Learning to listen before it judges — a team of project managers at a global pharmaceutical company

Quick answer

IMPROV Communication delivered a "Speeding up time to Business as Usual" training to around 25 people from a team of project managers at a global pharmaceutical company. The aim was to help a large, recently restructured team speak up more openly, collaborate beyond their individual projects, and stay steady under pressure. In anonymous feedback, 16 of 17 respondents would recommend the experience, and openness to reaching across teams scored 5.7 out of 7.

At a glance

• Client: a team of project managers at a global pharmaceutical company

• Engagement: 5 Guiding Principles training, June 2026

• Scale: around 25 participants, one 150-minute session

• 94% of respondents would recommend the experience (16 of 17)

• 5.7 / 7 openness to reaching across teams — the strongest score of the day

• 5.8 / 7 said the training is worth continuing

Source: anonymous post-session survey completed by 17 of around 25 participants (a 68% response rate), June 2026.

Why they asked us in

This is a team of around twenty-seven project managers under a manager who stepped into the role earlier in the year. Each runs largely separate projects, with most collaboration happening across departments rather than inside the team. A recent restructuring brought the group together, and trust is still forming. The department is under real pressure from leadership to move faster, and stress runs high.

The question behind the brief was practical: how do you build a team that speaks up openly, collaborates beyond its own projects, and stays steady under pressure?

The challenges that shaped our design:

• Silos. Project managers work in isolation despite the shared role, with only a short weekly meeting to connect them.

• Speaking up safely. Psychological safety is hard to hold in a group this size; quieter members often stay silent while strong, efficiency-focused voices set the pace.

• People versus task. Under pressure, the line between a task disagreement and a personal one can blur.

What we delivered

One 150-minute session for the full team, led by an experienced IMPROV facilitator, built around the 5 Guiding Principles of IMPROV and the emotional intelligence research that underpins them.

The session followed the three-phase architecture at the heart of our methodology:

• Pre-training activation. Ambassador calls to tailor the session to the team's real situation, plus a short reflection prompt for participants.

• The session itself. Experiential exercises grounded in the neuroscience of the amygdala response and the 5 Guiding Principles. Participants do, then reflect, then commit to one specific change.

• Post-training reinforcement. A 30-day sprint — eight short prompts over four weeks — plus a manager reinforcement guide and a two-week ambassador follow-up.

What the participants told us

Feedback was gathered through an anonymous survey straight after the session, measuring confidence to apply the ideas, openness to cross-team collaboration, and whether the training was worth continuing.

• Openness to reach across teams: 5.7 / 7 — the strongest signal of the day.

• Worth continuing: 5.8 / 7.

• Confidence to apply: 5.2 / 7.

• Would recommend: 16 of 17.

Three patterns stood out.

Listening was the change people most wanted to make. Five respondents committed to holding back their first reaction — asking a question before giving an opinion, letting colleagues finish, resisting the urge to find the gap.

Yes, And and Make Others Look Good were the two principles that landed hardest. Both are the ones most useful for a team that needs to work together across separate projects.

Appetite to keep going was strong: fourteen of the seventeen respondents opted into the 30-day sprint that follows the session.

In their own words

Ask one question before giving my opinion. — Participant

I will not immediately find gaps in proposals — instead give it a try, or ask for elaboration. — Participant

It's more fun when we play as a team. — Participant

At work, where the stakes are high, we keep ourselves protected. — Participant

What they committed to on Monday

• Ask one question before offering an opinion in meetings.

• Talk with a colleague from another team they don't normally speak to.

• Bring a Yes, And mindset to new tasks before saying no.

• Invite quieter group members to speak up.

Bring this to your team

If you lead a large team where people run their own work in parallel, you will recognise the question: how do you get them collaborating and speaking up openly, without slowing the work down? What transfers is a short, experiential session people feel rather than sit through, the 5 Guiding Principles as a shared language, and the three phases that turn a single day into a habit that holds.

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