You don't have to be the best to stand among the best

You do not have to be the best person in the room to enter it. You need the courage to show up. The humility to learn. And enough determination to keep growing. One day, I found myself in two very different worlds. First — technology, knowledge and community. Later — a running track, competition and people significantly faster than me. On the surface, the two experiences had very little in common. Yet I came away from both with almost exactly the same thought: being around people who raise the bar changes your perception of what is possible.

Mind

The first part of my day involved co-hosting Power BI Day II conference. It was one of those situations that makes something very clear: knowledge does not grow by protecting it. It grows through exchange. Someone demonstrates a solution. Someone else asks a question the speaker had not anticipated. Another person adds experience from their own organisation. Someone says, “we tried that and it failed” — and suddenly that becomes one of the most valuable contributions to the entire discussion. The best expert communities are not made up of people trying to prove that they know everything. They are made up of people who know enough to understand how much there still is to learn.

Body

Later, I moved into a very different environment. The Regional 5K Championships. I am an amateur runner. And the word amateur is doing some important work in that sentence. 😄 For the first — and possibly only — time in my life, I found myself sharing a changing room with some of the fastest female runners in the region. It was fascinating. Not because I suddenly started running like them. I did not. But proximity to excellence does something interesting. It shows you what becomes possible when talent meets consistent effort. You do not need to pretend you are operating at the same level. You can simply observe, learn and allow someone else’s performance to expand your own sense of possibility.

Team

There was another perspective that day. The result did not depend solely on individual performance. Each person contributed their part to something larger. And together, our team won. The familiar statement: “success is a team effort” becomes much more interesting when you look at what that actually means. A strong team does not require everyone to be excellent at exactly the same thing. It needs people who can contribute differently. Someone creates momentum. Someone stabilises. Someone notices risk. Someone mobilises. Someone protects quality. Someone creates the conditions in which other people can perform better. Difference is not necessarily a defect in a team. It can be one of its greatest resources. Provided we know how to see it.

Soul

There was one more moment that day — far smaller than a conference or a championship. I met Loluś, a parrot supporting a fundraising initiative for a young girl who needed surgery. A short conversation. A small gesture. A donation. Nothing spectacular. And perhaps that is exactly why it belongs in the story. We like to describe growth through visible milestones: promotions, medals, credentials, results. Yet some of the most meaningful things happen in micro-interactions that will never appear on a CV.

You do not always have to raise the bar alone

That may be the biggest lesson I took from that day. Growth is not always about pushing harder. Sometimes it is about moving closer to people you can learn from. Entering a room where you are not the smartest person. Standing on a starting line next to people whose pace is entirely different from yours. Joining a team where someone sees something you cannot see. And not treating that difference as a threat. Treating it as possibility.

Dare to dream big.
Dare to grow bigger.

You do not have to be the best to stand among the best. But you do need the courage to show up.

Explore how different perspectives can become a resource in Team Coaching →