Over the course of the first four months, a team of 14 professional coaches from Pyramid provided extensive training in change leadership and team coaching to 25 first-line leaders during rigorous, weeklong sessions. These change agents had an average tenure of 10 years and were recruited for a two-year special assignment: to build an internal-to-Sanofi capability for change leadership, team coaching and continuous improvement. The driver for embedding these capabilities centered on the ICF Core Competencies, so the mentoring and partnership with Sanofi’s change agents were the most important aspects of this rollout. Any good facilitator can complete a team-building event, but the team coaching that takes place after the goals are in place requires advanced coaching skills—especially listening for the team’s voice. Professional coaches know what to label in the team dynamics, how to raise awareness around emotional intelligence and self-awareness for each individual within the context of their team, and—very importantly—how to detach from outcomes, recognizing that it is the team’s game and they need to take ownership of all results, including the breakdowns and things that don’t work, so the team finds new ways of working. The coach is there to coach and to label the many unspoken fears and concerns—we often call “elephants”—that people tend to avoid recognizing and discussing. The coach also needs to celebrate shifts, movement and successes so the team members feel momentum and learn to acknowledge one another. And not to be forgotten is lightness in coaching—keeping the action in place and members moving whenever there is a truth that makes the team uncomfortable.
The teams selected for the initiative were classified into three categories:
• High-performing, but needing a stretch.
• Supervised by a new team leader.
• Middle-of-the-pack, but with potential to grow quickly.
These teams established team charters, set extraordinary but tangible business goals, experienced professional coaching to address team dynamics and gain tools for working through breakdowns, and learned to celebrate daily successes. Pyramid’s professional coaches also partnered with the change agents to conduct 60 Team Advantage™ games throughout the enterprise. These games directly impacted an estimated 25 percent of the field force and indirectly influenced many more as energized teammates spread the word about the shifts they were making. The coaching initiative helped employees build the skills to more effectively solve problems, work toward goals as part of a team, and communicate and collaborate across work groups and departments. With new confidence and in a spirit of play, employees learned to identify processes that needed to be simplified, revised or repurposed and take ownership of making the changes. This experience, combined with the process changes and new- leader visibility, accelerated change by equipping multiple teams with the skills needed to achieve their aggressive business goals. Individual participants modeled the competencies that were foundational to build each team leader’s coaching skills through the experience. This layering of experiential learning created traction around the desired organizational changes, which were confirmed by comparing the results of two surveys, one conducted prior to the initiative and the second conducted after one year.
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