When Love Misses the Mark
By Dennis Chew | Relational Intelligence · Inner Healing · Leadership Trust | Forthcoming
About the Book
All leadership is relational. Every decision a leader makes touches people. Every pattern a leader carries shapes the culture around them. And yet the relational dimension of leadership is the one most often left undeveloped — not because leaders do not care, but because the roots of relational failure run deeper than skill or intention.
When Love Misses the Mark is a book about those roots. Drawing on decades of mentoring practice, personal experience, and careful observation of leaders across industries and sectors, Dennis Chew explores how relational wounds from the past — unprocessed grief, unresolved conflict, patterns of self-protection learned in early life — can re-emerge in leadership contexts as blind spots, defensive behaviours, and failures of judgment that no amount of training can fix.
The book does not stop at diagnosis. It provides a practical, honest, and compassionate path toward what Dennis calls relational intelligence: the capacity to recognise your own patterns, take responsibility for their impact, and lead others from a place of genuine empathy, trust, and wisdom.
Key Themes
- The relational roots of leadership failure — Why smart, well-intentioned leaders repeatedly damage the relationships that matter most
- Blind spots and defensive patterns — How unprocessed relational wounds show up in meeting rooms, performance reviews, and moments of crisis
- The cost of relational disconnection — What organisations lose when their leaders cannot sustain genuine trust
- The path toward relational intelligence — Practical tools for self-awareness, honest reflection, and the gradual rebuilding of relational health
- Leading from a healed place — What it looks and feels like to lead with empathy, accountability, and wisdom that comes from the inside out
Who This Book Is For
This book is for leaders who sense — often quietly, often uncomfortably — that something in their relational world is not working as it should. It is for:
- Senior leaders who have achieved significant results but sense that their teams do not fully trust them
- Executives navigating conflict, succession, or cultural breakdown within their organisations
- Leaders who have been told they are difficult to work with — and genuinely want to understand why
- Coaches, mentors, and HR professionals supporting leaders through relational and organisational crises
- Anyone who cares deeply about the people they lead, and wants to love them well
Why This Matters in the Age of AI
As artificial intelligence takes on more of the analytical and operational work of leadership, what remains is irreducibly human: the quality of relationships a leader builds, the trust they sustain, and the wisdom they bring to moments that no algorithm can navigate.
When Love Misses the Mark is a preparation for that future — an invitation to do the inner work now, so that the human dimensions of leadership become a leader’s greatest competitive advantage.
Join the Waitlist
This title is currently in development. Join the waitlist to be notified on publication, receive pre-publication excerpts, and access exclusive content from Dennis as the book takes shape.