Business Advice: Dealing with employees - Bringing Up vs Moving Down

Which is better from a management/leadership position, to move down or to bring up, when dealing with employees?
Before you answer this let me explain what I mean by moving up or down. When I say move down, I'm referring to moving down to your employee's 'level' i.e. telling them what to do and how to do it. No explaining, no teaching and no growing by the employee. When I say moving up I'm referring to the idea of bringing the employee up to management 'level' and having them make the decision and think through the task at hand. Here there is explaining, learning and growing by the employee.
Now the answer my seem simple, move them up! But is it really that simple? Leading is much more time consuming and therefore more costly to do in the short term. Whereas, managing is quicker and gets the job done the way you want it done. I suppose it depends on the situation. But the goal of this post is to get you thinking about teaching employees rather than telling them. Let's say you're the manager of a retail store and you've designated the task of setting up a display to one of your employees. Once they have finished you look, only to find that the display is ALL wrong. It looks disorganized, the popular fast selling product is out of reach and therefore, presenting a less superior product at eye level. So, this is the problem. The solutions, either; manage or lead.
If you were to manage, you would probably tell the employee (nicely) that it was all wrong. Then you would proceed to draw up a sketch of how you want it to look and where the product goes, thus leaving the employee feeling upset and unaccomplished. As well, they haven't learned a thing!
A leader would approach this situation a little differently. First they may start off by asking, 'why did you decide to place the popular product there?' and then proceed to listen to their answer. After that they would suggest that it would be better set at eye level and would continue to explain why. Then they would ask questions about why they choose to set up the display to look like that. From there, a good leader would have inspired their employee to rethink their display and change it. If the leader has done their job right, the next display would look much better and the employee would feel good about it. As well, they would have a sense of ownership to that display, thus incorporating them into the business and would then lead to a more successful business.
As you have read, leading requires much more work and effort. But it yields better employees and a stronger business.
I hope this has helped someone understand the difference between a manager and leader and how by being a leader and teacher your business will be stronger than being a delegate.

Please post any objections, comments, questions etc below
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