, working alongside CEOs and executive teams on leadership assessment and development. The work that I found myself drawn to increasingly was vertical development — the idea that we can actually grow how we think, not just what we know, well into our seventies if we create the right conditions. I’ve been borrowing the smartphone analogy for a while now: most leadership development adds apps, but the real work is upgrading the operating system. Finding Cultivating Leadership felt like meeting people who had been practising and embodying this way of working for longer than I had — which is exactly what I was looking for.

I’m English and now live in the Austrian Alps — which sounds rather more glamorous than it is. In practice, it involves taking the rubbish down a 45-degree slope in winter because the refuse truck can’t make it up the hill. That said, the broadband is inexplicably excellent (certainly better than anything I had in London), which feels like a fair trade. Living here means I do get to ski, hike, and bike — not as often as I’d like, but often enough to be reminded why I chose it. There’s something about the scale and rhythm of the mountains that keeps me grounded, curious, and occasionally a little in awe. I’m drawn to places and conversations that create space to think more clearly, see differently, and act more deliberately — which is, in many ways, what both the mountains and my work are about.