Occasionally you meet a business leader—he is ordinarily insecure emotionally—who falls into the habit of saying unkind things about one subordinate to another subordinate. It’s hard on morale, or course, because you never know when such a chief may say something about you in your absence. The point here is that the loyalties the leader practices or fails to practice are under steady surveillance. The wise leader therefore makes them worthy of imitation. The prompt leader, the neat leader, the persevering leader, the leader who keeps his promises and does his best to be just, practices the kind of loyalties he may expect his followers to practice also. This idea us to see the truth in the old adage that “An institution is but the lengthened shadow of its leader.”
~ James F. Bender, The Technique of Executive Leadership (1950)