The Leadership Style and the Productiveness of Employees in the Banking Sector in Slovakia

The main goal of the article was to prove a relationship between applied leadership style of branch managers and productiveness of bank sales clerks and room for their productiveness improvement applicable in the banking sector in Slovakia. One part of the objective was to examine the continuity between applied leadership style of branch managers and their time in control functions held. Dependencies between the individual productiveness of bank sales clerks and the level of their loyalty and satisfaction were investigated. Opinions of branch managers about the applicable leadership style and room for sales clerks' productiveness improvement were examined through two questionnaire surveys (conducted in 2008 and 2012). The research results confirmed that the directive style of leadership is the mandatory style in the banking sector in Slovakia whereas the intensity of its implementation during the analysis period was increased. The research has also shown that there is a direct connection between the dominant style of leadership and room for improvement of sales clerks' productiveness, because the growth of the intensity of directive style in this case led to lower productiveness of the average bank sales clerks. Our assumption that the applied leadership style of bank employees depends on time working in managerial positions has not been confirmed. In comparison to long-term managers, branch managers who were working for rather short period in any managerial positions did not show any differences in their management priorities. The assumption that the employee satisfaction and loyalty significantly encourage individual employee productiveness was not confirmed in the research.