A Review of the Sales Leadership Style and Type Literature with Adaptations for Sales Leadership

One challenge facing managers is optimizing how they lead their employees. Literature shows that individual employees vary on the type of leadership they need and that managers can get more out of employees by giving each their necessary leadership style. Managers must identify the style of leadership needed by each employee and adapt their own leadership style to best suit each individual, which is difficult. This paper examines existing leadership literature to develop a typology that categorizes leadership styles based on two dimensions of employee needs, hands-on/off and transactional/transformational, to identify the optimal leadership style for each salesperson