Page 213 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

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HANDLING HECKLERS

here is no easy way to defuse hecklers, but you need never be
Tthe victim of someone who tries to steal your platform and
grandstand at your expense.
Humor can be a potent weapon in the right hands. Former Sec-
retary of State Alexander Haig was once speaking at the United
Nations when a group of Puerto Rican separatists began shouting at

him from the first row of the mezzanine-level spectator’s gallery.
Without missing a beat, Haig stopped his speech just long enough
to say that he was unable to hear what the men were trying to say,
but “if you would just step forward a few feet I’m sure I could hear
you a lot better.” The audience laughed, and the hecklers sat down
and stopped heckling.
In a political campaign, any heckling can be an opportunity for
the heckled. In a famous campaign coup that has since been imitated
and repeated by many other candidates, President Ronald Reagan
responded to loud heckling by saying, “This, ladies and gentlemen,
is why I’m here—this is democracy in action. The very system that
these people are complaining about is the system that makes it pos-
sible for them to be here shouting at the president of the United
States. And I, for one, intend to protect their rights as long as I’m in
offi ce.”

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