A qualitative study of leader behaviors perceived to enable salesperson performance

Abstract

This study builds on and extends previous sales leadership research by exploring sales professionals’ perceptions of effective leadership behaviors. Semistructured interviews with both sales leaders and salespeople working in a global enterprise software company were examined through a qualitative analysis. Results indicated that participants believed sales leadership played an important role in influencing sales performance. When asked to describe specific sales leader behaviors that best enable salesperson performance, sales professionals – both sales leaders and salespeople – overwhelmingly referenced coaching, followed by collaborating, championing, and customer engaging. We define and describe these four key sales leader behaviors and identify four potential mediating variables (trust, confidence, optimism, and resilience), from which emerges a conceptual framework of sales leader behaviors perceived to enable salesperson performance. We examine these four key sales leader behaviors and mediators in the broader context of leadership theory, particularly transformational, servant, authentic, and adaptive leadership theories. The key contribution of this study is the identification of a set of leader behaviors that are likely to be especially effective in modern sales organizations given that they originated from the perceptions of sales professionals themselves.     

Intuitively detecting what is hidden within a visual mask: Familiar–novel discrimination and threat detection for unidentified stimuli

Recognition without identification is the finding that, among recognition test items that go unidentified (as when a word is unidentified from a fragment), participants can discriminate those that were studied from those that were unstudied. In the present study, we extended this phenomenon to the more life-like situation of discriminating known from novel stimuli. Pictures of famous and nonfamous faces (Exp. 1), famous and nonfamous scenes (Exp. 2), and threatening and nonthreatening images (Exp. 3) were filtered in order to impede identification. As in list-learning recognition-without-identification paradigms, participants attempted to identify each image (e.g., whose face it was, what scene it was, or what was in the picture) and rated how familiar the image seemed on a scale of 0 (very unfamiliar) to 10 (very familiar). Among the unidentified stimuli, higher familiarity ratings were given to famous than to nonfamous faces (Exp. 1) and scenes (Exp. 2), and to threatening than to nonthreatening living/animate (but not to nonliving/nonanimate) images (Exp. 3). These findings suggest that even when a stimulus is too occluded to allow for conscious identification, enough information can be processed to allow a sense of familiarity or novelty with it, which appears also to be related to the sense of whether or not a living creature is a threat. That the sense of familiarity for unidentified stimuli may be related to threat detection for living or animate things suggests that it may be an adaptive aspect of human memory.     

Restorative Justice: New Horizons in Juvenile Offender Counseling

Treatment strategies of the juvenile justice system focus singularly on rehabilitation of offenders, and victims and communities are excluded from the rehabilitative process. Restorative justice views victims and communities as essential components in rehabilitative efforts. Implications for juvenile offender counselors are discussed.     

Familiarity from the configuration of objects in 3-dimensional space and its relation to déjà vu: a virtual reality investigation

Déjà vu is the striking sense that the present situation feels familiar, alongside the realization that it has to be new. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, déjà vu results when the configuration of elements within a scene maps onto a configuration previously seen, but the previous scene fails to come to mind. We examined this using virtual reality (VR) technology. When a new immersive VR scene resembled a previously-viewed scene in its configuration but people failed to recall the previously-viewed scene, familiarity ratings and reports of déjà vu were indeed higher than for completely novel scenes. People also exhibited the contrasting sense of newness and of familiarity that is characteristic of déjà vu. Familiarity ratings and déjà vu reports among scenes recognized as new increased with increasing feature-match of a scene to one stored in memory, suggesting that feature-matching can produce familiarity and déjà vu when recall fails.     

Examining the Validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) for Predicting Probation Outcomes Among Adjudicated Juvenile Offenders

The current study examined the ability of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk for Youth (SAVRY), a standardized risk assessment instrument, to predict probation outcomes among a sample of 158 adjudicated juvenile offenders placed on probation. Traditionally, the SAVRY has been used to measure violence risk among adolescents after release from custody. More recently, a delinquency risk measure based on SAVRY responses was developed, which could be useful for other types of outcome. This study examined the predictive validity of both summary risk ratings (SRR) for probation outcomes, including the reason for terminating probation and length of time on probation. A number of bivariate analyses and Cox regression models provided preliminary support for the ability of the nonviolent delinquency SRR, and modest support for the violence SRR, to predict probation outcomes. The implications for use of the SAVRY SRRs during juvenile justice system decision‐making and recommendations for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Compelling untruths: the effect of retention interval on content borrowing and vivid false memories

False memories are sometimes vivid and detailed. We proposed that the details that come to be associated with false memories may be produced by a process called content borrowing. In content borrowing, details from presented items are erroneously borrowed to corroborate the occurrence of the false memory item. In the present research we used think-out-loud protocols at both study and test to provide evidence for content borrowing in the DRM paradigm. We also demonstrated that content borrowing was more common after a 2-week delay, and was more common for critical lures than for missing exemplars.     

