Building coaching and collaborative leadership at Ipsen
An evolving partnership with Passe-Partout
Ipsen’s Medical Excellence team set out to strengthen its influence and reputation as a valued business partner. Its ambition was to bring technical expertise into more visible, confident leadership, supported by stronger relationships and a shared sense of purpose.
Working with Passe-Partout, this ambition developed into a partnership connecting professional coaching, leadership development, Action Learning and management consulting. Collaboration, coaching and communication have remained central throughout, with 201 learners attending across the UK and Spain to date.
Purpose and Objective
The partnership has focused on helping people listen more deeply, challenge constructively and communicate the value of their work. Within Medical Excellence, this included building leadership presence, strengthening connections across sub-teams and developing the confidence to contribute to strategic conversations.
The Breakthrough programme was designed around these priorities and aligned with Ipsen’s Leadership Competencies and Impact Together programme. Its emphasis was on the everyday behaviours through which colleagues build trust, influence decisions and establish themselves as effective partners.
Establishing a foundation in coaching
The journey began with the CMI Level 5 Professional Coaching Practice programme, introducing a structured approach to helping others think through challenges and identify their own ways forward. Coaching provided a foundation for more thoughtful conversations and a shared approach to supporting development.
Coaching Supervision formed part of the partnership, supporting reflection on coaching practice. Some participants subsequently progressed to CMI Level 7 Strategic Coaching and Mentoring, extending their development and contributing to the team’s growing coaching capability.
The programme covered crucial topics
Coaching and collaborative learning:
Professional coaching practice
Coaching supervision
Strategic coaching and mentoring
Action Learning facilitation
Communication and organisational influence:
Leadership presence
Strengths-based teamwork
Stakeholder engagement and management consulting skills
Connecting individual strengths with collective purpose
Stakeholder interviews helped ground the Breakthrough programme in the expectations and experiences of the people working with Medical Excellence. A Buildathon, CliftonStrengths profiling, the London launch and the Madrid summit formed part of the development journey, connecting individual strengths with the team’s wider ambitions.
These experiences created opportunities to explore leadership presence, communication and collective identity. A dedicated learning portal on Promote supported the programme with resources and a shared space for learning and communication between sessions.
Applying learning to real business challenges
Action Learning provided a practical way to apply coaching and collaboration to live organisational pressures. Three sets explored challenges that directly affected Medical Excellence’s ambition to be recognised as a strategic partner: communication, time poverty and reputation.
Participants worked together to examine underlying causes, test assumptions and consider different perspectives. This approach encouraged careful listening and open questions, giving colleagues space to think before deciding on action. It also created opportunities to work across team boundaries and build relationships through shared problem-solving.
Early outputs included four sets of guidelines covering meeting overload, email management, demand management and changing priorities. Other work included richer stakeholder analysis and the progression of communication initiatives. Discussions on reputation generated commitments to clarify processes and timelines and seek earlier involvement in strategic conversations.
These outputs gave the learning a direct connection to working life. Participants could develop their coaching skills while addressing issues that matter to the team and its internal partners.
Building internal facilitation capability
As the partnership developed, the emphasis expanded to equipping colleagues to facilitate Action Learning themselves. The CPD-accredited Action Learning Facilitators Programme combined virtual learning with practical sessions, supporting participants to understand the process and practise leading it.
Participant feedback highlighted the importance of psychological safety, trust, openness and inclusion. Learners described developing more effective questions, distinguishing clarification from exploration and helping the person presenting a challenge retain ownership of their decisions. Other takeaways included managing group dynamics, maintaining focus and following up on agreed actions.
This stage was central to the partnership’s longer-term purpose: building capability within the team so that colleagues could continue supporting each other’s learning and problem-solving.
Participant feedback and evaluation
Evaluation of the CMI Level 5 Professional Coaching Practice programme showed particularly strong ratings for facilitation, overall value and likelihood of recommending sessions. Feedback from the Action Learning Facilitators Programme also indicated positive experiences, supported by 43 evaluation responses across its sessions.
| Evaluation measure | CMI Level 5 Professional Coaching Practice | Action Learning Facilitators Programme |
|---|---|---|
| Facilitation | 97.69% | 85.40% |
| Overall value | 96.25% | 83.31% |
| Net Promoter Score | 97.58% | 82.21% |
Scores are reported session evaluation ratings expressed as percentages. The facilitator programme results draw on 43 session responses.
The client reflections illustrate how participants experienced the partnership in their day-to-day work. Sian Carr described the value of Action Learning as a form of group coaching and problem-solving:
“They have created the space for us to pause, reflect, challenge one another constructively, and work through real business challenges together. This has accelerated our ability to think differently, stay solution-focused, and support each other in finding better ways forward.”
Sian Carr, Global Head of Medical Training & Capabilities, Ipsen
Reena Diyar highlighted the effect on her questioning, listening and approach to complex challenges:
“What Action Learning has helped me do is slow that thinking down. It has made me much more aware of the questions I ask, how I listen, and how I explore a situation before jumping into action.”
Reena Diyar, Global Knowledge Transfer Associate Director, Ipsen
Lessons for sustained learning
The experience highlighted the importance of protecting time for collaborative learning. Competing commitments sometimes affected attendance and the number of practice opportunities available, reinforcing how much Action Learning depends on consistent participation and shared commitment.
Feedback also identified opportunities to refine the learning experience through shorter theory segments, more immediate practice, clearer initial explanations and a faster pace. These insights underline the importance of making development accessible alongside demanding roles, while preserving the space needed for reflection and meaningful discussion.
Continuing the partnership
The partnership has now progressed to CMI Level 5 Management Consulting Practice. This next phase extends the focus towards how participants engage with stakeholders, understand organisational challenges and shape solutions as internal partners.
Across each stage, the connection between coaching, communication and collaboration has remained consistent. Participants have developed ways to support one another, explore challenges more openly and take greater ownership of their development. As Sian Carr reflected:
“Passepartout have helped us build capability that feels practical, embedded, and genuinely owned by the team.”
Sian Carr, Global Head of Medical Training & Capabilities, Ipsen