My experience of this style of management is when a manager, who sits within the same block as the rest of the team, hands out instructions via email rather than talking directly to the recipient and treats this email as absolute handover of responsibility of the task. The sending of the email is invariably followed by asking the recipient if they have received said email before it has been delivered.

If this manager does speak directly to a team member regarding a piece of work it will be done very quietly and secretly and completely outside the already agreed task list for the coming release.