Task performance is direct behavior an employee is involved in that creates goods and services from resources provided by the company (Colquitt, LePine, & Wesson, 2021). An example of task performance would be if one of my sales representatives completes the required daily activity metric for an inside sales rep of 60 outbound dials, two appointments created, two proposals generated, and one sale made; these metrics are considered routine task performances. However, when one of my sales reps makes 150 outbound dials, sets five appointments, generates six proposals, sells four deals in a day, or sells a contract for over $300,000, these tasks are regarded as an adaptive task performance since it is unusual and unpredictable (Colquitt et al., 2021). My job as a sales leader is to assess an employee's ability to achieve routine tasks consistently and motivate them to achieve adaptive tasks, which leads to an increase in organizational performance.

Citizenship behavior is the second element of job performance, which is the employee’s voluntary behaviors that go beyond task performance or job description to contribute to the organization. An example of interpersonal citizenship behavior is when one of my sales reps takes it upon themselves to help a newly hired inside sales rep to learn the fundamentals of the job to ensure they will have a good experience and contribute to the team and organization; this is called interpersonal citizenship behavior. Another element of citizenship behavior is organizational citizenship behavior; an example would be while on vacation, one of my sales reps speaking highly about our company, keeping any internal strife they may know about to themselves. This form of organizational citizenship behavior is known as boosterism (Colquitt et al., 2021).

Counterproductive behavior is employee behaviors that are intentionally disruptive to the organization’s mission of completing goals (Colquitt et al., 2021). This disruption can come from property damage, production waste, politics & gossip, or personal aggression towards other employees. Sales can be demanding, leading to voluntary counterproductive behavior (Seriki, Nath, Ingene, & Evans, 2020). For example, after counseling and providing performance improvement plans, I have dismissed sales reps because of their continued counterproductive behavior of gossiping about peers, the sales process, and leadership decisions. While this might not sound counterproductive to some, this behavior is contagious on a sales floor. It could lead to low performance for the team and ultimately poor organizational performance. To counter this negative behavior, I create performance improvement plans using positive and negative reinforcement techniques (Reinforcement Theory - PSYCH 484: Work Attitudes and Job Motivation - Confluence, n.d.) and ensure that the performance reviews are constructive and concise (Knight, 2011) so that the message is heard.