Everest doesn’t care what language you dream in. Sanofi’s leaders found that out in Barcelona.

A hotel ballroom in Barcelona became base camp this week, as Explore Performance facilitator Pablo led Sanofi’s team through For Those Who Dare, our Everest-based leadership experience, entirely in Spanish.

Running the programme in the room’s own language changed the texture of the day. Nothing got lost in translation, and nothing got softened either. Every decision point landed the way it was meant to: fast, real, and personal.

The Mountain As A Decision-Making Tool

For Those Who Dare puts teams inside the real choices Axe faced high on Everest, where oxygen is thin and the consequences of a bad call are immediate. Sanofi’s teams used those same moments to practise something much closer to home: how they make decisions together, under pressure, when the easy option and the right option aren’t the same thing.

You could see it happening table by table. Heads together over the data. Hands up mid-debate. The odd raised voice when someone disagreed with the group’s read of the mountain. That’s the point. A workshop that stays polite rarely changes how a team actually behaves back at their desks.

Values, Not Slogans

Sanofi didn’t just want a leadership exercise. They wanted their own values to show up in the room, tested against a real scenario rather than printed on a poster. Everest gave them that test. Teams had to choose between speed and safety, between individual ambition and group survival, and those choices mapped straight back onto the behaviours Sanofi asks of its people every day.

The energy in the room by the final debrief said as much as any feedback form could. Laughter, arguments, a fair bit of noise. That’s what values look like when they’re being lived rather than recited.

Delivered Locally, Felt Globally

Pablo’s session in Barcelona is part of a wider pattern at EP: taking a single piece of expedition IP and delivering it with total fluency in whatever language and culture the room needs. Same mountain, same stakes, same Everest footage. Different voice, different room, same result.

Want your next leadership session to feel like this? Get in touch to talk through how For Those Who Dare could work for your team.