A new technical manager may stop doing the work themselves but still hold onto most of the important decisions.
The team owns the projects, but architecture changes need approval. A developer wants to change direction, so they ask the manager. Two engineers disagree, so the manager decides. An unexpected problem comes up, and everyone waits for the manager before moving forward.
The work has been delegated, but the decision-making has not.
This can be especially difficult for technical managers because they often have more experience than the people they manage. They know how they would solve the problem, can quickly spot potential risks, and may genuinely be able to make the decision faster.
But management changes what success looks like. If every meaningful decision continues to flow through one person, the manager can become a bottleneck even without doing the technical work themselves.
Research on decentralized decision-making supports the importance of this distinction. A 2024 study of 5,807 employees across 144 companies found that moving decision authority downward was associated with employees taking on more informal leadership when their managers also demonstrated empowering leadership behaviors.
Giving someone responsibility for the work matters, but so does allowing them enough authority to actually own it.
That doesn't mean a technical manager should stay out of every decision.
Some situations carry enough risk to require greater involvement. An inexperienced engineer may need more guidance. A decision affecting multiple teams may require coordination at the management level.
The harder situations are often less obvious.
What happens when an engineer chooses a technically reasonable approach that simply isn't the approach the manager would have chosen?
Can the manager allow it to proceed?
What happens when two experienced engineers disagree? Does the manager automatically make the final decision, or can the team work through the disagreement without them?
And when uncertainty increases, does the manager become more controlling even when the team has enough information to move forward?
The issue isn't whether a manager retains or gives up control. It's whether they can adjust their involvement to the situation.
Technical performance provides plenty of evidence that an engineer can make good decisions themselves. Management requires something different: knowing when a decision no longer needs to be theirs.
That can be examined before someone becomes a manager.
Organizations can look at how a candidate responds when another person owns an important outcome, chooses a different approach, or has enough information to make a decision independently.
No single response determines management readiness. The useful information comes from the pattern.
A technical manager still needs judgment and expertise. But as responsibility shifts from individual work to team performance, that expertise has to be used differently.
The question is no longer only whether the person can make the right decision. It is whether they can recognize when they shouldn't need to make it.
Huettermann, H., et al. - Research on decentralized decision-making, empowering leadership, and informal leadership across 144 companies (2024).
Hærem, T., et al. - Research on delegation of decision authority under uncertainty. Organization Science (2022).