Page 98 - Leadership Secrets of Hillary Clinton

IN TRANSITION—GAME CHANGER

leader? Well, one of the areas in which you can really differen-
tiate yourself is in your communication. Here are two things
that you can do to be recognized as a strong communicator.
The first is to have the ability to speak clearly and con-
cisely about the change effort, and then link it to others in
a way that engages them. I call this your “elevator speech.”
Imagine that you meet someone in your organization on
the ground floor of the building, and you are going to take
the elevator to the tenth floor together. (I believe that takes
about 90 seconds in most buildings.) Suppose that person
says, “What are you working on now?” You want to have a
well-crafted response that you can customize on the spot
for anyone that you happen to be talking to. Here is a
three-part formula for an elevator speech. While you will
need to adapt it to your particular change effort, it is
important that you cover all three parts if you want others
to see you as a change agent.
Here’s what the project is about:

• Here’s why it’s important to do it:
• Here’s what success will look like:
• Here’s what we need from you:

Second, if you are leading a change effort, you need to
have a communication plan. The purpose of the plan is to
get the right information to the right people at the right time
in the right way (mode).

x 87 z