Effective Coaching for Adaptive Selling: The Role of Leader-Member Exchange and Gender Matching

This study focuses on the role of gender in coaching relationships in the sales context, and extends theory by integrating work on leader-member exchange (LMX) and social role theory (SRT). Specifically, we propose that LMX mediates the relationship between coaching and adaptive selling, but only when the gender of the coach matches that of the employee because men and women enact different role behavior when selling. We test our theory using multiple group moderated mediation in a structural equation model of 564 salespeople and their 69 managers. Results show that, although coaching consistently improves the LMX between managers and employees, it only stimulates adaptive selling when genders match. This study highlights the challenges organizations face when they expect managers to engage in behaviors that are not socially congruent with the expectations of their role. In addition, when the occupation itself is gendered, as is the case in sales, societal norms and beliefs play a large role because coaches may not consider the full variety of strategies that lead to better performance for the opposite gender, and employees of the opposite gender may be less receptive to the coaching. As such, the range of employees who benefit from coaching narrows.