We’ve spent decades drilling the importance of discovery into every sales methodology. We teach our people that you never lead with a pitch. You never assume you know the customer’s problem. You ask, you listen, you explore. You earn the right to propose a solution by first deeply understanding the situation.
And we know that discovery isn’t one-directional. The best discovery conversations are those where the customer is learning too — clarifying their own thinking about the problem, seeing connections they hadn’t seen, developing a sharper understanding of what they actually need.
When both sides are collaborating in this process, trust builds, we align around the issues and move forward productively.
We understand all of this when we’re sitting across from a customer. So why do we abandon it the moment we turn to our own people?
Recently, I watched a high-performing manager coaching someone on his team. I’ve known him for years. He’s sharp, very customer-focused, and understands business issues quickly. In the conversation, he surfaced a few key issues about the deal.
Once he understood those, the conversation shifted. He didn’t ask any more questions; there was no more discussion. He instructed the salesperson, “Go call on these people and ask them these questions. The answers are critical to moving this forward.”
And that was it. The review was over, and he went on to his next meeting.
Later, I was talking with the manager and he asked my reaction. I replied, “I think the next steps you outlined are probably important, but you skipped the ‘discovery process.'”
This caught him off guard. His instincts about the deal and next steps were right. He replied, “Well that’s what I told the seller to do, he had more work to do on discovery. What did I miss?”
What he didn’t understand was the “discovery process” that’s core to every coaching conversation.
We know what happens when our sellers do a bad job in discovery with customers. They may not really understand the problem. They may not understand why it’s important to the customer. They don’t understand how the customer thinks and feels about it. They may not understand how the customer wants to move forward in addressing it.
Too often, we see sellers doing minimal discovery, leveraging “questions with an agenda,” moving to pitching the solution without fully understanding. This leaves the customer to connect the dots and figure things out. And we know that over 60% of the time they fail.
The same thing happens when managers skip discovery with their people.
The manager is working with incomplete information. The person closest to the situation has context the manager simply doesn’t have. Without exploring, the manager is just guessing. While the manager may have been involved in hundreds of these conversations before and tends to rely on their instincts, because they haven’t done proper discovery, they have no context in which to have the highest impact in the conversation.
Second, and more importantly, the person being coached never gets the chance to discover for themselves. Just as a customer develops a clearer understanding of their own problem through good discovery questions, a team member develops deeper insight into their own situation when a manager asks rather than tells. They start seeing what they actually know versus where they’re genuinely stuck. They start thinking about what they may have missed, what they might do about it, what they need to learn.
The real driver of learning and sustained performance isn’t being told what to do — it’s building the capability to figure it out for themselves.
The best coaching conversations mirror the best sales discovery conversations. They’re genuinely two-way.
The person being coached discovers things about their situation — a sharper problem definition, things they may have overlooked. In the process, they develop a deeper understanding that they can apply not just to the specific deal or call, but that shapes their thinking in all other calls.
And in each of these “discovery calls” the manager has with sellers, they learn new things. Not just about the situation, but how the seller thinks, where their reasoning breaks down, what they may be missing, what they need to more effectively achieve their goals.
These are insights you can never get through directive coaching.
And just like in selling, when the manager and seller are discovering together, the quality of what follows is dramatically better. The next steps and actions are more focused. The seller becomes more accountable. And the manager’s understanding of their team’s capabilities becomes richer over time.
Ironically, the managers most likely to skip discovery are often the highest performers. They got promoted precisely because they’re good at seeing problems and solving them quickly. That pattern-recognition ability is a genuine strength.
But as managers, this becomes a severe limitation. The skill to understand things quickly and take action works against them in leading their people. They see the issue clearly, so taking the time to help someone else see it feels inefficient. Why ask questions when you already know the answer?
High-impact coaching isn’t about transferring insights to our people. It’s about developing their capability to think for themselves, developing their own insights, developing their curiosity and drive to learn.
People will never develop the capability to figure things out if they are always told what to do.
And this doesn’t just limit the development of each individual — it adversely impacts the ability of the organization to perform at its highest level.
The manager I observed would never walk into a customer meeting, announce what he thought the problem was, and start prescribing a solution. He understands discovery in that context instinctively.
He already knows how to do this. He’s just not doing the same thing with his people.
Discovery isn’t just a sales skill. It’s a leadership discipline. And skipping it carries the same cost whether you’re selling to a customer or coaching your team: you get compliance instead of commitment, surface-level engagement instead of deep understanding, and short-term answers instead of long-term development.
The next time you’re tempted to jump straight to the answer in a coaching conversation, pause and ask yourself: “Am I skipping discovery?” Chances are, the conversation that follows will be more valuable for everyone — including you.
Afterword: Here is another fascinating AI-generated discussion of this post. Enjoy!
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