Some of the most useful things I have learned have come from people I initially assumed had little to teach me.
That is an uncomfortable admission, but an important one.
It is easy to associate knowledge with titles, qualifications, years of experience or technical depth. I work in technology, where credentials and expertise matter. However, they can also create blind spots. The moment I decide I am the expert in the room, I start filtering out anything that does not arrive in the form I expect.
That is usually when I miss something valuable.
Expertise comes in different shapes
A new employee may not understand the technology yet, but they can instantly see which parts of the onboarding process make no sense.
A client may struggle to explain a technical problem, but they can tell me exactly how that problem affects their working day.
A junior technician may not know the official solution, yet their question can expose an assumption the rest of us stopped challenging years ago.
Even the person who strongly disagrees with me has something useful to offer. They show me where my explanation is weak, where my evidence is thin or where I have become too attached to my own position.
The lesson is not always delivered neatly. Sometimes I have to look for it.
Copilot does not replace that exchange
I see a similar issue appearing as organisations adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot.
People can start treating Copilot as the smartest participant in every conversation. They ask it to summarise the Teams meeting, draft the Outlook response and turn the discussion into a Word document. Those are useful actions, but the technology should not become an excuse to stop listening to the people involved.
A meeting summary can capture what was said. It cannot decide which quiet comment should change my thinking.
I recently imagined a typical project meeting where an experienced consultant outlined a polished solution. Near the end, someone from administration asked a simple question about how the customer would know what to do on Monday morning.
That question could easily disappear among the technical detail. Yet it might be the most important contribution of the meeting.
Copilot in Teams could help surface the question afterward. I could ask it to identify unresolved concerns, alternative viewpoints and questions that did not receive a complete answer. That gives me another chance to notice what I overlooked.
The value still comes from the person who asked the question.
Curiosity is a practical discipline
Learning from others does not require me to agree with everything they say. It requires me to remain curious long enough to understand why they see the situation differently.
I can ask:
- What does this person notice that I do not?
- What experience are they bringing to the conversation?
- Which of my assumptions are they challenging?
- What can I take from this, even if I reject their conclusion?
Those questions turn ordinary conversations into useful ones.
They also change how I lead. Instead of entering every discussion ready to provide the answer, I can enter looking for information I do not yet have. That creates room for people to contribute without first proving that they are the recognised expert.
I have never met anyone who knows everything. I have also never met anyone who knows nothing.
If I listen carefully, every conversation can leave me with a better question, a clearer explanation or a different way of seeing the problem. Copilot can help me capture and revisit those moments, but curiosity is what makes them matter.
The smartest person in the room may simply be the one still prepared to learn.
