Dark Souls: Four entities have "Lord Souls" that make them gods. Gywn gives two chunks of his soul to a dragon and some Nazgul human kings, with enough left over to sacrifice himself and restart the flame of creation. Nito the Gravelord does fuck-all with his soul. The Witch of Izalith uses her lord soul to try to do the flame of creation thing but fails. Her daughters fill the lieutenant role but it's unclear how much it powers them up. Finally, the Dark Soul fragments to fill the hearts of all humans. Larger chunks spin off to create some magical princesses. Overall, none of these methods seem to involve any sort of control from the top down.
Wheel of Time: The Forsaken are powerful individuals from an ancient age who sold themselves into service to the Dark One, an evil god. Their connection to him gives them a very powerful and direct form of dark magic in addition to whatever magic they already had. Before this they were pretty awful people but the use of dark magic and time spent in skulduggery and violence have only worsened this. It is unclear how much of a physical change there is but their eyes eventually turn solid black. The Dark One has quite a bit of hands-on control over his lieutenants, including deciding whether they will get reincarnated after death. Lastly, one of the Forsaken creates monster races of varying sapience so the dark power can be transmitted to some degree.
Sufficiently Advanced Magic: The primary goddess has lieutenants that are comparable to archangels. In addition to whatever hosts they command, some of these lieutenants are able to create fragments of themselves, which are lesser avatars. In addition, the lieutenants are able to create magical bonds on mortals. These bonds resemble the rune marks that all magic-users have, but have their own quirks and grant greater powers. The lieutenants can use these bonds to affect the marked in various ways. Later books get into the different magic and mythology in other parts of the same world, and there are some other examples of a god/demigod blessing lieutenants with powers and artifact weapons.