Presented by
Management Forum
The Leadership and Management Summer School for Pharma Professionals Training Course
Working in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry, with ever-increasing change and pressure, is probably one of the most challenging managerial roles of any industry today. This 5-day Summer School has been especially designed to help you transcend these challenges by training you to become equipped to see the bigger picture in all aspects of your role.
7-11 July 2025 »
from £1999
- Format: Live online
- CPD: 30 hours for your records
- Certificate of completion
Overview
Working in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry, with ever-increasing change and pressure, is probably one of the most challenging managerial roles of any industry today. This Summer School has been especially designed to help you transcend these challenges by training you to become equipped to see the bigger picture in all aspects of your role.
This Pharma Mini MBA accelerated management programme is a distillation of the most valuable parts of an MBA, as applied to the pharmaceutical industry.
Please note:
- Pre-course work (sent out to delegates prior to the course):
- Diagnostic questionnaire – your strategic competencies
- Discussions of diagnostic output/other areas of value
- Despite the virtual nature of this webinar, it has been designed to take advantage of the BigBlueButton platform. During Module 1 (days 1 & 2) participants will be expected to participate both visually and with audio (seen and heard) throughout the sessions.
This training course is part of our collection of Leadership & Management Training Courses which focus on leadership, innovation, strategy, communication, finance, problem solving and conflict management, to name a few key areas.
Module 1 - Positive Persuading and Influencing Skills for Pharma Professionals
This module will help you to build confidence and acquire the necessary skills to increase your personal effectiveness in dealing with colleagues, clients, bosses and stakeholders across the pharmaceutical industry.
Dynamically designed and delivered, the interactive programme focuses on best practice tips and techniques that will allow you to strengthen and perfect your influencing ability in three key areas:
- Improved inter-dependent working across functions and even cultural boundaries
- Increased self-awareness – gaining insights in how you come across to others
- Great communication, self-projection and influencing skills
Core objectives:
- Identify some of the more challenging obstacles to effective communication
- Learn how to prepare for one-to-one and one-to-group communication
- Acquire and practise communication skills which lead to improved relationships in the workplace
- Explore strategies for handling difficult people and situations
- Learn how to work with individuals from different functions and cultural backgrounds
- Develop a personal effectiveness ‘action plan’ for the future
Module 2 - The Pharma Mini MBA
This intensive three-day module will help you to translate your learning into new behaviours and improvements in your capability and performance and will work through live issues impacting on the industry and on you directly. The individual and group exercises will focus on pharmaceutical/biopharma/generic MBA case studies, and also on your own challenges and examples.
The business school case studies will help give the ‘feel’ of a full MBA and help you understand more about the strategies used in today’s pharmaceutical and associated industries.
Core objectives
- Develop your understanding of the key techniques of an MBA to apply to your work
- Gain a greater understanding of the pharma industry, its drivers, challenges and opportunities
- Hear about the latest strategic technology innovations being used and developed in the pharma industry
- Understand what strategic thinking is and how to use strategy tools
- Develop your leadership and strategic skills
- Become more effective in coping with and managing change in the pharma industry
- Explore the benefits and costs of doing an MBA
- Take away a Mini MBA toolkit to apply to your job
- Discuss and learn from real pharma industry case studies
Who should attend?
This is a ‘must-attend’ for professionals in the pharmaceutical/biopharma/medical device/animal health industries wishing to develop their business management skills for more senior levels and beyond mere technical ability. It will also help anyone thinking of studying for an MBA who would like an idea of what is involved. It is particularly beneficial to attend with a colleague to maximise the practical learning.
It is also relevant for:
- Experienced line managers and leaders
- Newly appointed managers
- Functional or department heads
- Project or team leaders
- Technical support specialists
- Advisers and consultants
This course will cover:
Module 1: Positive Persuading and Influencing Skills for Pharma Professionals
Introduction
- Defining personal effectiveness (scene-setting, terms of reference – behaviour and personality – group work and discussion)
Behavioural influences (self-awareness)
- Factors which influence human behaviour at home and at work
- Family and parents – genetic, gender and generation influences
- Culture and ethnicity
- Understanding the difference between negative manipulation and influencing with integrity
Understanding the diverse forces which influence motivational response
- Mindsets
- Gender
- Generation and age
- Nationality and regionality
- Behavioural styles
- Leadership and management styles
Communication models that work
- An introduction to EI (emotional intelligence) – EI self-mapping tools
- How to read and interpret other people’s behaviour
- Calibrating – pacing and/or leading – neuro-linguistic programming concepts and skills
- Defining and distinguishing positive and negative behaviours
- Examining and exploring passive, aggressive and assertive behaviour
- Techniques for assertiveness
- Analysing behaviour patterns – self-others using the people mapping and behavioural toolkit
Communication skills workshop
- Developing communication strategies that work
- The 4-Box Model
- Planning communication: starting, maintaining and ending discussion
- Techniques for involving others
- Listening skills: theory and practice – open and closed questions, summarising and clarifying
- Learning to say no, handle criticism, express criticism, make requests
- Preparing for difficult conversations with colleagues, peers and other stakeholders
- ‘Selling’ ideas, getting buy-in and commitment from others
- Influencing a group of individuals who represent different ‘style challenges’
- Influencing people from other cultures and backgrounds
- E-persuasion and influencing – using IT tools such as email and teleconferencing to persuade and influence from a distance
- Dealing with difficult customers, colleagues, bosses and staff
- Techniques for self-projection
- Handling aggressive as well as passive individuals
- Working with non-verbal communication
- Managing conflict and stressful communication – response vs reaction
- Evaluating performance and planning for improvement – follow-up
Module 2: The Pharma Mini MBA
Strategy and strategic challenges in the pharma industry
- Strategy and strategic thinking and their importance in the pharma industry
- Strategic analysis, planning and implementation
- Environmental analysis
- Understanding the competitive environment
- Strategic options
- Applying the MBA toolkit
- Stakeholders and their expectations in the pharma industry
- Obtaining the value out of strategy in the pharma industry
Commercial management and leadership in the pharma industry
- New product development and the target product profile
- Portfolio management used in the pharma industry
- Understanding business performance
- The business plan
- Diagnosing specific performance problems
- Developing strategic alliances and collaborations in the pharma industry
- Benefits, costs of doing an MBA and the different routes
- The role of leadership
- What are the core competencies of effective leaders in pharma?
