He nailed the coaching. His rep still tanked.

I was reviewing a coaching call between a sales manager and one of his reps last week, and I watched the same thing happen that I've now seen dozens of times.

The rep was struggling. Deals were stalling out. The manager jumped in and did what most managers do — he started fixing the pitch.

"Try leading with the compliance angle instead."

"Ask about their current contract earlier in the call."

"Tighten up your close — you're leaving too much room."

All solid feedback. Technically correct. And the rep nodded along to every single suggestion.

But here's what the manager missed: the rep wasn't struggling because of technique. He was struggling because he'd lost confidence after a string of bad calls and didn't believe his next one would be any different.

The manager was coaching the process when he needed to coach the person.

And that gap — knowing which problem you're actually solving — is the difference between coaching that gets okay results and coaching that gets maximum performance.

When you're coaching anyone — a salesperson, a business owner, an athlete — there are two distinct things you need to address: the person and the process.

Coaching the person is the inner game. Mindset blockers, limiting beliefs, motivation, self-trust. It's helping someone marshal the internal resources they need to actually go do the thing.

Coaching the process is the technique. The tactical adjustments to execution that move the needle on performance. In sales, that's tweaking a script, adjusting tonality, restructuring a discovery call. For an Olympic athlete, it's the tiny form adjustments that shave a tenth of a second off their time.

Both are real skill sets. And most coaches — most managers, most leaders — are naturally better at one than the other.

The process-only coach runs what amounts to an informational boot camp. Their people understand the technique. They've got the knowledge. But they don't have the mindset or motivation to actually implement it.

You can hand an athlete a perfect technical breakdown of their form. But if they're burned out, feeling defeated, or don't believe in themselves anymore — none of it lands. The knowledge is useless without the internal capacity to act on it.

The person-only coach is the flip side. Their team is fired up. Everyone's energized and in the right headspace. And then they go execute the wrong shit with maximum enthusiasm.

Great energy. Bad technique. Either way, you're stuck.

This is the part that separates good coaches from great ones.

Some days, someone needs a mindset reset before any technique conversation makes sense. That same person, two days later, might be locked in mentally — and what they actually need is a specific process fix to break through a plateau.

The best coaches I know don't default to their strength every time. They read the room. They diagnose what's actually blocking performance. And then they respond to that — not to what's most comfortable for them to coach.

The question they're constantly asking themselves: Is this a person problem or a process problem right now?

That single question changes everything about how the conversation goes.

Most of us have a clear lean. We either lead with empathy and motivation, or we lead with process and technique.

That default will get you pretty far. But it won't get you maximum performance from the people you're leading.

So here's the move: once you know your default, get intentional about building the other half of the toolbox. Build it into your coaching sessions. Make it a habit. Before every conversation, ask yourself which lever this person needs you to pull today — not which one you're most comfortable pulling.

Because the coach who only pulls one lever gets decent results. The coach who knows when to pull which one gets everything their people are capable of giving.

Adios,

Ray

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