I work at an aerospace engineering company. Early in my management career, I was asked to take over the System Architecture team - the people who do the front-end conceptual design for a lot of products. Most of the people on that team were PhD’s in things like physics, chemical engineering, nuclear physics, etc., and many had multiple degrees. Some had been there 30 or 40 years - longer than I’d been alive. Note: I wasn’t asked to take it because I was smarter than anyone on the team - probably the opposite - each person on the team would have considered it a demotion to be given a management job.

I found the best approach was to just think of myself as a facilitator/enabler. I’d talk to the team members individually to understand what was in their way, then I’d legitimately try hard to remove those things. I talked to everyone like peers, and didn’t insert myself where it was likely that they knew better than me (e.g., I wasn’t going to be solving any technical problems on a nuclear propulsion design, so no reason even getting involved).

Just being respectful to everyone (whether they work for you or not) goes a long way. But you also have a job to do - there no reason to be apologetic if your job includes making assignments or whatever, just do it.