I will be traveling to Germany soon to work with a group of sales professionals from Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium. It will be my second time with this group and the focus will be the adoption of successful behaviors. One of these behaviors that works in sales, leadership, job interviews and life, is creating and telling powerful stories.

I’ve already received several of this class’s stories and they will become part of a series of workshops, but one was particularly powerful. It was written in English (for my sake), and English is not this person’s native tongue. What amazed me was the way I did not have to make many changes to this story to improve it.

I’ve given dozens of story-telling courses, and some have involved people with advanced degrees from Stanford and other fine schools, but one variable remains constant: I must rewrite their story to make it better. But not this European’s story.

How could this be? Another part of this consulting course provided the answer. The course will include, among other things, a few workshops on discovering your strengths and then leveraging them in your work. According to StrengthsFinders, this person possesses the strength of communication which, their literature states, is an innate gift for turning events into vivid, powerful stories (among other things). The question becomes, “Did this person know about this strength and leverage it prior to this training?”

The first time I met this group was in Rome, and I do not remember this individual mentioning the use of stories in his or her work. More than likely, it is a great strength that has been under-utilized. Hopefully, following this assignment, they will all learn about their strengths and begin to employ them with intentionality. And if they do, they will be more engaged and successful in their work.