Leadership Behaviors in Sales Organizations

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of applied sciences, Nürnberg (IOM), course: MBA, language: English, abstract: The scientific field of leadership behavior is well researched, but there are no homogen-ous statements about what a leader really defines. With the help of studies, scientists could identify different leadership behavior types and their influence on subordinates. Task-oriented leaders are goal-focused and do never lose track of the target, even if the staff is unsatisfied with the situation. Relations-oriented leaders try everything to create comfortable work circumstances for their subordinates. They belief, that satisfied em-ployees generate a higher productivity. The third major type of leadership behavior is the change-oriented, which is to be found in dynamic industry sectors such as the tech-nological industry. This type of leaders should be open for change and should motivate their employees with new ideas. Another question is, if leaders are born to become lead-ers or if people can develop to become a good leader? However, both assumptions are right. Leaders should have inborn distal traits like a strong personality, but also proximal traits like social skills and a good problem solving ability, which can be developed and learned. Summing up, there exist different leadership behavior styles and leaders should know about the behavior types, because the use of the different types depends on the actual situation. The second part of the work paper tries to analyze the specific traits and skills of sales leaders. The results are that sales leaders have to have strong proximal traits like social and emotional skills. As the targets are already identified, they have to be relations-oriented to win the subordinates working for the mission. The leading type also depends on the given situation. If the leader has a good relationship to his rep-resentatives, he can be more task-oriented to reach a higher level of productivity. But if he has a week relationship to his Reps, he should be more relations-oriented to in their trust. As the short enumeration shows, there exists no right way to lead, rather every situation asks for its own leadership type.