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.     

个人化设计在临床研究中的应用——从个体角度研究个体差异

本文从有关研究证据的基础上,介绍了个人化设计的理论基础和实验设计,并在此基础上讨论了个人化设计在临床研究领域中的应用价值,总结出一种适合临床病人使用的研究程序。个人化设计允许对个体的个人价值进行分析,并能同时研究不同刺激信息的作用,在个体水平上分析个体差异。通过简化了的实验程序,个人化设计为解决临床研究中的问题提供了一种新的思维方式。文中还对相关研究法的局限进行了讨论。     

Work,leisure, and psychological well-being in a sample of young adults

This study of 20 ‘white-collar’ workers aged 20–30 measured motivation, enjoyment and access to various categories of experience in both work and leisure, and examined their relationship with psychological well-being on a number of dimensions. The method used a short questionnaire, psychological scales and the innovatory ‘experience sampling methodology’ (ESM) where respondents answer questions in a diary on the receipt of a signal from a pre-programmed watch or radio pager eight times a day for 1 week. The results show, in line with other studies, that intrinsic motivation in daily life is correlated with happiness but that, not previously reported, when motivation at work is examined both extrinsic motivation and instances where a person had to do the activity but did not wish to be doing something else, i.e. ‘positive motivational change’, are correlated with positive aspects of psychological well-being, while instances where a person wanted to do the activity but wished to be doing something else, i.e. ‘negative motivational change’, correlated with negative aspects. The results also show that enjoyment in both work and leisure correlates with aspects of psychological wellbeing; and that macro ‘flow’ experiences, where high skills and high challenges are perceived as equal, are enjoyable and interesting and come primarily from work. The study also shows that categories of experience considered important for psychological well-being and deemed to come primarily from work can be obtained in leisure. The results are discussed in the context of person—situation interactions and processes, and it is advocated that these should be studied in a variety of samples.     

THE RELATIVE MOTIVATIONAL PROPERTIES OF SENSORY AND EDIBLE REINFORCERS IN TEACHING AUTISTIC CHILDREN

We compared the effects of sensory and edible reinforcers on resistance to satiation in three autistic children while learning visual discrimination tasks. Within-subject designs were used to compare a single sensory reinforcer with a single edible reinforcer and to compare multiple sensory reinforcers with multiple edibles. Results indicated that multiple sensory reinforcers maintained responding over more trials than did multiple edible reinforcers; however, the use of single sensory reinforcers and single edibles resulted in about equal numbers of trials to satiation. Both multiple and single sensory reinforcers produced higher percentages of correct responses than edible reinforcers. The findings are discussed in terms of the advantages of sensory reinforcers in teaching autistic children.     

Money versus pain: experimental study of a conflict in humans.

Ten healthy human males volunteered to be subjects in an experiment in which they were to be paid to endure a painful sensation. This sensation was produced by isometric muscular contraction in the thighs. For each of six sessions the subjects received either a payment that was changed for each session (0.2, 0.5, 1.25, 3.125, 7.8125 French francs per 20 s) or a lump sum. At the beginning of a session, the subjects assumed a seated position against a wall, but without a seat, and the duration for which they could hold this position was the chief variable measured. Heart rate, blood pressure, and magnitude estimation of pain were also recorded periodically throughout each session. Pain was reported after a mean delay of 15 +/- 7 s (SE), and the magnitude estimates then increased linearly with time. The duration of maintaining the painful position increased linearly in relation to the logarithm of the increase in the amount of payment. Thus, utility of money decreased when pitted against pain.     

The power within: Mass media,scientific entertainment,and the introduction of psychical research into China, 1900–1920

How did a new science initially promoted by only a few individuals eventually become a widespread cultural phenomenon practiced and known by thousands of people? Following a transnational approach, this article traces the introduction of psychical research into China during the first two decades of the 20th century. Known in the Republican period (1912–1949) as Spiritual Science (xinling kexue or xinling yanjiu), psychical research flourished between the 1920s and 1930s, playing a key role in the popularization of applied psychology and mind-cure across China. This article takes a step back from the heyday of Spiritual Science by looking at the period that immediately preceded and helped define it. Focused on wide-circulation newspapers, popular manuals, and stage performances, it teases out the ways in which Chinese popular culture translated European, American, and Japanese psychical research to local Chinese audiences in the midst of China's search for modernity. By naturalizing the reality of psychic powers, spiritual scientists blurred the boundaries between science and superstition in a period when these were posited as diametrically opposed.     

Using Daily Creativity Planning to Promote Creative Behavior

Research has demonstrated that on the path from a creative idea to a creative outcome, high creativity motivation and self-efficacy do not necessarily lead to creative behavior. The present study proposed and examined the notion that daily creativity planning could promote creative behavior and contribute to the cultivation of creativity. A total of 77 middle school students (39 students in the experimental group and 38 in the control group) participated in this study, for which a quasi-experimental design was administered. The experimental group conducted a two-week daily planning for creative activities, while the control group did not conduct any intervention. The results showed that students' creativity motivation and creative self-efficacy were at relatively high levels overall and were positively and moderately correlated with creative behavior. Daily planning could effectively facilitate students' creative behavior. These findings point to a promising and simple creativity enhancement strategy for cultivating students to develop the habit of making creative plans in their daily lives.