Learn From your boss and Think like a leader

Great leaders inspire teams, influence colleagues, and develop strengths in others. But before leading others in practice, the best leaders master the art of thinking like a leader long before formally leading a team or having a ‘manager’ title bestowed upon them.

Before starting my own talent consulting firm, I began my corporate career as a Recruiter. I was fresh out of school and quite comfortable navigating the black-and-white environment of a classroom where there was a right and wrong answer for every question. I had a knack for mentally organizing new information and subsequently plucking said information from my memory to correctly answer any question asked on an exam. I assumed that the same skills that had garnered a strong GPA would also guarantee success in corporate America.
I was wrong.
Unlike the classroom environment, there’s rarely a single ‘right’ answer to any one dilemma in the working world. After just a few months into my professional career, I was struggling to succeed in the world of metaphorical shades of grey. Every day, questions popped-up that I didn’t yet have the answers to.
A candidate declined an offer. Should I make a counter-offer?
A director asked me to post a newly created position. Did we have a headcount?
A manager wanted to promote her team member. Should I support it?
With the weight of wanting to make the ‘right’ decision on my shoulders, I marched my way down the hallway to my boss’ office and swiftly dropped the problem squarely into her lap to solve.
Or so I thought.
Met With Questions, Not Answers
Rather than being met with an answer to my question, I got the opposite. I was met with more questions and lots of them. Even worse, they were questions that I did not have the answers to. In fact, I hadn’t even considered them.
That promotion I had asked about was met with questions like, “What was his last performance appraisal score?” “How was he performing compared to his peers?” “Did the work warrant a full-blown promotion, or was it just a small increase in scope?”
The questions went on and, as they did, I felt smaller and smaller. “I’m not sure,” I said, “I didn’t think to ask that.” At this point, I was still hopeful that she might take pity on me and tell me how to proceed with solving the problem at hand.
Instead, she sent me packing with a long list of questions that I needed to answer before she would share her opinion. I called the manager with my tail between my legs and diligently walked through each of my boss’ questions, carefully taking notes on the manager’s responses.
Back down the hall I went where I quickly rattled off the additional information I had gleaned. We were getting closer, but we weren’t entirely there. The answers to my first set of questions had prompted yet another round of new questions which I had also failed to consider. I had been so focused on answering each specific question she had asked that I hadn’t slowed down to take in the full picture of the situation at hand.
Tap Into Your Natural Curiosity
“Tap into your natural curiosity,” she told me. “If you were running this HR department, what would you want or need to know to make a sound decision on this?” Back to my office I went, this time with a shorter, more fluid list of things to look into. My ego was bruised, and I’m sure the poor manager didn’t understand why this simple request necessitated yet another conversation. But, this time I focused less on securing answers to specific questions and more on gathering the information I would need to come to a decision on my own.
They say the third time’s the charm, right? I certainly hoped so. I made my way back to my boss’ office and shared the additional information I had gathered. This time, she asked only one question, “What do you think we should do?”
Not exactly an answer.
But, to even my surprise, I myself had an answer. I had a point of view, and it was an informed one that weighed the pros and cons of several different decisions we could make.
It turns out that by not giving me the answers, she instead gave me the most powerful gift of my career. By coaching me to worry less about getting to the ‘right’ answer and focus more on asking the ‘right’ questions, she empowered me to seek out answers on my own and taught me how to think like a leader. She challenged me to think critically and strategically, even when giving me the answers would have been easier for her in the moment.
Rethink Your Role as a Leader
If you’re a leader, stop giving your team all of the answers and start asking them more questions. Yes, it will take more of your time upfront and it will likely be uncomfortable (maybe even painful) for both of you. But, it will also cultivate high-performing, empowered leaders in spades.
As leaders, we know that there’s never one ‘right’ answer. Leaders are in leadership roles because they have demonstrated the ability to take in lots of information, critically evaluate its relevance and impact, and make the best decision they can with the information they have at that moment in time.
Pay it forward, and help your team learn to do the same.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s start at the beginning: with Milankovitch himself.
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The Earth in orbit around the Sun, with its rotational axis shown. All worlds in our solar system have seasons determined by either their axial tilt, the ellipticity of their orbits, or a combination of both. Although the axial tilt dominates Earth’s seasons today, this may not always be the case. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER TAUʻOLUNGA)
Back in the early 1900s, Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch decided to work on a puzzle that no one else had successfully solved: linking the physics that governed the Solar System with the theory of Earth’s climate. As the Earth orbits the Sun, you’ll barely notice any year-to-year changes, as they’re relatively minuscule. Sure, the phases of the Moon shift, the exact date and time of equinoxes and solstices vary, and timekeeping requires the regular insertion of leap days to keep the seasons aligned with our calendar.
While Newton’s law of gravitation and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion are relatively simple, however, anything more complex than the simplest system imaginable can lead to incredibly elaborate orbital complications. In the case of the Earth, it’s affected by:
the fact that it rotates on its axis,
it moves in an ellipse, rather than a circle, around the Sun,
it has a large, natural satellite: the Moon,
which in turn orbits the Earth tidally locked, inclined at an angle to Earth’s orbit and axial rotation, and in a quite eccentric ellipse,
and the small (but not completely negligible) gravitational influence of the other bodies in our Solar System.
All of these effects interplay with one another to determine the long-term evolution of Earth’s orbit.
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When the Earth’s north pole is maximally tilted away from the Sun, it’s maximally tilted towards the full Moon, on the opposite side of the Earth, while when your hemisphere of the Earth is maximally tilted towards the Sun, it’s maximally tilted away from the full Moon. The Moon stabilizes our orbit but also slows the Earth’s rotation, with both the Moon and Sun as well as the other planets all playing roles in the long-term evolution of Earth’s rotation, axial tilt, and orbital parameters. (NATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY ROZHEN)
There are a few important rules at play. One is the law of gravitation, and the fact that these aren’t point-like objects we’re talking about, but rather spheroids: physical objects of a real, finite size and with intrinsic angular momentum to them. That angular momentum, for each object in our Solar System — and particularly for the Earth, Moon, and Sun — is split up into the spin of each body, or its rotational motion, and its orbital angular momentum, or its revolutionary motion. (Yes, even the Sun doesn’t remain stationary, but rather makes its own “wobbly” motion due to the gravitational influence of the other bodies in the Solar System.)
What Milankovitch found, perhaps surprisingly to some, is that these effects all add up to cause three major long-term variations, arising from the interactions of these Solar System bodies.
Precession, or the fact that the direction that Earth’s axis points rotates over time.
Axial tilt, which changes ever so slightly from its current 23.5° over time.
Eccentricity, or how circular vs. elliptical Earth’s orbit is.
Although there are other effects, they’re all minor compared to these three major ones. Let’s look at them individually.
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Earth’s rotational axis will precess over time due to two combined effects: axial precession (shown here) and apsidal precession, as its elliptical orbit also precesses. The combined effects, which have ~26,000 and ~112,000 year periods, respectively, result in a total precessional period of closer to ~23,000 years. (NASA/JPL-CALTECH)
1.) Precession. This one is actually pretty straightforward: the Earth spins on its axis, which is inclined at 23.5° with respect to our revolutionary path around the Sun. When our axis is pointed perfectly perpendicular to the line connecting the Earth to the Sun, we experience equinoxes; when the axis is pointed along the Earth-Sun line, we experience solstices. Although the timing of both equinoxes and solstices would change over time, astronomically, the insertion of leap days keeps the equinoxes centered around March 21 and September 23, with the solstices occurring around December 21 and June 21.
But the physical direction that our axis point does, in fact, change over time. Right now Polaris is our “north star” because our axis points towards it to within 1°, which is remarkable but unusual for a bright star. Over long periods time, the direction that Earth’s rotational axis points will make a complete circle, as two effects both come into play:
our axial precession, which is Earth’s “wobble” relative to the stars, largely due to the Moon and Sun,
and our apsidal precession, which is how Earth’s ellipse “wobbles” as we orbit the Sun, primarily due to Jupiter’s and Saturn’s influences.
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Today, in the year 2020, Polaris lies extremely close to the exact north celestial Pole. The red circle traces out the direction that Earth’s axis will point along over time, indicating which star will best serve as a pole star in both the far future and the distant past. Vega, the brightest star in this vicinity, will be our pole star in a little over 13000 years. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER TAUʻOLUNGA)
Axial precession causes Earth to make a full 360° turn on its axis every 25,771 years, while the apsidal precession leads to an additional 360° turn (in the same direction) every ~112,000 years or so. For an observer on Earth, if we could live that long, we’d see the pole stars change in a periodic fashion every 23,000 years or so, as these effects combine in an additive fashion. Thousands of years ago, the star Kochab (the brightest star in the Little Dipper’s bowl) was where our North Pole pointed; thousands of years from now, it will point at Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky, 13,000 years in the future.
The main effect of this precession on temperature is seasonal, however, and has no long-term effect on an annual basis. Because the South Pole points towards the Sun close to the December solstice, orbital perihelion aligns with its summer and aphelion is close to its winter, resulting in colder winters and hotter summers compared to the Northern Hemisphere. This will change over time with a ~23,000 year period, but presents no long-term, overall temperature variations.

