The care and feeding of front-line managers has always been the No. 2 job of a good manager. Having the above demands placed on me for developing supervisors, I learned to meet with young supervisors daily because they need regular technical and emotional guidance. Gradually, the frequency diminishes in relation to their maturity as managers. The criticism you take for this is that you do not treat all your managers equally. No manager is equal to any other manager.
Good supervisors become invisible when the honors go around.
The best managers are ghosts. My goal is to be invisible. I explain to my charges that you don't need to be invisible all the time and, in fact, your communication with coworkers ranks as a critically important component of your job. I understand Molta's point about accountability. However, some employees do have the ability to take general direction and run with a project, even when that means getting others to work with them to accomplish the task.