This study focuses on the bright side of perceptual differences regarding leadership that may exist between managers and employees. Specifically, building on leadership literature, the authors propose that in situations wherein a manager’s perceptions of their own leadership are lower than that of their employees’ perceptions of their managers’ leadership, employees’ sales performance levels are higher. Data were collected from retail store managers and frontline employees in Brazil in three different contexts (e.g., footwear, clothing, and furniture). Based on polynomial regression analyses, the findings suggest that sales performance is generally higher when a manager’s self-perceptions are lower than their frontline employees’ perceptions of managers’ transactional and transformational leadership.

本研究侧重于经理和员工之间可能存在的关于领导力的感知差异的光明面。具体而言，作者以领导力文献为基础，提出在经理对自己领导力的认知低于员工对其经理领导力的认知的情况下，员工的销售绩效水平更高。数据是从巴西零售店经理和一线员工在三种不同情况下（例如，鞋类、服装和家具）收集的。基于多项式回归分析，研究结果表明，当经理的自我认知低于一线员工对经理交易和变革型领导的认知时，销售业绩通常更高。