[gcanyon]

You might resonate with Situational Leadership. The basic premise is almost exactly what you say above about senior engineers. In SL they break it down into four stages:

    1. Beginner: you tell them exactly what to do and how to do it.
    2. Novice: you mostly tell them what to do and encourage them to learn and experiment.
    3. Experienced: you consult with them on what to do, and they mostly manage how to do it.
    4. Expert: you give them the goal and mostly just ask them how they'll approach it and how long it will take.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory