What triggers my good performance : my personality trait or my supervisor's leadership style?

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to find out the impact of the supervisor’s leadership style as well as the sales’ agents personality traits on sales performance in a life insurance company in Lebanon. Design/ methodology/ approach: The Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (5X-Short) was adopted to assess the supervisor’s leadership style and the Mini-IPIP Questionnaire to assess the sales agents’ Big Five Personality Traits. The questionnaires were distributed to 200 sales agents.SPSS was used to analyze the data. Statistical tools such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis were adopted. Findings: Results revealed a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership and sales agents’ performance, and a negative and significant relationship when it comes to transactional leadership. The impact of the laissez-faire leadership style on performance was found to be insignificant. Regarding the Big Five Traits, extraversion is shown to be significantly positive to sales agents’ performance, whereas neuroticism significantly negative. While running the regression with both the leadership styles with the Big Five Traits, the results came out surprising as the leadership styles lost their significance. Moreover, extraversion and neuroticism are found to be the best two significant factors affecting the sales agents’ performance positively and negatively, respectively. Research limitations: The sample size, comprising sales agents of a single life insurance company with a limited number of employees, is relatively small, which may not be representative of the overall Lebanese insurance sector. Thus, the generalization of results nationally to the insurance industry might not be possible. Furthermore, a comprehensive explanation of all potential determinants of sales agents’ performance is not addressed in this research. Hence, future research is needed to investigate more potential moderators and/or mediators that might have an impact on sales agents’ performance. Practical implications: This research will help life insurance companies in the recruitment process of potential unit heads and sales agents. They need to be looking for the styles and traits found out to be effective if they want to boost their sales figures. Originality/ value: Few scholars tackled leadership in their Lebanese studies, however none addressed the insurance industry. Moreover, this research examined the impact of both, the supervisor’s leadership style and the employees’ personality traits on sales performance in a single study; something not highlighted before.