One of the worst errors a project manager could do...

I've always thinked that a good manager is someone which doesn't appear to be a manager...

• He should drive the team but the team must not understand that it's driven by him
• He should trust and encourage the member of the team delegating charges and duties more as possible 
• He should get the top performance more as possibile from his team members (...and he isn't supposed to directly do the job, well I guess that's not a priority, the focus should be on team members)

There is a bright phrase to describe the manager charges (ehm..the bright phrase is still mine...):

You cannot taste the wind, you cannot see it and maybe you cannot hear it but wind is there and it silently boost boats. A good manager is like the wind, he boost the team from behind the scenes.

Probably that's all true but there is a huge error that a manager, a project manager, *MUST* avoid!

One thing is trust and delegation style, one thing is an agnostic tasks assignment style.

From my perspective, an agnostic tasks assigment style is when the manager works just as a task dispatcher, considering efforts, critical paths, etc. but simply assuming that there is a task and that someone will consume that tasks. The manager isn't worried from "how" but just from "when".

In this way the manager work as an "accountant", assigning, checking but not governing the processes!

In the trust and delegations style the manager still dispatches tasks and assignment, still consider effort, critical paths and so on and still check the tasks are being done...

Where is the difference? It's in the style, I think that an in agnostic task assignment a manager is..., what I could say, well he's lazy. The style is assign and forget (well that's also a design pattern in software architectures, fire and forget but it's other stuff).

In trust and delegation style the manager *must* be part of the processes critically checking, reviewing and supporting team members decisions

He should empower the team, explaining and suggesting on the basis of his knowledge and thats totally different from imposing decisions.

So what's the error to avoid, "one of the worst errors a project manager could do"?

Obviously it's the agnostic task assignment style (and too much often I do this error). Trust and delegation is very challenging and hard because it's also needed a deeply knowledge of the approached scenarios and sometimes you've to admit you errors if you've convinced team members to change their decisions (yes, I've just said to you) , but IT'S ALWAYS THE WINNING ONE!