[InclinedPlane]

I'm not sure it matters, actually. Most of the highest value work is going to get done by the best folks, so as long as the "trust and empower" regime doesn't cause a complete erosion in the productivity of the mediocre programmers then it might end up being a net positive.

Even so, you are correct that there's no one size fits all management strategy for every individual and every situation. Holding such a view is a sure fire route to failure, typically. If managing were as easy as consulting a lookup table for the correct policy to apply then we wouldn't need human beings with lots of experience to do it would we?