- Leadership vs management
- Leadership style and approaches in the pharma industry
Managing innovation in the pharma industry
- Innovation approaches currently being adopted along the pharma value chain
- Future innovations in pharma and the life science industries
Leading and implementing pharma strategy and change
- Leading successful change
- Diagnosis around change
- How to create the conditions for successful change
- Why people resist change and how to manage this
- Change management including leading a structural reorganisation
- Creating a team, department and organisation relevant to today’s pharma business needs
- Team formation and development
- Implementing strategy and change, essentials of planning and managing projects
- Project management tools and techniques to use in implementing pharma projects
- Applying key project management techniques to pharma projects
- Understanding of cultural awareness to work more effectively with pharma colleagues
Hot topics in market access strategy
Practical application/review
- Personal development action plan to apply the learning within your own organisation
- Revisiting your competency assessment – what has shifted?
- Recommended further reading
- Practical application of tools (toolkit)
Robert Hersowitz
MDI
Robert Hersowitz has established an international reputation as a management and management development consultant. He has spent the past thirty years designing and delivering programmes and workshops to a wide variety of organisations in Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Africa. His expertise is broadly based, working with middle and senior management in the private and public sector. He has trained and coached over 30,000 managers and executives.
Other assignments include long-standing projects with clients in the airports, industrial gases, information technology, financial services, pharmaceutical industries, govt., military and voluntary sectors.
He is a regular contributor to conferences as a keynote speaker and seminar leader both in the UK and abroad. He has written and published several articles and has contributed to a number of books on themes of Human Resource Development, Virtual Teams and Self Managing Teams for Prentice Hall and HRD Associates
Laura Brown
Independent Pharmaceutical Consultant
Dr Laura Brown MBA, BSc (Biochemistry), BSc (Psychology), PhD, Diploma in Clinical Science, FICR, is Chair of an international pharmaceutical management consultancy and course director and senior lecturer for the MSc in Clinical Research at the School of Pharmacy, University of Cardiff. She has also worked as an associate with Cranfield School of Management on the leadership module of the MBA programme and their strategic thinking courses.
Dr Brown worked for Cambridge Corporate Development, an international strategy consultancy, for seven years and has extensive experience in senior management roles in the pharmaceutical industry. She has worked for Wellcome, Hoechst Marion Roussel and Phoenix International and consulted internationally with numerous pharmaceutical companies in the EU, US, Singapore, China and India. She is co-author of several management books including Be Your Own Strategy Consultant, The Ultimate Book of Business Skills and Project Management for the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Oguz Ozden
PWC
Oguz is a strategy consultant in PwC’s Strategy& practice, leading large, complex and international transformations across the Pharma and Life Sciences sector. He has over 10 years of consulting experience in the sector having worked across various functions in Biotech, Pharma and Consumer Health as well as Pharmaceutical Wholesale.
Leela Barham
Leela Barham Economics Consulting Ltd
BSc (Economics), MSc (Health Economics) Leela Barham is an independent health economist and policy expert working on a freelance basis. This follows 7 years at a specialist economic consulting firm working in a small dedicated health and pharmaceutical team. She has more than 10 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry – both at home and abroad – and has worked for all stakeholders in the health care system ranging from patient organisations, the National Health Service, health insurers, and the pharmaceutical industry.
She has particular expertise in public and patient involvement, Patient Access Schemes/risk sharing schemes, the Cancer Drugs Fund, policy on Health Technology Assessment (HTA), and the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS). She regularly writes on hot topics affecting the industry for Pharmaceutical Executive, Pharmaphorum and EyeforPharma and has also written for PharmaTimes, and Pharma Pricing and Reimbursement. She has also had her research published in peer review journals including The Patient and Pharmacoeconomics.
NEW higher discounts for multiple bookings - bring your colleagues to make your training budget go further:
- 30% off the 2nd delegate*
- 40% off the 3rd delegate*
- 50% off the 4th delegate*
Please contact us for pricing if you are interested in booking 5 or more delegates
7-11 July 2025
Summer school
Live online
09:30-16:30 UK (London) (UTC+01)
10:30-17:30 Paris (UTC+02)
04:30-11:30 New York (UTC-04)
Course code 14880
- GBP 1,999 2,499
- EUR 2,889 3,589
- USD 3,309 4,089
Until 02 Jun
- 5 days live online training
- Browser-based, no download usually required
- See presenters and interact with fellow attendees
- Download documentation and certification of completion
- Fair transfer and cancellation policy
Not ready to book yet?
for 7 days, no obligation
* Early booking discounts may not be combined with other discounts or offers. As such, the discounts for 2nd/3rd/4th delegates are based on the full price; and apply only when booking multiple delegates on the same date.
