I somewhat foolishly studied management in undergrad. I took lots of classes which would probably be far more beneficial to me now than they were before I had a decade of work experience. My class of 40 or so other business majors had no way of conceptualizing what the concrete reality under our many many accounting classes might be.
Some classes started to click after a couple internships and enough re-enforcement. Some classes were clearly beneficial from the start. (Public speaking with Brian Brenberg pays dividends nearly daily.)
One class though felt particularly useless. It was my senior year and while I don't recall the name of the class, I remember that it primarily focused on resourcing decisions and planning with insufficient information. The students were required to engage in a computer simulated market and choose between various options for R&D, product line expansion, marketing, etc. The whole thing felt so contrived as to be useless. The capstone event of this class was a competitive session where the whole group teamed up to compete in a group simulation against other groups of students from other schools. The professor was very proud of the arrangement and a few times boasted about how well her classes always fared in this competition.
Competition day comes around, and for some reason I don't recall a particularly bragadocious student who I don't recall anyone trusting very much gets picked to be CEO and make the final call on all strategic decisions. He was to be informed by various "department heads" who worked with each other to attempt to lead the org to success.
I remember at each interval of the game, when our team was supposed to enter the various resource allocation decisions for each department, our leader would look at the department head and say something to the effect of "but can you do a little better?" or "lets raise the price just a little" or "can you go 10% faster?". On the clock to submit their decisions, everyone balked. The decision maker in the room wanted a different outcome than their team had been able to produce.
So inevitably a few leads would cave to the request.
It was an unmitigated disaster. We failed so miserably that even the professor looked embarassed to be assoociated with us.
I don't think I learned anything from the class time, the homework, or the simulation project in that class, but I certainly learned something from that capstone competition.
Trust the path your direct reports choose. They earned their seat through hard work and expertise. Ask questions, push for clarity, support their work, but at the end of they day when you ask for their decision you need to trust it instead of goading them for more because you can. Don't throw out an idea in the 11th hour and expect them to implement it before a deadline. Don't upend weeks of work with a firm decision they know they can't risk arguing.
Consider the time and aggregate effort it took to reach the decision being put before you. Trust the process. Consider the path that information traveled. It's probably more carefully considered than the path your idea took from your brain to your mouth.
I count that lesson among the best I learned in my schooling.