The Well-Spoken Woman (27 page)

 

Women have to be active listeners and interrupters—but when you interrupt, you have to know what you are talking about.

—Madeleine Albright, interview with Ed Bradley,
60 Minutes
, January 2008

 

 

T
he art of diplomacy speaks to dealing with difficult audiences. Most people do not arrive at an event with an ax to grind or with the intention of ruffling feathers. That being said, at some point you could face a disruption. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has learned to be ready for anything when she visits with constituents in her home district of Madison, Wisconsin. In 1998, Baldwin smashed double glass ceilings when she became the first woman to serve in the state's congressional delegation and the first openly gay person elected to Congress. Since her victory, she has become a national leader on civil rights and a voice for millions of Americans who face discrimination. Given the controversy surrounding gay rights, Baldwin has dealt with her share of rabble-rousers. Nonetheless, she was caught off guard by a man with a crude handmade sign who showed up at a town hall meeting.

When Representative Baldwin walked into the meeting room in the village of Poynette, her eyes immediately locked onto the sign, which read: “Terminate Unwanted Lesbians.” The sign holder was an older man with scraggly long hair and a bushy white beard. He had positioned himself in the front row, and Baldwin realized that no one else could see what she was seeing. Thus, there was no empathy or support from the other people in the room until the man stood and turned to face them to speak. When they
read his message, an audible groan was heard. He then launched into a diatribe on the virtue of free speech and asked Baldwin if she considered his sign to be a hate crime.

Baldwin responded that the sign was “odious” but that it did not constitute an arrestable offense. Since the man did not threaten her physically, she decided to turn the disconcerting situation into a teachable moment by calmly outlining the rationale for the hate-crime legislation that was pending on Capitol Hill. As she shared with me when we spoke about the incident later, the practice of “turning the other cheek” is a technique that has served her well.
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For years, she has been dogged by protesters with ugly chants and placards. Once on a bike tour in the district, she was followed by a man who yelled at her all day through a bullhorn. It bothers Baldwin when protesters show up at places like senior centers because it is her constituents who often feel intimidated. On some occasions, she will have police protection, and she always abides by the practice of not engaging harassers. She maintains her composure by taking a deep breath and staying calm.

Jeers, Not Cheers

The man with the detestable sign was an exceptional case. Most audience members are not openly hostile or there to cause trouble. Most are rooting for the presenter to do a good job. They show up anticipating they will take something positive away from the event. They are impressed with the speaker's credentials and hope to gain a fresh insight, learn something new, or do a little networking on the side. One possible upside to an agitator or unfriendly crowd is that at least you know where you stand. In some situations, it is the seemingly neutral audience members who catch you off guard. A sea of poker faces is impossible to interpret. Are they into you or not? A nonresponsive audience can be frustrating because you may not know what is silencing them.

Members of the news media can also be a challenging audience. A reporter letting loose with gotcha questions can make you appear defensive. Reporters have a bag of tricks they use to try to pull spokespeople off of preplanned messages. Some attempt to ingratiate themselves to get you
to relax and lower your guard. Others have a thinly veiled agenda to put words in your mouth. On some talk shows, expect incoming fire from the host and other guests.

What Won't Work

When dealing with a difficult questioner or a trying audience, the first rule of thumb is to avoid reacting emotionally. It is best to maintain your composure rather than try to engage a disruptive person. Otherwise, the encounter can leave you looking petty, angry, or insensitive. It might be tempting to let loose in a moment of frustration, but as Scarlett O'Hara said: “Tomorrow is another day.” Losing your cool won't solve anything and likely will make the situation more unpleasant for everyone.

Diplomacy can ease the situation. Defined as the art and practice of conducting negotiations, diplomatic skills can help you handle messy situations without arousing hostility. How you react to an eruption matters because all eyes are fixed on you. It is, in many respects, a test. The audience is watching to see if you can keep your professional wits about you. What a gift it would be to be able to fire back at a heckler with a cutting Joan Rivers style quip. For those of us who lack the comedian's forty years of stage experience, coming up with a brilliant retort on the spot is unlikely. Most people think of the perfect thing to say a day later. It is better to concentrate on diffusing the situation firmly and fairly with a proactive response.

In some scenarios, it's necessary to set realistic expectations in advance about what can and cannot be accomplished. This may mean you will need to lower expectations. Sometimes the most favorable outcome may be the one in which resistance is neutralized. With others, the only recourse is to cut losses. Deflecting or neutralizing negativism is not about knuckling under. It is about staying calm so you can remain in control,
earn the audience's respect, and salvage what is salvageable. This chapter gives you the diplomatic cache to never let them see you sweat.

