Communication skills training for one of the world’s largest pharma companies – boosting communication and collaboration so they can continue to deliver leading patient care
We’re all expected to work smarter. Do more in half the time. Yet to do this you need to know how to collaborate. You need to get people to work towards the same goals. And in large, multinational organisations, with lots of competing priorities, this isn’t always easy.
In January 2025 one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies asked us to run a workshop for a department that recently went through organisation change. 11 teams had just been put together in new constellations.
Our brief was simple: We need to know each other better. We need to understand the value that each of our teams bring to the table. And we need to make sure that we know how to collaborate to deliver real value to the wider organisation and ultimately to our patients.
Session 1: What value do you bring?
We divided the day into two sections. In the morning we created a ‘market place’ where every team had to present the value that their team brings.
We asked each of the 11 teams to develop a story based on a simple Why, What, How structure. One person presented the team’s story. Each presenter had 10 minutes to convince their colleagues that their business was everybody’s business.
With targets for 2025 already prepared, each team was now tasked to collaborate in making a plan in creating and reaching their 2025 targets.
Session 2: How can you communicate more effectively?
In the afternoon we focussed on skills building, split into four areas:
- Building credibility: The first exercise was about assessing our individual credibility. Why? Because if you’re in any kind of collaborative situation you need to be perceived as credible first. We explored the basic elements of credibility and where we can improve.
- Covering the essentials: Most of us are in meetings all day. And most have no time to prepare for each meeting properly. So we introduced the five communication essentials for preparing quickly for a meeting and asked the participants to plan their next meeting based on the five essentials.
- Collaborative listening: Any conversation or negotiation has at least two people in it. If you wan’t to arrive at a common understanding your listening skills are essential. Not only will they make for better conversations – they will also give you leverage. Because knowledge is power.
- Understanding meeting dynamics: Why do most people feel that most meetings are a waste of time? Well the answer to that question is simple. 1. They don’t have time to prepare and 2. They don’t understand the dynamics of what goes on in the meeting.
A few quick tips on meetings:
- Never go to a meeting without a clearly defined purpose. This is not complicated. You can prepare a meeting within a few minutes by simply following the good old rule of Why, What and How? Why are we meeting (purpose)? What should we discuss (topic)? How should we respond (decisions)?
- We introduced the teams to the Domain Theory. An approach to running meetings that deconstructs the dynamics going on in the meeting but also how easy it is to run a meeting when you know the dynamics. In a way that delivers value, decisions and happy participants.
Outcome
Since we ran this workshop in the autumn of 2024 we’ve been asked to run similar workshops for a number of other departments. So word has spread that this is a great way of getting teams aligned and collaborating in times of organisational change.
Since departments collaborate across it’s always a good idea that the entire organisation has the same approach to running better meetings, collaborating and communicating.