one of the things I've always respected was a supervisor/manager who'd step up and help when things got rough

It helps that I also just wanted to go home too, and if the work wasn't finished no one was leaving. So I had my own motivation to not skimp away for office bullshit and instead be working.

And a lot of people don't seem to grasp that you are training your management as much as they are training you. You need to foster in them what you want to see and benefit from, because it will pay off tenfold later. Too many people are willfully obstinate just because they hate authority or are too stubborn to understand they are making their own life harder by not working with their leadership.