Leading teams to success : case Dista Ltd.

Abstract

This bachelor’s thesis was commissioned by Dista Oy, a company specialized in business-to-business remote sales, founded in 2014. In 2019, Dista switched from an individual working model to teamwork. The purpose of this thesis was to examine how sales teams are currently lead in the company and how to improve team performance and efficiency through leadership. Research was built on various leadership frameworks, the focus being on Frederic Laloux’s Teal paradigm, James Kouzes’ & Barry Posner’s Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership and Pentti Sydänmaanlakka’s framework of Intelligent Leadership. An employee questionnaire was conducted in order to get a good grasp of how teamwork and leadership are currently perceived by Dista’s sales negotiators.

Based on the primary and secondary data observed and collected, Dista’s current leadership was deemed being only somewhat supportive enough for efficient teamwork and high performance. Even though most of the survey responses suggested that Dista is going in the right direction with their leadership practices, there still proved to be room for improvement to keep employees satisfied and efficient. Overall, employees seemed to have a positive attitude towards teamwork, and most were quite satisfied with the current compensation model and work atmosphere. Probably the biggest challenge deemed to be communication both within teams but also with the management.

Various development suggestions were introduced in the Discussion part of the thesis. For instance, Dista’s management was suggested to focus on employee motivation, one-to-one feedback, clarifying expectations and the company's vision, open communication, enabling regular team meetings as well as offering employees more opportunities for professional development.