The Impact of Resilience to Change on the Transformational Leadership Behaviors Demonstrated by Frontline Sales Professionals

Abstract

This study explores the impact of resilience and key demographics on the transformational leadership behaviors demonstrated by frontline sales professionals. Data were collected from a sample 356 frontline sales professionals (55% male, 45% female, and covering both large and small industries). The sample responded to two pre-validated surveys about their transformational leadership, resilience to change, and socio-demographic profile. The analysis indicates that resilience was a positive, low to moderate predictor of transformational leadership behavior explaining 23% of the variance in the transformational leadership behaviors. This study relied on self-reported responses, which are subject to biases that may result from the research participants' capacity to recall or remember events and/or routinely demonstrated characteristics. The data obtained in this study confirms that the level of resilience to change in frontline sales professionals predicts a portion of the level of transformational leadership behaviors demonstrated by individuals and throughout organizations of varying sizes. The current literature lacks an exploratory analysis of the relationship between resilience to change and the demonstration of transformational leadership behaviors. This study adds to the empirical literature on both topics.