NewLeadership coach Steve Tappin says Chinese CEOs are more inspirational

Few have had the kind of one-on-one interactions and face time with the global business elite that Steve Tappin can boast about. The 48-year-old from Harrogate, England, runs Xinfu Group, a firm which focuses on coaching top executives to become better leaders, and is the host of BBC show CEO Guru in which he interviews the world's top business executives. In his most recent book, Dream to Last, he focuses his attention on 100 of mainland China's key enterprising influencers, including some of its most enigmatic personalities: Alibaba's Jack Ma Yun, carmaker Geely's Shufu Li and Fosun International's Guo Guangchang for example.

Tappin shares with the South China Morning Post why he believes Chinese chief executives are far more inspirational than Western ones, his picks of which up-and-coming leaders investors should watch, and what keeps China's best minds up at night.

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The reason I got into this was because I joined a company called Imperial Chemical Industries. It was one of the biggest companies in Europe. On one level, it was a fantastic company and on another level, it didn't work as well as it should. As a young man in it, I thought there must be a better way to build companies. It kicked me off on a mission and my mission is to inspire leaders and to help them develop a new way of leading their businesses globally. That includes the West and includes China.

I've learned over the years that we do need inspirational leaders and at the moment I don't see enough of them in the West. They are good executors, people who know about shareholder value. There are people who are ambassadors. There are entrepreneurs but there's not quite yet - not for me - an inspiration.