3 Things Every Life Sciences Coach Should Know (and Most Skip)

Most managers don’t struggle with what to coach. They struggle with getting out of the way long enough for coaching to happen. Great coaching isn’t about having the right answers; it’s about asking the right questions, listening fully, and giving people room to find their own way forward. These three habits are what separate managers who tell from managers who actually develop people.

Let the silence do the work

You ask a rep, “How do you think that call went?” Then comes a pause, then a longer one. Every instinct says to fill it, so you rephrase, soften, or answer for them.

Don’t. Teachers learn this early: ask a question, then wait, even when the silence feels endless. That pause is where your rep is actually thinking, and often where the most honest answer shows up. If you answer your own questions, you’ve turned a coaching conversation back into a lecture.

Try it this week: After your next debrief question, silently count to seven before saying anything.

Ask questions you don’t already know the answer to

Most of us walk into a coaching conversation with a theory. You watched the call, you saw the objection go sideways, and you’re pretty sure you know why. So, the question comes out as “Did you skip the clinical data because you were short on time?”

That’s a leading question. It feels helpful, but it only confirms what you already believe and closes the door on what you don’t know. Open-ended questions get you new information: “Walk me through what you were thinking when Dr. Patel pushed back.” You might learn it wasn’t time at all. Maybe it was confidence in the data, a training gap, or something about that account you’d never have seen.

Try it this week: Before your next 1:1, rewrite any question that starts with “Did you…” into one that starts with “What,” “How,” or “Walk me through.”

It’s not your problem to solve

Managers are problem-solvers, and that’s often how they got promoted. But in a coaching conversation, jumping straight to the fix cuts the discovery short. The first issue a rep raises is rarely the real one, and if you solve it immediately, the deeper one never surfaces.

Your job is to help them solve it. Guide when they get stuck, but let them identify the gap and own the next step. People commit to plans they build themselves, and that ownership is what turns one good conversation into lasting behavior change.

Try it this week: When a rep brings you a problem, ask “What have you considered so far?” before offering any advice.

Want to make great coaching the norm, not the exception?

Tips like these make a difference one conversation at a time. iCoach helps life sciences organizations make coaching consistent and measurable across every manager and every team. Structured coaching workflows, coaching connected to needs-based training, and Power BI dashboards for visibility into coaching quality and trends come together on a single platform for field and non-field teams across sales, medical, and market access.

Coaching is a critical action. Continuous development is a deliberate strategy.

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