Publicis Groupe: When 150 executives practiced influence under pressure

The context

Publicis Groupe runs Le Grand Studio, a leadership program with over 1,500 alumni. Each cohort brings together 150 VPs, SVPs, and Managing Directors from agencies worldwide. These are people who spend their days navigating competing priorities, regional tensions, and the quiet politics of matrix organizations.

The opportunity

These leaders already knew influence mattered. What they lacked was somewhere safe to practice it.

Theory sessions hadn't shifted behavior. The real skill of building authority across lines you don't control only develops under pressure. The question was how to create that pressure without the real-world consequences.

What we built together

A 120-minute leadership laboratory. Not a workshop about influence, but a live environment where participants had to earn it.

Leadership frameworks for matrix dynamics

We started with two frameworks: Sense-Respond-Adapt (flexing strategy when conditions shift) and Adaptive Leadership (mobilizing people through uncertainty). But frameworks alone don't change behavior. Practice does.

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Interactive drills under pressure

We created six-minute modules delivered via interactive voice notes, where leaders chose their path through authentic workplace tensions. Immediate decisions. Real-time feedback from an AI coach. The kind of rapid-fire pressure they recognize from Tuesday mornings.

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Business simulation with a complete fictional world

Then came the scenario. We built an EV challenger brand with product specs, market positioning, and C-suite WhatsApp voice notes revealing internal tensions. A cold-open video dropped teams directly into a high-stakes client moment. Cross-agency dynamics, competing KPIs, regional friction, and the quiet undermining that never makes it into case study textbooks.

Teams had 35 minutes to design collaboration strategies on a game board-style creation space, then pitch their blueprints to peers ready to challenge every assumption. External pressures arrived mid-challenge, forcing real-time pivots.

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What shifted

91% recommendation rating from 400+ global participants.

But the number that mattered more: leaders reported implementing the frameworks in live projects within days. Not because they'd memorized models, but because they'd already practiced using them under pressure. The muscle memory was there.

Teams also kept sharing strategies after sessions ended. The peer networks outlasted the program.