Mónica Serra General Manager La Roche Posay Spain & Portugal

There were two types of needs. A business need and a pure team need. The business need comes because La Roche Posay is a brand that in the last three or four years has accelerated enormously, with double-digit growth, almost doubling the size of the brand in three or four years and with very strong ambitions at divisional and group level.

This is the business context. In this business context, we find ourselves in a context of a very young, very talented team that has to face these ambitions and these powerful challenges.

We saw that the help we needed was precisely to see how we help the team to become a high-performing team capable of meeting these challenges. How do we get there, how do we accompany the team, how do we transform it.

With strong teams you can challenge yourself and you can do it. The issue is how long it takes. If it's going to take three or four years to get a high-performance team capable of accelerating, it's too late. In this type of growth and at these market speeds, in six months you have to be delivering results and accompanying the business. For me, the word acceleration is the key.

At the end of the day, when you're in these kinds of markets, in these kinds of brands and these kinds of accelerations, there's a lot of pressure and the impact for the teams is powerful. There is a lot of pride, the pace is frenetic and there is a lot of expectation on the team. A young team, very talented, with a lot of potential to develop, which had to be trained to experience this type of situation.

The project has lasted about a year. It consisted of looking for spaces, which until now were very focused on business and strategy, to talk about team and team building. And to start identifying what kind of team we wanted to be and how we were going to achieve it. As managers are also part of a team, it is interesting that someone from outside guides you to make everyone participate in this ecosystem, focusing on a common goal and a shared vision.

These were monthly sessions, highly customized. We adapted them according to the need. It was a co-created work between what we told and what the EEC coach observed. I loved that it was so personalized, so month by month, and depending on what was happening, we were also integrating the contexts of the team. Many things happen in a year, there are people who leave, people who join... In the business there were moments with better results, others with worse ones, and we included all of that in the journey.

No doubt about it, the coach's gaze is a work of craftsmanship. His diagnosis, his analysis... everything was a very fine source of information, very accurate to reality, which allowed for the design of spaces for conversation so that precisely that which was missing could emerge.

There are several: trust, the kind of team we wanted to be, pending conversations, feedback. The feedback workshop was one of the most powerful sessions, the one on pending conversations that unlocked a lot, on what relationships we wanted to weave between us.

A very powerful moment is when we built the team rules and talked about legacy. This was key because as a team we understood that the team is stronger than the individual and that we were there to build something higher and bigger, which will last when we are no longer on the team or when new people join. This realization made us feel co-responsible for building that legacy. This also helped us to self-manage ourselves much better.

A lot has changed: the well-being of the team, the happiness of all of us who work, the pride of belonging, the care for each other, the shared vision, the legacy and the capacity for self-management.

We have reached a point of maturity where we know when there are outstanding conversations and how to address them. Together we have signed up to rules that we make sure are followed, even if it is a manager who deviates.

This self-management is key. It was necessary to show the way and to raise and visualize this high-performance team. And the results have been phenomenal.

We have a questionnaire where we measure the wellbeing of our teams, from whether they have barriers to doing the job to how committed they are to the brand and so on. In our case, at LRP the commitment was 98%, absolutely record levels..

In terms of business performance, the results are undoubtedly in line. It is important to measure both. The human component is at the heart of everything. In the end, companies are made by people, people make teams and teams are what build brands and business. Therefore, having a solid and cohesive team is what makes a solid and cohesive business in the long term. We take care of people and we take care of results and both are equally important.

Everything, there is a very clear impact. What you notice at the top comes down to the bottom, everything is very interconnected.

First, observation, taking the time to observe the team, what the needs are, listening, reflecting. Taking the time to do the ceremonies and talk. That's where we clean up what the day-to-day rushing makes dirty. That time is important for vision and not losing focus.

The absolute key to success is customization, the hallmark of EEC. You can have a theoretical process, but putting something in place that really responds to very concrete things that have been happening, to concrete needs, to concrete objectives, is what makes you move forward, also in a concrete way.

The way in which the team relates to each other, the type of meetings, the feedback, as something that is still difficult and that we are still working on. And, above all, that everyone takes responsibility. This is a challenge for everyone, for the team.

We talk about building a high-performance team. It challenges us all. It is everyone's responsibility. Also the results are everybody's. A change of mindset was cooperation, no matter who asks for it, no matter who says it. We all row for it.

The Escuela Europea de coaching is one of the L'oreal group's reference partners. I knew what coaching was, and it was obvious to me that EEC should be the one to join us in this challenge.

The stamp of craftsmanship, of meticulous, tailor-made work. I listen, I create, we co-create. Flexibility and customization are the keys to this project and EEC's hallmarks. And, of course, the results. How all this translates into results and applicability to the job and the day-to-day.

It is essential that the team focuses on the important things. The main thing is focus, both at the business level and at the people level, what we want to waste our time on or what we want to spend it on, how we want to relate to each other and for what purpose. Shared vision