Coaching Yourself to Leadership: Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader

The Elevator Speech

When you are networking, many times you will only have a few minutes to catch people’s attention and get them to see your value. Therefore, you need to have a good handle on that time-honored tool—the “elevator speech.” Your elevator speech should describe what is unique about you. It should be short, catchy, and memorable, and include interesting work you have been doing, particular skills and talents that you have, and possibly your goals. You want it to draw the attention of the other person and make them curious to learn more about you. You will only have a short amount of time to do this (the time it takes for an elevator to travel from one floor to the next—hence the name), so have your speech down pat. This is why it’s ...