"As you give more responsibility and autonomy to your most capable direct reports, focus your conversation less on how they should approach a task and more on the what and why. For example, why is the initiative important? What’s the scope of the task and what is their level of authority: to make the decision or bring options and a recommendation to you for approval? What are the key issues they need to address and resolve? Who are the people in other groups they need to collaborate along the way? What are the key milestones and check-in points and what are your expectations for communication during the course of the initiative? By contrast, with less experienced people you are trying to help move up the learning curve toward greater independence, it’s appropriate to be more prescription about the how things are to be done. Similarly, your check-ins will typically be more frequent and detailed."

Read the whole article by John Beeson on HBR here.

A really good classification by Christian Bonilla on Quora can help get the ball rolling.