An empowering manager is still very much present, but they just don't tell you how to do it. They'll check in regularly and ask, with open curiosity, how it's all going on. They'll watch your presentations and cheer from the wings. They'll read your reports and add a supportive comment or two.

A spread-too-thin manager asks for the occasional status update, but doesn't take an interest in the work, decides to "trust" that the report is fine and skips the deliverables until they hire someone who is not capable and have to deal with the fallout.

If you have more than six direct line reports, it's more likely that you're in that second category.