In 1989, I enlisted in the US Army and served as an enlisted soldier for three years before applying and being accepted at The United States Military Academy at West Point. After graduation in 1996, I followed the normal career path of an Infantryman: Infantry Officers Basic and Advanced courses, Ranger School, Airborne School, and the Air Assault School. I also served in a number of leadership positions of ever increasing responsibility that were right in my sweet spot of expertise. I was becoming an expert in conducting combat operations.

And then the army threw me a wild pitch. Shortly after being promoted to Captain and while waiting for a company command to open up, I was assigned as the Battalion Motor Officer of a headquarters company of a Mechanized Infantry Battalion. I was put in charge of more than a hundred mechanics, several different types of engineers, fuel experts, and a fleet of heavy machines from tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M113 tracked vehicles, to HMMWVs, tow trucks, and mortar vehicles. The job was way, way out of my expertise.

And to top it off, I was the officer responsible for managing the senior non-commissioned officers who ran the motor pool and a Chief Warrant Officer 3, all of whom were older than me and had worked in their fields for their entire careers. I was the least qualified person you can imagine for the job, and I was terrified of failing. My background didn’t include any expertise in what they were doing on a day to day basis and I was 100 percent responsible for their results. The Army is somewhat uncompromising when it comes to results and it was very much a sink or swim situation. I had to figure out what to do—and quickly.

Luckily for me, the Warrant Officer was not only a deep technical expert, he was also a real leader. He took me under his wing, even though I theoretically outranked him, and he taught me a leadership lesson that has stuck with me for life. His idea was that I only had to be the expert at one thing—asking smart questions. I needed to learn the basics of the daily work but not the details. He taught me that curiosity about what was going on around me would lead me down the right path. The idea was that in the technical world, most people know what needs to happen and asking the right questions will help them clarify their thinking and elevate the status of key resource allocations. Questions help leaders evaluate the work being done from a managerial context and improve decision making.

So, instead of managing the results of the work, I focused on asking questions about the daily activities that lead to the results we needed. After some trial and error, I was able to come up with a series of questions that helped me understand the proper resources needed to get any job done and to find obstacles in the path of the teams. My role became chief facilitator. I made sure everyone had what they needed to be successful on a daily basis, such as tools, m