CALM, COOL, COLLECTED

The daughter of a Czechoslovakian diplomat who fled the Nazis and then the communists, Madeleine Albright has encountered a variety of tense situations and demanding personalities. Within days of her becoming the first woman secretary of state, a
Washington Post
reporter attempted to damage her reputation for candor. On the campus of Ohio State University, she was nearly drowned out by antiwar protesters. And Saddam Hussein called her a serpent. If Secretary Albright needed extra-strength aspirin to deal with those headaches, it never showed.

Albright's communication style came to the fore in her first diplomatic posting when she served as the US ambassador to the United Nations. There she learned that it was no longer possible to hesitate or be intimidated; she was obligated to speak up. When she walked into a UN Security Council meeting in 1993, she was, not surprisingly, the only woman in the room. The fifteen other nation-states were represented by men sitting with their arms across their chests. “There are lots of women who have walked into rooms like that.” Albright said that in the past, she would have followed her instincts by getting a feel for the mood before uttering a word. Then it dawned on her that it was imperative for the US representative to put aside any ambivalent feelings: “If I don't speak now, America's position won't be known…. OK, I'm a woman—I should wait. No, I'm the United States—I must speak.”
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Albright says that inner dialogue helped her find and use her voice.

In her jewel-hued dresses and signature pins, Albright brought a personal savoir faire to international relations. The introduction of line dancing to the Security Council chamber may have been considered “undiplomatic” by detractors. Yet, when Albright showed the minister of Botswana how to do the macarena, she was demonstrating more than dance steps. Her unconventional approach endeared her to the public and eased tensions with colleagues. Albright has said her adult life has been much
more fun than her childhood because as a youngster, she was always very serious.

At the age of eleven, the Korbel family immigrated to America, eventually settling in Denver. Her father, Josef, a former diplomat, became a professor of international relations, and her mother, Anna, worked as a secretary. Madeleine attended a private all-girl high school where she participated in debate and founded an international relations club because “I was pretty boring in high school. I was a foreignpolicy wonk even then.”
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Her extracurricular activities and good grades secured a scholarship to Wellesley College, and in the fall of 1955, she headed east to study political science.

Thirty years later, when her alma mater announced the creation of an international studies school called the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, Albright was “over the moon.” She credits her Wellesley education with providing the analytical skills that prepared her to serve as a diplomat. After college, however, the international stage would need to wait a few decades for Albright to emerge. Despite a passion for world affairs, three days after her college graduation, Korbel married Joe Albright, a wealthy newspaper heir. The Albrights lived in New York and later Washington, DC. Joe joined the family business as a reporter, and Madeleine raised three daughters, including twins, while earning a PhD in Russian studies. After twenty-three years of marriage, Madeleine says she was stunned the day her husband announced he was leaving for another woman.

Zig-zaggy
is the word Albright uses to describe her career. During what she termed “my time of good works,” she was a fund-raiser at a prestigious private school and worked on political campaigns. Her first full-time job was as a staff member for the National Security Council during the Carter administration. Her political resume was polished as a staff assistant on Capitol Hill and at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and
she was a foreign-policy adviser for Democratic presidential candidates. Albright wrote in her biography that as she rose through the ranks, no matter her accomplishments, she felt some people “would forever see me as their wife's friend or the cooperative mother who arranged car pools.”
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KNOW YOUR TROUBLEMAKERS

A hallmark of Secretary Albright's tenure at the State Department was her determined effort to make foreign policy seem less foreign to the American people. She pledged to “tell it like it is,” even when the audience didn't agree. At Ohio State University, Albright was a study in diplomacy when a town hall meeting on the possibility of bombing Iraq turned into a rowdy demonstration of unruly democracy. The forum, which was hosted and broadcast live by CNN, nearly turned into a free-for-all, with war protesters attempting to drown out Albright and other administration spokespeople with chants of “One-two-three-four, we don't want your racist war!”

Without assistance from the moderators, Albright steadfastly weathered repeated boos and angry interruptions as she laid out the Clinton administration's concerns about the intentions of Saddam Hussein. While she spoke, the more aggressive hecklers had to be physically removed from the arena. Afterward, there was much finger-pointing about how and why the event had spun out of control. The protesters may have decided to disrupt the event when they learned they would not be given an open microphone. Albright kept her emotions in check throughout the ordeal and commented later that the forum “shows what a vibrant democracy” we have.
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Anticipating trouble greatly increases the likelihood that you can manage it before it spirals out of control. When addressing a hot-button issue, it is important to know why people are attending. Are they carrying unresolved issues or other baggage? Do they want to listen, or do they expect to be heard? Have they been told they will have a chance to voice objections? If people are coming loaded for bear, the room temperature can be lowered by providing an opportunity for individuals to speak at the beginning. Set aside time for a public comment period so audience members can blow off steam. Speakers from the audience should have an
agreed-upon time limit so everyone has a chance to be heard. Assign a note taker with a flip chart positioned at the front of the room. Jotting down the comments reinforces the sense that each speaker is being listened to.