Never Outshine Your Master

What I learned about power after being too useful, too trusted, and too close to the top

Photo by André Volkmann on Unsplash

There is a strange lesson I learned only after spending enough years inside organizations:

Being good at your job can create problems you never intended to have.

You solve problems.

You become reliable.

People start coming to you before they go to their manager.

You understand things others don’t.

You become the person who knows where everything is, who to call, what the client really wants, and what will probably go wrong.

At first, it feels like recognition.

Then it becomes responsibility.

Then dependency.

And eventually, if you’re not careful, dependency becomes exposure.

That’s when I finally understood the uncomfortable wisdom behind one of Robert Greene’s most famous rules:

Never Outshine Your Master.

I used to think it meant, don’t make your boss look stupid.

I now think it means something much broader.