I have never used this strategy on a peer or a subordinate, ever. I am more than happy to remind them that they learned this thing from me, although admittedly I usually make it into a joke. However, i use it frequently for superiors. Example 1; when I started at Mark Anthony we somehow got into a discussion about fonts and I ended up explaining to the people present what serifs were (those little bits at the tops and bottoms of letters that make text look like it was type-written), and how sans-serif fonts were simply fonts without those bits. Well, one of the people present was my boss, and he is now a font-nazi who freaks out at anyone who “mixes” fonts on websites because serif and sans-serif don’t belong together (wrong, but that’s another story). What he doesn’t say – in fact, what he has totally forgotten – is that he had no idea what a serif was before that day. I know he’s forgotten because sometimes he explains this back to me. And I just nod and say “ok”.
Of course, it serves nobody for me to say “hey, dumbass, I taught you that”. But I wonder less why we let these things go than why we feel we have to.
From: https://thecooperreview.com/non-threatening-leadership-strategies-for-women/