Leadership in Supervision

Leadership has traditionally been viewed as an individual attribute that goes beyond management. All managers are expected to be leaders, but not all leaders have expertise in the management functions.

However, leaders may emerge without formal appointment. These leaders become influential, either because they have special skills or resources that meet the needs of others, or because the formally-appointed manager lacks leadership skills and the informal leader steps in to fill the vacuum. Provided the informal leader is supporting the goals of the organisation, this can be a useful support to the manager.

Keep the following points in mind:

• Your authority as supervisor comes from above, from the people who supervise you.
• Your position as a leader comes from the people you supervise.
• Supervision is about doing something.
• Leadership is about being someone.

The Definition and Elements of Leadership

There are three elements present regarding leadership, namely: the person taking the lead, the person or people following him/her, and the task/job being done:

• The leader
• The followers and
• The situation (task)

We can’t speak of leadership if any of these elements are lacking.

Now that the elements of leadership are known, the term can be more easily defined:

“It is a process by which people are influenced to act efficiently in order to achieve specific objectives.” (Louis A. Allen)

We may all differ in what we regard as being leadership characteristics/behaviour. Research conducted by Kirkpatrick and Locke in 1991, however, highlighted six traits that differentiate leaders from non-leaders:

Drive: Leaders exhibit a high effort-level. They have a relatively high desire for achievement, they are ambitious, they have a lot of energy, they are tirelessly persistent in their activities, and they show initiative.

Desire to Lead: Leaders have a strong desire to influence and lead others. They demonstrate the willingness to take responsibility.

Honesty and Integrity: Leaders build trusting relationships between themselves and followers by being truthful or non/deceitful and by showing high consistency between word and deed.

Self-Confidence: Followers look to leaders for an absence of self-doubt. Leaders, therefore, need to show self-confidence to convince followers of the rightness of goals and decisions.

Intelligence: Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather, synthesize and interpret large amounts of information; and to be able to create visions, solve problems and make correct decisions.

Job-Relevant Knowledge: Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about the company, the industry and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leaders to make well-informed decisions and to understand the implications of those decisions.

Click here to view a video on how to lead your tribe the way Mufasa led.