Recognition during recall failure: Semantic feature matching as a mechanism for recognition of semantic cues when recall fails

Research suggests that a feature-matching process underlies cue familiarity-detection when cued recall with graphemic cues fails. When a test cue (e.g., potchbork) overlaps in graphemic features with multiple unrecalled studied items (e.g., patchwork, pitchfork, pocketbook, pullcork), higher cue familiarity ratings are given during recall failure of all of the targets than when the cue overlaps in graphemic features with only one studied target and that target fails to be recalled (e.g., patchwork). The present study used semantic feature production norms (McRae et al., Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 37, 547–559, 2005) to examine whether the same holds true when the cues are semantic in nature (e.g., jaguar is used to cue cheetah). Indeed, test cues (e.g., cedar) that overlapped in semantic features (e.g., a_tree, has_bark, etc.) with four unretrieved studied items (e.g., birch, oak, pine, willow) received higher cue familiarity ratings during recall failure than test cues that overlapped in semantic features with only two (also unretrieved) studied items (e.g., birch, oak), which in turn received higher familiarity ratings during recall failure than cues that did not overlap in semantic features with any studied items. These findings suggest that the feature-matching theory of recognition during recall failure can accommodate recognition of semantic cues during recall failure, providing a potential mechanism for conceptually-based forms of cue recognition during target retrieval failure. They also provide converging evidence for the existence of the semantic features envisaged in feature-based models of semantic knowledge representation and for those more concretely specified by the production norms of McRae et al. (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 37, 547–559, 2005).     

Can déjà vu result from similarity to a prior experience? Support for the similarity hypothesis of déjà vu

The strange feeling of having been somewhere or done something before—even though there is evidence to the contrary—is called déjà vu. Although déjà vu is beginning to receive attention among scientists (Brown, 2003, 2004), few studies have empirically investigated the phenomenon. We investigated the hypothesis that déjà vu is related to feelings of familiarity and that it can result from similarity between a novel scene and that of a scene experienced in one’s past. We used a variation of the recognition-without-recall method of studying familiarity (Cleary, 2004) to examine instances in which participants failed to recall a studied scene in response to a configurally similar novel test scene. In such instances, resemblance to a previously viewed scene increased both feelings of familiarity and of déjà vu. Furthermore, in the absence of recall, resemblance of a novel scene to a previously viewed scene increased the probability of a reported déjà vu state for the novel scene, and feelings of familiarity with a novel scene were directly related to feelings of being in a déjà vu state.     

Success and satisfaction as a function of environmental constraint and origin-pawn feelings1

This research investigated causal relationships among situational and dispositional determinants of origin-pawn (O-P) feelings and perceptions of task satisfaction and success. Seventy-seven college students performed a task under one of three conditions—freedom, moderate freedom, or high constraint. Analysis of data through multiple regression and path-analytic techniques indicated that O-P feelings are a function of both situation and disposition. While condition and O-P feelings have direct effects on both success and satisfaction, satisfaction is affected more by the situational element of freedom versus constraint than is success. The path analysis tended to support a previously conceptualized causal model of relationships among the variables.     

Memory awareness disruptions in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: comparison of multiple awareness types for verbal and visuospatial material

Successful memory is normally accompanied by explicit awareness of retrieval and confidence in the accuracy of the retrieval product. Prior findings suggest that these features of metamemory can be dissociated from retrieval accuracy in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI). However, the literature on this question contains variable and conflicting results, likely because of differences in experimental conditions. We sought to systematically evaluate memory awareness disruptions in aMCI using multiple measures and stimulus formats within the same individuals. Memory awareness was tested with global predictions and postdictions, judgments of learning, confidence level ratings, and modified feeling-of-knowing ratings in tasks of visuospatial and verbal memory. These tests were administered to 14 individuals with aMCI and 15 healthy, age-matched controls. Memory awareness accuracy was calculated as the correspondence between subjective judgments and memory performance.Individuals with aMCI demonstrated impaired global and trial-level retrospective task awareness for visuospatial and verbal stimuli. Additionally, modified feeling-of-knowing awareness was impaired selectively for verbal stimuli. Statistical effect sizes for global awareness impairments were comparable to impairments in several objective neuropsychological memory assessments.Memory awareness (metamemory) disruptions in aMCI were most evident for a subset of subjective judgment types and task input modalities. These findings advance understanding of the nature of memory impairments in aMCI and support the utility of incorporating memory awareness testing to better characterize memory integrity in older adults.