Hey there. Orianna here from Fortune.

Micromanagement has a bad rap. It’s often thought of as a leadership sin that drains morale, stalls progress, and sends top performers straight to LinkedIn.

But Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky has a different take. Done right, he argues, it can actually accelerate careers. And according to Chesky, Apple’s late cofounder Steve Jobs perfectly proves his point.

“Steve Jobs is notorious for being [into] all the details; you could say he was a micromanager,” Chesky explained to CNBC. But after speaking to Jony Ive, who used to be Apple’s chief design officer, Chesky says that the negative label misses what was really happening.

“I said, ‘Do you ever feel like Steve Jobs micromanaged you? Because he was in every detail.’ And he said, ‘No. He didn’t micromanage me. He partnered with me. We were working on problems together, and I felt like him being [into] the details made me better.’”

That distinction matters. As Chesky sees it, the issue isn’t actually whether a leader is deeply involved with staff. It’s whether their involvement expands their workers’ thinking and therefore propels their career forward—or quietly boxes it in.

And Chesky has one telling question managers can ask themselves: “If I’m in the details with somebody, am I making them better or am I disempowering them?”

With more than 4.5 million listings across 65,000 cities and 7,300 employees, it’s a philosophy Chesky applies at Airbnb himself: “I hope that when people feel like I’m involved in projects, they feel like I’m helping them push to think bigger.”

Ultimately, when micromanagement looks more like partnership than control, it’s the thing that can help unlock their potential.

Jobs’ “obsession with detail” didn’t diminish Ive’s autonomy, or make him feel like his boss was hovering over or undermining him.

Instead, it made him feel his manager was invested, raised the bar, and pushed him toward a more expansive version of his own talent—one that would go on to shape some of the most iconic products of the modern era, from the Apple Watch to the iPad.

Today, Ive remains one of the most influential creative leaders in tech.

—Orianna Rosa Royle
Success Associate Editor, Fortune

Got a career tip or dilemma? Get in touch: orianna.royle@fortune.com. You can also find me on Linkedin: @oriannarosa.