Forging Bonds Not Battles: Leading From The Heart!

Former French Foreign Legionnaire turned executive coach, Vladimir Bourov is helping Hong Kong’s men reclaim strength through service, community and conscious leadership. Elizabeth Kerr reports

PHOTOS BY Andrew Spires & courtesy of Tatiana Bourov

At first blush, Vladimir Bourov looks a lot like the rest of the bankers, insurers and consultants at Fuel in ifc Mall late on a Thursday afternoon. His white shirt is perfectly starched, he’s lean and manicured in a way that looks disciplined, not uptight, and the perfect square of the knapsack he’s toting suggests precision packing. None of that is surprising considering the seven years Vladimir spent in the French Foreign Legion prior to relocating to Hong Kong.

Vladimir’s coming from Admiralty this day, where he’s just wrapped up sessions related to his consultancy business Servant Leadership, which specialises in leadership training and executive coaching for C-suite dwellers in need of guidance on corporate work culture (www.vladimirbourov.com). Vladimir guides his clients on how to be conscious in leadership and on how their influence will impact their people and in turn their families. It’s his way of contributing to a better world, and his time in the military is one of the reasons the city’s executives are requesting his services.

“They trust I’m the person they can learn from,” Vladimir opens. “My 35 years have been rich in experience: unique life experiences, military service, Harvard Business School. What I convey to my clients is that leadership is about service, and that starts with a responsible mindset. I facilitate the fulfilment of individual needs and influence how they manage their business to create positive change. We all want a world where our children are going to grow up with leaders who are stewards – not people who confront each other for resources to line pockets.”

Vladimir’s commitment to giving back and inspiring others by leading by example was also the driver behind his DB-based initiative Pushing Limits Forging Bonds – just now disbanded due to family reasons. For the past three years, he has provided High-Intensity Functional Training (HIFT) sessions for men three mornings a week, free of charge. He hopes PLFB will soon make a comeback, headed up by fellow residents, with a continued focus on commitment, resilience and raising the bar.

Interest in leadership was indeed born in The Legion, but also of necessity. Vladimir moved to Discovery Bay with his wife Tatiana after they got married in 2019 and went on to have a son, like most preferring the environment for children. It was she who convinced him to move to Hong Kong after they met in a Paris train station in 2016 – “Tatiana’s to blame for everything,” he quips – where she’d been recruited by a Hong Kong firm after working in the mainland for a decade. And it was Tatiana who encouraged him to get certified in Life Coaching, NLP and as a Counselling Master Practitioner when it became clear he was struggling to transition to life outside the military.

Vladimir says he loved Hong Kong and its security from the get-go, but it took a while to accept. “I remember we were walking in Tamar Park around 11pm one night. We saw a group of maybe seven guys coming towards us, and for me that’s a fight. I was already calculating my strategy... and they just passed by. I was super-shocked. My risk assessment failed,” he laughs again. For most of us The Legion is the stuff of fantasy – think of films like Beau Geste, Beau Travail or Legionnaire – but Vladimir credits it with straightening out his life and putting him on his circuitous route to DB. Born in the Soviet Union, in Irkutsk, his family fled to Spain in 1995, but a paperwork mix-up left him on his own in a small village with his grandmother and younger sister at just four years old. The mix-up lasted two years.

“You can imagine. It’s 1995. There’s no Skype, no WhatsApp. The money that was left for us to live on is gone in five to six months,” he recalls. “There were very good people who saw that something wasn’t right, and they helped us out and got us into school. As kids we didn’t really realise the problem. What I recall well is that my entrepreneurial side was born there.” Vladimir learnt that neighbours would pay him a few pesetas to complete ‘odd jobs’ and manual chores, enough to buoy the family until his parents finally made it back to the small Valencia town they’d settled in. By the mid-2000s, however, a combination of Spanish nationalism at the time and regular bullying when he was younger meant he had “built a life on the streets”.

None of this prevented Vladimir helping to fund his sisters through university – he also helped transform an old kebab shop that his parents had managed to buy into a thriving Russian/ Spanish takeaway (it’s still there).

“I made the decision to go to France during the nights I was working on that small business, because I wanted to move forward with my life,” he says. “I finished rebuilding the shop, and one week before going to The Legion I gave my mother the keys to it. I had €120 in my pocket and I moved to France.”

As a new recruit Vladimir embarked on a gruelling training programme before gaining a spot in an all-Russian squad. He spent three years as a sniper and finally got on a leadership track.

“I was a sergeant, which isn’t high in terms of commissioned officers. But my function was Special Forces instructor which gave me a chance to work with different units and gain a lot of experience. That’s where my leadership skills really developed. The Legion gave me hope, a new life and a sense of feeling valuable and useful.”

Vladimir has parlayed that feeling of usefulness into his leadership coaching and now into the six-month-old Wolves Private Club (www.wolveshk.com), a paid membership, men-only club whose mission is to ‘unite and empower like-minded men, pushing each other beyond ordinary, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in triumph and adversity, and forging legacies that resonate through time’. There’s a focus on outdoor activities, thought-provoking events and servant leadership initiatives. Every week, members come together to share challenges and triumphs, support, uplift and empower one another.

In 2025, it’s still more acceptable for women to seek support from peers: Vladimir is targeting men because it’s what he knows; Tatiana, as Wolves’ co-founder, is in charge of the club’s wider reach. “To promote fatherhood within the club, my wife and I also organise family-focused events and seminars focused on strengthening the bond between fathers and children and promoting a healthy lifestyle for the entire family.

“When I arrived in Hong Kong, I recognised the need among leaders for support and camaraderie similar to what I experienced in The Legion. This inspired me to create a private club grounded in my leadership expertise and my desire to help others grow. Alongside my wife’s knowledge in longevity, we aim to share valuable insights to help our members and their families foster healthy, fulfilling and long-lasting lives.”

Wolves Private Club’s focus is on longevity, servant leadership and philanthropy. “Material success shouldn’t be your goal,” Vladimir finishes. “It should be service, a more inclusive environment, and a culture where people thrive and fulfil evolving needs.”