Over the last two decades, team coaching has emerged as an extension of Executive Coaching, empowering leaders to work with their teams in new ways and transform team-building into culture-building. Since 2012, the field sales force for Sanofi’s North American Pharmaceutical division has been reaping the benefits of team coaching delivered via The Pyramid Resource Group’s proprietary model, Team Advantage™: The Complete Coaching Process for Team Transformation.
A Challenging Climate
In late 2011, North American Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi employed 5,000 people and was generating annual revenue of roughly $10 billion USD. Anne Whitaker had just been named the division’s president at a time when the organization as a whole faced great challenges. Some of Sanofi’s best-selling drugs were just months away from going off patent, while other products faced stiff generic competition. Employees were weary from recent mergers, ongoing restructuring, and attempts to integrate cultures and processes while the company implemented necessary but painful cost-containment measures. Their anxiety was quantified by a disheartening employee engagement index of 61.6 percent.
Although Anne was concerned about market share and profit, she also recognized that sustainable improvement and innovation starts with employees who find meaning and satisfaction in their jobs and take pride in their company. She brought in The Pyramid Resource Group to coach a select cadre of first-line leaders tasked with seeding change leadership capabilities and coaching teams as Sanofi prepared to shift to a more patient-focused sales model.
Accelerating Change
Pyramid’s Team Advantage™ model is a 16-week process that fast-tracks team cohesiveness and performance by asking members to create a game plan worthy of their time and energy. It has the built-in measures of a game with business goal attainment and encourages creativity and play.
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