I was chatting about my recent leadership coaching experiences with Mr Bob Anderson, the founder of United States-based The Leadership Circle and co-author of the book, Mastering Leadership. He wanted to know what I had observed regarding the coping strategies of leaders. My response was that I had consistently seen strong levels of arrogance and critical behaviour among leaders.

He then agreed to investigate this, looking at his client database of almost 100,000 leaders around the world developed over 15 years. The database comprises chief executive officers, business unit heads and those who report directly to them, with 60 per cent being men in the age group of 30 to 50 across manufacturing, education, government, healthcare, consulting, financial services and energy.