[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                PATHWAYS TO SUCCESS: HOW PRACTICING CIVIL-
                  ITY, COLLABORATION, AND LEADERSHIP CAN 
                  EMPOWER MEMBERS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                              BEFORE THE

                      SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE 
                      MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                                OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-10

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Modernization of 
                                Congress
                                
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                                


                    Available via http://govinfo.gov
                    
                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
48-601                    WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
                    
           SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS

                    DEREK KILMER, Washington, Chair

 ZOE LOFGREN, California              WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina,
 EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri             Vice Chair
 ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              BOB LATTA, Ohio
 DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota             RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
 NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia             DAVE JOYCE, Ohio
                                      GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
                                      BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas

                            COMMITTEE STAFF

                     Yuri Beckelman, Staff Director
                 Derek Harley, Republican Staff Director
                           
                           
                           C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Chairman Derek Kilmer
      Oral Statement.............................................     1
Vice Chairman William Timmons
      Oral Statement.............................................     3

                               WITNESSES

Dr. Alison Craig, Assistant Professor, University of Texas at 
    Austin
      Oral Statement.............................................     4
      Written Statement..........................................     8
Mr. Shola Richards, CEO and Founder, Go Together Global
      Oral Statement.............................................    11
      Written Statement..........................................    13
Ms. Liz Wiseman, Founder, Wiseman Group
      Oral Statement.............................................    15
      Written Statement..........................................    19
Discussion.......................................................    25

