When you make the person above you feel surpassed, you do not earn admiration. You trigger insecurity, and insecurity looks for payback.
Make your talent feel like support. Let your competence protect the superior’s image, not compete with it. Praise their taste in selecting you. Present your sharpest ideas as refinements of their direction, not as corrections.
If you must be brilliant, be brilliant in ways that flatter them: solve problems they “noticed,” finish tasks that make them look decisive, and keep your strongest moments offstage. In hierarchical rooms, the emotional comfort of the powerful matters more than objective results. Grow indispensable without making anyone feel small, and you rise safely.