–Kate
Connecticut

The fact that you consider your biases about management to be
“reasonably conventional” says a lot about your character. In my experience, your philosophy of management is rare and enlightened. There are sadly few managers who really believe in “treating [their employees] like adult human beings, who in nearly every case know how to do their jobs better than I do.”
To most managers, “empowerment” is nothing more than a marketing slogan that is used to sell predetermined processes to employees under the pretense of giving them power.

I hope you’ll expand this section to show how this approach has actually worked for you, allowing your employees to find innovative ways to approach the job that a more top-down management style would have suppressed.