Management focused study and professional development plan (PDP) Essay

Management focused study and professional development plan (PDP) - Essay Example The importance of good leadership cannot be stressed enough with the number organizations and business entities that folded to the failure of its leadership. Leadership coupled with the tools of management, intends to reach or achieve the vision of an organization with its available resource in information, technology, materials, organization and personnel. In today’s very competitive business arena, leadership can spell the difference of an organization’s success or failure. Leadership is a critical element in ensuring the sustainability of an organization. Research in the field of leadership has never been saturated with theoretical and conceptual quests for leadership styles that work with any situation and followers’ condition. (Jamaludin, et al, 2011, pg. 73). One of the important attributes of leaders that attract the interest of many researchers is their leadership styles (Adeyemi-Bello 2001). Leaders lead through a combination of logical decision making a nd feeling. Depending upon the situation, it may require more emotional intelligence and less logical decision making or vice versa (Mayer & Caruso, 2002). ... Consistent with this observation, Al-Mailam (2004) argued that high-quality leadership is regarded as vital in bringing success to any group activity. One of the more recent and prevalent discussion about leadership is the emotional aspect of it as â€Å"leadership has been described as an â€Å"emotionladen process† (George, 2000, p. 1046), with the skillful management of followers’ feelings representing a critical leadership function (Humphrey, 2002, 2008). The ability to address underlying feelings and emotions is essential to effective leadership (Mayer & Caruso, 2002). This brings to the fore the relationship and emotional aspect of leadership which has been the subject of inquiry of many management theorist – emotional intelligence. This is quite interesting because the emotional aspect of human resource was used to be thought of as insignificant and irrelevant in the production line that management theorists relegated it as being trivial and unimportant. When science in management was first introduced in an organization and production line, the emotion of the people in the bureaucracy was never considered (Taylor, 1911). Organization then was viewed more of cohesive machine that works efficiently rather an structure that composes of people of different background, interest, predisposition and motivation. Recent management theorists however are looking at it at a different perspective. Mayer and Salovey (1997) elaborated the idea and defined emotional intelligence as "the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and action" (Grewal & Salovey, 2005 p. 332). Interpersonal