领导(lǐng dǎo) - leader, leadership, to lead in Mandarin

领导 (lǐng dǎo) is both the verb to lead and the noun for the person or people doing the leading. As a noun it is the everyday word for whoever is above you: your manager, the head of the department, the officials in charge. It can be singular or plural without changing shape, and 领导们 is available when you want to be explicit.

The register matters. 领导 carries an institutional flavour, so it fits an office, a school, a state body or a party organisation. In a small private business people are more likely to say 老板. Asking 领导同意了吗 is asking whether it has been signed off upstairs.

The trap for English speakers is reading it as "leader" in the heroic sense. A national figure is 领袖 or, more plainly, named by post. Your 领导 is simply the person whose approval you need, and the word is used with a faint dryness that a literal translation loses entirely.