06/19/2026
Last year, I had a story planned for the storytelling segment of my presentation. A good one. Tested, polished, the kind that usually gets a laugh in the first thirty seconds and a nod by the end.
I never got to tell it.
I asked the room a simple warm-up question about a time someone really listened to them at work.
A woman in the back said she could not remember the last time. Not in a dramatic way. Just tired.
A few heads nodded. Not the polite kind. My planned story was about being heard. It was a good story. It also would have skated right past what had just happened in that room.
So I put it down.
I told a different one instead, about a stretch of my own career when I felt completely invisible at work, the kind of invisible where you start to wonder if you are actually doing the job or just occupying it. I had not planned to tell that story that day. I am not sure I had told it in a training room before.
AI helped me build that segment, outline and all. It built a perfectly good story about being heard.
Honestly, though, it could not feel the moment when a tired voice in the back row meant the prepared answer was the wrong one.
