Management Journal: Aspects of Managing

Management Journal: Aspects of Managing
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Management Journal: Aspects of Managing
Introduction
In my professional setting, there are some skills that I can apply in the management process involving interactions with my peers, managers, subordinates, customers, and vendors. These critical skills include emotional intelligence, communications, and vision. In emotional intelligence, a leader will have the ability to manage various kinds of relationships by applying different attributes, including charisma, control, and emotional self-awareness (Nye, 2008). A leader will be considered to have communication skills when they apply persuasive words, examples, symbols, and being persuasive to distant or near followers. Finally, leaders with a vision will tend to be attractive to followers and be effective as much as possible regarding balanced capabilities and ideals. This is reflected in Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy that holds that a leader will strive to catch up with their followers. Besides the critical skills, there are other hard power skills that leaders should have, including organizational and political skills (Nye, 2008). In organizational skills, leaders should be able to manage information and reward systems and control the inner and outer circles. Politically, leaders should have the ability to buy and bargain, bully, and have the power to build and maintain willing coalitions. The last set of skills that leaders should have is smart power skills, which includes the contextual IQ (Nye, 2008). In this category of skills, leaders should be able to understand the evolving environment, capitalize on the existing trends, and adjust their styles to match with the context and the needs of the followers (Nye, 2008). This paper highlight emotional intelligence as one of the softest powers I can apply in my professional setting and examines Apple’s strengths and development opportunities concerning managing. In my professional setting, I will choose not to use political skills that require leaders to bully, buy or bargain, or always maintain a winning coalition when working with employees.
The ability to effectively lead a team combines both hard and soft powers. In hard power, leaders employ Machiavellian and organizational capacity skills to achieve their desired interests. Soft powers will include effective communication skills, vision, and emotional intelligence. According to Nye (2008), effective capacity to lead will have a combination of both the soft power and hard power to derive the meaning of leadership, which will involve different entities, including leaders, followers, and the setting in which the leaders and followers act upon. While most leaders adhere to a combination of both soft and hard power model, leaders in other organizations follow the path of smart power where they apply the contextual IQ or the broader political skills. In this context, leaders in different organizations have followed different models where others take the path of transactional and transformational leadership and charismatic leadership. In general, leadership tends to be more important in some contexts compared to others, and some employees prefer to b...