SHOW THE THINKING, NOT MERELY THE ANSWER

Earlier in my career, I was managing a pharmaceutical sales district in a market I had come to know fairly well.

I had been in the management role for approximately five years, working within the same general market environment. Over that time, I had become familiar with many of its patterns. I understood the competitive landscape, the differences among territories, and some of the factors that tended to influence performance.

The market wasn't entirely predictable. Pharmaceutical markets rarely are.

But it was familiar enough that I had developed a reasonably good sense of what I was looking at when I reviewed our business.

Then we received access to a new set of data.

And suddenly, there was considerably more to look at.

We had always worked with sales information, market performance, and customer targeting data.

The new resource went further.

We could examine market expansion, understand how individual territories contributed to district performance, and explore more detailed customer information that could influence how representatives prioritized their efforts.

It was a meaningful advancement.

For someone who enjoyed understanding the business behind the numbers, the possibilities were exciting.

But access to better information introduced a question I hadn't fully appreciated at first.

Were we becoming better at understanding our markets?

Or were we simply becoming better equipped to describe them?

The distinction began to emerge during my field rides.

As I spent time with representatives, I noticed that everyone had developed a somewhat different approach to managing their business.

Some were comfortable working with the new reports. Others relied more heavily on the tutorials and instructions that accompanied the rollout.

A few were especially eager to interpret what they were seeing, although they couldn't always explain the reasoning behind their conclusions.

What struck me was that these approaches weren't necessarily wrong.

The representatives had been operating with varying degrees of success, using methods that made sense to them.

But the new data created opportunities that weren't always being recognized.

For example, I might ask a representative why the pharmaceutical market in their territory was expanding faster than the district or regional average.

Sometimes the response was straightforward.

They weren't sure.

Given how recently we had received the information, that was a perfectly reasonable answer.

Other representatives began suggesting possible explanations.

Perhaps new physicians had entered the market. Maybe a health center had expanded. Perhaps a state-led initiative was identifying patients who previously hadn't been reached.

Those possibilities interested me.

Not because every explanation was necessarily correct, but because the representative had begun moving beyond the number itself.

Market growth was no longer simply a percentage on a report.

It was something worth investigating.

And I began noticing that the difference between using the data and interpreting the data was larger than I had initially realized.

Around that time, I began asking representatives a hypothetical question.

Suppose you were visiting an institution and happened to step into an elevator with your director or vice president.

You had perhaps three to five minutes together.

And the executive asked you to explain how your territory was performing.

What would you say?

Could you summarize your results?

Could you describe the dynamics of your market?

Could you explain what competitors were doing, where opportunities might exist, and what factors were contributing to your performance?

I wasn't looking for a memorized speech.

I wanted to know whether the representative understood the business well enough to explain it conversationally.

That is a different skill from being able to locate a number in a report.

A person can know exactly which screen contains market growth and still struggle to explain what might be influencing that growth.

They can identify their highest-priority customers without fully understanding why those customers represent the greatest opportunity.

And they can report strong or disappointing results without being able to describe the circumstances surrounding them.

The elevator question made the challenge practical.

If you really understand your business, you should be able to tell its story.

Eventually, I decided to make my analytical approach more explicit.

Instead of simply presenting my conclusions about district performance, I began walking representatives through how I arrived at them.

I would examine our district within the broader regional picture and explain why I was looking at particular information.

What stood out?

What seemed different from what I expected?

What comparisons might be useful?

What questions did the information raise?

And what additional context would I want before drawing a conclusion?

Then I would show how a representative could apply similar thinking to an individual territory.

It wasn't intended to be a rigid formula.

I was providing a roadmap, with my reasoning visible along the way.

That distinction mattered.

A finished analysis might tell someone where an opportunity exists.

Understanding how the analysis was developed can help that person recognize opportunities independently.

And I didn't want the representatives to believe my approach was the only acceptable one.

Their different ways of examining the business were part of what made the exercise valuable.

The objective was to strengthen their thinking, not replace it with mine.

What began through individual field observations gradually developed into something we could use across the district.

During our regular district conferences, whether conducted online or in person, I began incorporating representative-led analytical demonstrations.

Approximately every two weeks, a different representative would prepare a PowerPoint presentation and walk the team through an analysis.

The representative would share the screen, navigate the information, and explain what they were seeing.

But I wanted the presentation to feel like a conversation.

Not a recitation of instructions.

Not a mechanical demonstration of where to click.

A story about the business.

Some representatives were already comfortable interpreting data and could bring more advanced observations to the discussion.

Others were proficient at following the established processes but were still developing confidence in their analytical reasoning.

I deliberately made room for both.

There was value in seeing a highly analytical colleague approach a problem in an unexpected way.

There was also value in watching someone who was still learning explain how they worked through the information.

And when a representative encountered something they didn't understand, I wanted them to feel comfortable asking the group.

What would you make of this?

What would you investigate?

What might explain the difference between these two results?

The presentation didn't need to be perfect.

In fact, an imperfect explanation could sometimes produce a more useful conversation than a polished presentation that left no room for questions.

I would often remind the group that there were no wrong answers in the exploratory discussion.

That didn't mean every interpretation was equally supported by the evidence.

It meant people needed room to offer ideas, test assumptions, and become comfortable admitting what they didn't yet understand.

The responsibility to think more deeply remained.

So did the expectation that everyone would make greater use of the new information.

But the path toward improvement didn't have to look identical for every representative.

Over time, I began noticing changes.

Not everyone became an exceptionally sophisticated analyst.

Some representatives continued to rely closely on the instructional materials. They preferred having an established process to guide them through the reports.

But even among those representatives, I noticed greater curiosity about what the information might mean.

Others, who were already comfortable with analytics, became more capable as they encountered approaches and observations they hadn't previously considered.

During field rides, I began hearing more consistent analytical language and more thoughtful explanations of territory dynamics.

The representatives seemed increasingly comfortable moving from describing what had happened to exploring why it might have happened.

My leadership and coaching feedback also improved relative to the broader averages available to me.

I wouldn't attribute every improvement to this one initiative. Leadership effectiveness is influenced by many factors.

But the feedback, combined with what I was observing in the field, suggested that the approach was contributing something useful.

The method also became worth sharing with other leaders, including managers who were newer to their roles.

What had started as a response to observations involving only a portion of my team had developed into a broader coaching practice.

And that became one of the most important lessons I took from the experience.

Organizations invest considerable effort in providing employees with information, technology, and training.

Those investments matter.

But there is another dimension to capability that can be easy to overlook.

People benefit from seeing how experienced colleagues approach uncertainty, compare information, question assumptions, and develop conclusions.

They also benefit from having opportunities to demonstrate their own reasoning without being expected to get everything right immediately.

In my case, the most useful intervention wasn't another tutorial on how to operate the reporting system.

It was creating a regular opportunity for people to explain what they were thinking.

And to hear how others thought.

I had initially approached the challenge by showing representatives how I analyzed the business.

Eventually, representatives were showing one another.

That was the more meaningful development.

Because the objective of coaching isn't to create people who can repeat your conclusions.

It's to help them develop the judgment to reach better conclusions of their own.

A manager can provide an answer.

A good coaching environment can help people learn how to find the next one.

And sometimes, the first sign of progress isn't a more impressive analysis.

It's a better question.

Training can teach someone how to navigate the data.

Experience teaches them to look beyond the numbers and ask what they mean.

That's the craft.