Closing the Gap Between Seeing and Knowing

Photo by kilo 🐍 on Unsplash

By Ben Dunn

In my early days as a Regional Sales Manager at the nation’s largest lawn care company, one of my responsibilities was managing 25 outside sales reps. Some were seasoned veterans. Others were brand new to sales.

Mike P was one of the new ones.

He had just come down from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was his first outside sales job. He made it through training, but once he got into the field, something felt off.

He wasn’t asking many questions. He wasn’t standing out. From where I sat, it looked like he was going to do just enough to get by.

And without saying it out loud, I started to treat him that way.

And that showed up in small ways:

•             Less attention

•             Less coaching

•             Fewer check-ins

At some point, I chose to engage instead of observe from a distance.

What I found wasn’t what I expected.

Mike wasn’t driven by the same things as some of the others. But once I began to understand what really mattered to him, things started to shift.

His currency wasn’t recognition. It wasn’t competition. It wasn’t even money.

It was time.

Time off to compete in his real passion—disc golf.

Once I saw that, the conversation changed. We worked on a plan together to reward his sales goals with more flexibility in his schedule.

Expectations became clearer. The work became more focused. And over time, his performance followed.

By the end of the season, Mike wasn’t just my best rookie. He was my top outside sales rep.

Although this happened early in my management career, that experience has stayed with me.

Not because of the result, but because I had figured out who he was—and what made him tick.

What I thought I was seeing wasn’t what was actually there.

I learned that as a leader, my job wasn’t simply to observe behavior, but to also interpret it.

The biggest learning, though, was this: the better I knew my team members, the better I could interpret their actions. Nothing substitutes for really getting to know the people you work with and around.

And those interpretations quietly shape how we show up.

Who we invest in.
Who we challenge.
Who we quietly let drift.

The gap between seeing and knowing is easy to miss.

But it’s there—all the time.

And how we move within that gap has more to do with outcomes than we might think.

Now I try to slow those moments down.

To ask before I label.
To understand before I judge.

Because sometimes the difference between an average performer and your best one isn’t them.

It’s whether you took the time to see them clearly.