Source: https://www.medium.com/@irenemdickens32/if-you-have-a-boss-then-you-can-learn-a-lot-from-him-6d9c58d2e603

Over time periods of ~41,000 years, Earth’s axial tilt will vary from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back. Right now, our tilt of 23.5 degrees is slowly decreasing from its maximum, which was reached just under 11,000 years ago, to its minimum, which it will achieve a little less than 10,000 years from now. (NASA / JPL)
2.) Axial tilt. At present, the Earth rotates on its axis at an angle of 23.5°, and that axial tilt plays a more significant role than even how close or far we are from the Sun in determining our seasons. When the Sun’s rays are more direct on our portion of the Earth, we receive more energy from the Sun; when they’re more indirect (incident at a lower angle and passing through more of our atmosphere), we receive less energy. Over the course of a year and averaged over the whole planet, our axial tilt doesn’t substantially affect how much total energy the Earth receives.
But our axial tilt does vary somewhat over long periods of time: from a minimum of 22.1° to a maximum of 24.5°, oscillating from its minimum to maximum and back to minimum again approximately every ~41,000 years. Our Moon is primarily responsible for stabilizing our axial tilt; the tilt of Mars is comparable to that of Earth, but Mars’s variations are about 10 times as great, because it lacks a large, massive moon to keep these axial tilt variations small.