I’m a really big fan of giving ICs a goal and letting them plan and execute how they’ll get there on their own. If they have questions I’m there and if they’re going down a dark hole, I pull them out of it. But otherwise, I just get out of their way.

It’s kind of sad because you can tell pretty quickly who has always been told what to do. In the beginning they’ll struggle so you can’t just leave them to drown. When they get over that, they need almost constant affirmation. It can take years which is fine. But it often operationalizes itself as really talented people who get stuck as intermediate developers.

So it turns into two competing management problems. How do you convince them that management works for them? And how do you groom them into leadership positions? The first is the easier of the two.

A variation of "what are you going to do?" or "how would you solve X?" helps the IC to come up with a plan of how to address the feature/issue/whatnot. This creates space for them to take the initiative and after a while they grow and get used to do it, but it can take 1-2 years.

For some people who've been told what to do for most of their careers it's important to not leave them in the deep end on their own. It takes a mix of coaching and guiding them. The aim is that at each step they are faced with something that is both challenging and achievable.

I think that there are people who are capable of working mostly independently when simply given goals and people who are not (yet?) and should be given clear instructions on what to do and how to do it - and IMHO the key part is to accept that both are okay, especially in different roles, and you "just" have to understand which is which and appropriately match the roles, levels and management style to these people.

Well thats what ics and workers generally speaking are told - that they work for managers. A rather uniquely flawed concept.

Send them to graduate school.