Supervisory management requires more than just a title. To effectively engage employees in their assigned tasks in order to get the desired results, supervisors must learn and use leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities. The leadership role entails interacting with a group of individuals in order to influence their opinions, attitudes, and performance. A leader’s influence is reflected in whether employees follow willingly and achieve organizational goals.

Contemporary leadership thought leaders include Warren Bennis, who suggests that people want four things from leaders: (1) direction, (2) trust,

(3) hope, and (4) results. James Kouzes and Barry Posner believe that successful leaders engage in five practices: (1) challenging the process, (2) inspiring a shared vision, (3) enabling others to act, (4) modeling the way, and (5) encouraging the heart.

Servant-leadership has also emerged as a popular practice with many global companies. It posits that in order to lead, one must first know how to serve. Robert Greenleaf and other proponents of this leadership style contend that service entails making sure that others’ needs are met first, acting with integrity, listening to stakeholders, and empowering followers for success.

While no one style of leadership is considered best, effective leaders demonstrate a number of common practices. They take responsibility for their followers’ success by inspiring shared vision and values, holding employees accountable, and engendering mutual trust and respect through consistent candor, caring, and competency. Leaders create a supportive climate for people to develop new competencies, explore new roles, make decisions, adapt to change, and become leaders themselves.? LO857