Although it’s possible that the Republicans will be so utterly divided and inept that Hillary may win anyway, don’t count on it.
The lesson of 2000 is that a presidential candidate who doesn’t how to connect with the electorate, is vulnerable and likely to squander the most powerful rational advantages. She may be defeated even by an improbable candidate with no national or international experience.
THE REMEDY IS AT HANDIs the situation fixable?
Fortunately, yes.
In just a couple of years, Al Gore went from being one of the most boring speakers on the planet to one of the most exciting.
By 2006, Al Gore had learned how to tell his story and connect with an audience about the things he believes in. In fact, he has become rock-start popular. Even deep in Republican territory like Boise, Iowa, Gore can pack a 10,000-seat arena—and tickets for his talk sell out faster than for Elton John. Emblems of his success are the Emmy, the Oscar and now the Nobel Peace Prize for the movie of his PowerPoint presentation, An Inconvenient Truth.
The question is whether Hillary is going to learn the language of leadership before the election, or whether it will take the shock of losing an election that she should have won to teach her the elements.
Steve Denning is the author of The Secret Language of Leadership: How Narrative Inspires Action Through Narrative, a book just published by Jossey-Bass. To find out more, and get a wide array of free bonus leadership tools, go to http://www.stevedenning.com/launch.html
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