Leadership and Supervision

Leadership is the process that occurs when a leader influences another person or group and focuses the followers’ behavior on a goal or outcome. Persuading a subordinate to clean up his or her work area could be seen as leadership, as could convincing hundreds of people to volunteer for disaster relief work. Influencing people and focusing that influence toward a tangible outcome are fundamental to the leadership process. Leadership can happen in a variety of settings, either formal or informal. The more formalized settings such as business organizations can give individuals a formal job assignment in which they are expected to lead other organizational members. This formalized leadership role is often called supervision. While leadership and supervision are similar, there are some significant differences in ...