MANFRED Kets de Vries is one of the world's most distinguished clinical professors of leadership development and organisational change. He has published over 400 academic papers and 50 books, and a few commentaries in The Business Times.

But his new book, The CEO Whisperer, published in March 2021, does not read so much like a management book as a quasi-memoir of a professor who, having spent years coaching top executives, has distilled the most important lessons of being a good leader - and, perhaps more importantly, a good human being.

He ambles, meanders, philosophises, and repeats points if he suspects it didn't fully register the first time.