Leadership Styles and Orientation of Sales Managers in Insurance Sector

Abstract

In this paper, an attempt was made to study the leadership styles and orientation of sales managers in the insurance sector. The sales managers are team leaders, who have to motivate, guide and coach the members towards key result. To study the leadership styles exercised by the sales managers, orientation for task and orientation for people were examined. Their scores were plotted into Blake and Mouton's managerial grid matrix to understand their leadership styles. 60 sales managers of private insurance companies in Vellore were identified for the study through snow ball technique of sampling. The result revealed that the size of the team was significantly related to frequency of team meetings and achievement of targets. Also, task orientation and people orientation were considered relatively important by the sales managers in leading their team. 96.7% of the respondents exhibited Team Leader style in varying degrees.