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The Pharma Career Ladder · The first-line manager · Step 5: Motivating and building the team · Lesson 4

Autonomy, mastery, purpose

Three drivers, applied to a field team

By Ahmed El Menshawy · 20 years in pharma, from medical rep to country manager in the UAE. Founder of RepPharma. LinkedIn
Published

Pay a rep fairly and you remove a reason to leave. You do not create a reason to give more.

Daniel Pink's Drive gives three words I come back to often: autonomy, mastery, purpose. They sound abstract. In a field team they are very practical.

  • Autonomy.
  • Let the rep plan the week and build the route. We agree the priorities together.
  • Agree the outcome, then leave the method to them. A rep who chose the how owns the result.
  • Mastery.
  • One skill the rep chose, practised until it feels natural.
  • Then say out loud what they can do now that they could not do before. Progress nobody names feels like standing still.
  • Purpose.
  • Talk about the patients a doctor treats, not only the monthly figures.
  • And when you set a priority, explain why. An instruction without a reason gets compliance, rarely effort.

One test I use before adding any new rule, report or approval step: which of the three does it take away?

Most of the time, the answer is autonomy.

“Pay fairly. Then give them room, a skill and a reason.”
Autonomy, mastery, purpose: Three drivers, applied to a field team

Lesson 4 of 19 in Step 5: Motivating and building the team, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.

More lessons in step 5: Motivating and building the team

Lesson 1The 70% managerWhy the first-line manager decides whether a sales team is engagedLesson 2What actually motivates a repFixing frustrations is not the same as building driveLesson 3Money is not the whole answerWhat an incentive can do, and where it stopsLesson 5The one-to-one that is worth the hourAgenda, ownership and follow-throughLesson 6Knowing what is going on at homeCare as a management skillLesson 7Trust is built in small promisesThe manager who does what they saidLesson 8Recognition on a zero budgetFive things that cost nothingLesson 9Recognising effort when results lagProtecting motivation in a bad quarterLesson 10Emotional intelligence for managersKnow yourself, manage yourself, read your teamLesson 11Six leadership stylesChoosing the style the moment needsLesson 12The team meeting nobody dreadsStructure, timing and everyone talkingLesson 13Psychological safety in a sales teamWhy reps hide bad newsLesson 14Stages of a new teamForming, storming, norming, performingLesson 15When two reps do not get alongMediating without taking sidesLesson 16The difficult conversationPreparing, opening and staying in itLesson 17Radical candour in a field teamCare personally, challenge directlyLesson 18Managing a rep older than youAuthority without seniorityLesson 19The rep who wants your jobDeveloping a successor, not a rival

Motivating and building the team, in RepPharma

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