Heather,

To me this is a common sense thing but many managers don't understand thier role.  I have been with the same company for almost 30 years and the main reason is that they depend on me to provide results on engineering projects and I love the challenge... Since my second year in I have been a go to guy.  My management style reflects the need for appreciation that I enjoyed and the sincereness of honest answers regardless of whether it was what I wanted to hear.

Not all people perform at the same level and have totally different skill sets.  If you can recognize this, you can pair up taskers with free thinking project idealists and create small teams that actually mentor each other.  They become very dependant on the others strengths and work together to accomplish so much.  Creating inclusion and telling them the goal, the resources that they have, and expectations, we build a timeline based on thier comfort level and thier skill set... If it doesn't meet the timeline we add resources to help them meet the goal.  I never tell them how to complete the goal, they tell me how they are going to achieve their goal.  And yes in the end it is thier goal and achievement.  They get all the credit and recognition.  My recognition is having a great team that everyone sees getting the job done.  I lose people to promotions, but isn't that making the company stronger and providing new opps for promising new people?  Recognition is everything...