Philip Selznick

“The term “leadership” connotes critical experience rather than routine practice. This is suggested in the following comment by Barnard: The overvaluation of the apparatus of communication and administration is opposed to leadership and the development of leaders. It opposes leadership whose function is to promote appropriate adjustment of ends and means to new environmental conditions, because it opposes change either of status in general or of established procedures and habitual routine. This overvaluation also discourages the development of leaders by retarding the progress of the abler men and by putting an excessive premium on routine qualities.[6]  {37}”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation

“Third, character is functional, in the sense that it is no mere accidental accretion of responsive patterns. Character {39} development fulfills a task set by the requirements of personality organization: the defense of the individual against inner and outer demands which threaten him. “Biologically speaking, character formation is an autoplastic function. In the conflict between instinct and frustrating outer world, and motivated by the anxiety arising from this conflict, the organism erects a protection mechanism between itself and the outer world.”[9] Whatever the special content of varying theories of character-formation, they share an emphasis on the reconstruction of the self as a way of solving anxiety-laden problems.”
― Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation