The CEO Who Hid His Blindness for 45 Years - What AI Taught Him About Leadership

Send us Fan Mail For 45 years, Mike Hobday sat in boardrooms at IBM, Barclays, Prudential and Atos - running transformation programmes worth millions, presenting on stage in front of hundreds of people - and never told a single person in that room he couldn't read the screen behind him. Not glasses. Not correctable. Partially sighted since birth. He kept it hidden until he was sixty. In this episode, Mike and I talk about what that secret cost him, what it taught him about carrying something private inside a career built on performance, and why he now believes AI is doing to every leader what his eyesight once did to him - exposing exactly what you've spent years learning to hide. This is The Power Within." In this episode of The Power Within, I sit down with Mike Hobday - former IBM General Manager, former CEO of an AI company, transformation leader and executive coach - to explore why so many AI pilots stall, why agentic AI changes more than workflows, and why leaders need a clear North Star before people can follow them into the future. But the conversation also becomes deeply personal. Mike shares that he has been partially sighted since birth and kept it private at work until he was 60 - a remarkable story about vulnerability, confidence, identity and the masks people wear in professional life. This is not just a conversation about AI. It is a conversation about fear, leadership, trust and the human story people need when everything is changing. Tune in for an inspiring conversation that will leave you equipped with the tools to lead with confidence, overcome obstacles and unlock The Power Within email us at: [email protected] Subscribe, share and leave a review to help others discover the show