 
   PATHWAYS TO SUCCESS: HOW PRACTICING CIVILITY, COLLABORATION, AND 
                     LEADERSHIP CAN EMPOWER MEMBERS

                              ----------                              


                      THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
                            Select Committee on the
                                 Modernization of Congress,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in Room 
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Derek Kilmer 
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Kilmer, Cleaver, Perlmutter, 
Phillips, Williams, Timmons, Latta, Van Duyne, and Joyce.
    The Chairman. There we go. Okay.
    The committee will come to order.
    Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the committee at any time.
    I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening 
statement. I won't use all five.
    Earlier this year, this committee made a conscious decision 
to explore some topics that aren't always easy to discuss. It 
is one thing to acknowledge conflict in the workplace. It is 
unpleasant, but it is quite another to really dig into that 
unpleasantness to ask why it exists and what we can do to 
address it. These conversations are hard because they force us 
to consider our own actions and to think about the roles we 
play in an institution that has become increasingly polarized.
    None of us want to shoulder the blame for Congress' low 
approval ratings, but every Member bears responsibility. As one 
of our witnesses, Shola Richards, has said, there has never 
been a drop of rain that believed it was responsible for the 
flood. I thought of that on my walk to the Capitol this morning 
as I got drenched. So, while these conversations are tough, we 
need to keep having them. We need to address the institution's 
problems instead of acting like they will somehow resolve 
themselves because they won't.
    The bottom line is that, if we want things to work 
differently, we need to do things differently. The good news is 
that this committee gives us an opportunity to do just that. We 
are providing a forum for discussing some of the thorniest 
issues Members confront on a day-to-day basis. Our mission is 
to make Congress work better for the American people. And, in 
order for that to happen, Members of Congress also need to work 
better.
    Institutions are a reflection of the people who work for 
them, and nearly every Member I know is here because they want 
to solve problems and make things better for the folks they 
represent. But the desire to do good isn't reflected in the 
dysfunction that is more often on display.
    Our committee held a planning retreat earlier this year, 
and we kicked things off by talking about why we ran for 
Congress in the first place and whether Congress has met our 
expectations. And there was a lot of hopefulness expressed. One 
member said she was here to open doors for more people to have 
a voice in politics. Another spoke about her strong desire to 
be part of the solution. And one member summed up the 
congressional experience best when he said, ``I have never been 
more disappointed or more inspired.''
    There is so much desire to get things done and so much 
frustration with the process. The system often feels top-down, 
which makes it hard for rank-and-file Members to feel 
empowered. What is more, as we have discussed in this committee 
before, the incentive structure can sometimes feel out of 
whack. Members are recognized more for racking up social media 
hits than they are for hard work.
    The frustration is definitely there, but today we are going 
to focus on harnessing that desire to get things done. Every 
Member wants to be effective and productive on behalf of the 
people they serve. The trick is finding out how to turn that 
desire into tangible action.
    The experts joining us today know a lot about the tools and 
approaches that lead to success in the workplace. They have 
researched and advised top business leaders all over the world 
and understand how to build and maintain successful teams. They 
understand what factors motivate people to produce at high 
levels, as well as the connection between job satisfaction and 
success.
    The research shows that leaders who practice civility and 
who take a collaborative approach to their work are able to 
produce and achieve at higher levels. So I am looking forward 
to talking about how Members can apply these principles to 
their own work in Congress and figure out creative ways to move 
their policy and political goals forward.
    As with our past few hearings, the committee will once 
again make use of the committee rules we adopted earlier this 
year that give us the flexibility to experiment with how we 
structure our hearings. Our goal is to encourage thoughtful 
discussion and the civil exchange of ideas and opinions.
    This is the wonky part.
    So, in accordance with clause 2(j) of House rule XI, we 
will allow up to 30 minutes of extended questioning per 
witness. And, without objection, time will not be strictly 
segregated between the witnesses, which will allow for extended 
back-and-forth exchanges between members and the witnesses. 
Okay.
    Vice Chair Timmons and I will manage the time to ensure 
that every member has equal opportunity to participate. Any 
member who wishes to speak should signal their request to me or 
Vice Chair Timmons, and I know we have got some participating 
virtually. So just give us the, you know, tug of the ear, as 
you wish, Mr. Latta.
    Additionally, members who wish to claim their individual 5 
minutes to question each witness pursuant to clause 2(j)(2) of 
rule XI will be permitted to do so following the period of 
extended questioning.
    Okay. With that, I would like to now invite Vice Chair 
Timmons to share some opening remarks.
    Mr. Timmons. Good morning.
    Thank you all for traveling a great distance to be with us 
today. This is our third hearing on civility and how we can get 
Congress to actually do the job the American people want to us 
do, which is working together to solve the biggest challenges 
we face.
    It has been years that we have been talking about 
immigration and healthcare and debt and spending, and we really 
haven't gotten very far on many of these issues. And it is 
definitely not the right path forward. It has been a 
destructive experience. We can see the challenges we are facing 
now. We have to find a way to work together. And I think that 
this issue, civility, and how we have really fact-based 
collaborative policymaking, we have to figure this out. We 
really have to figure this out, and I think that this committee 
has the potential to make recommendations that will make 
Congress work better for the American people.
    So this subject, in my mind, has been divided into three 
categories. The first is time. The second is incentive 
structures. And the third is relationship-building.
    Time is one that we have talked about for the last 2-1/2 
years. In 2019, we had 65 full working days, so 65 full working 
days. We had 66 travel days, fly-in/fly-out days. The 6:30 vote 
we took on Monday, we call it--I call it a bed-check vote, 
making sure you are here. That is not a working day. We didn't 
do any work on Monday. So, you know, this week we have Tuesday, 
Wednesday, Thursday, full working days, and then we fly out on 
Friday.
    So we can't have 65 working days every year and think that 
we are going solve problems. We just have to have a way to be 
here more, and we talked about that. And, you know, it is not 
just physical presence. It is what we do when we are here. I 
call it pinballing. You know, you have got committees, one, 
two, sometimes three or four. You have subcommittees, two, 
three, four, seven. And then you have votes. And then have you 
fundraising. And then you have constituent meetings. There is 
just so much that you can do. And, generally speaking, people 
that run for Congress try do everything. And when you try to do 
everything, sometimes you either let things slip through the 
cracks or you don't do some of the things very well.
    So time is one really important one. We have to free up 
time for Members to do their job and to engage in this fact-
based policymaking.
    Incentive structures is the second. We have a lot of 
conflict entrepreneurs. The loudest voices are heard and 
rewarded often. And the people that are working to solve the 
problems are--it is just a tough road. And it is not nearly as 
rewarding as yelling from the top of the mountain. So we have 
got to find a way to incentivize collaborative fact-based 
policymaking. We have to find a way to facilitate an exchange 
of ideas from a position of mutual respect and not use the 
often-provided political talking points and have--you have no 
idea what is in the weeds. But, if somebody gave me a piece of 
paper, I can talk about it in a mildly angry way. So we got to 
get away from that. And we got to find a way to actually dig--
dig deep on these issue because the answer to these problems is 
not going to be on one page of paper with bold font. `
    Last is relationship-building. This kind of ties into the 
first two, and it is embodied in the term ``civility norms.'' 
We don't have opportunities for relationship-building across 
the aisle, largely because of our schedule. That is the time, 
and the incentive structure doesn't reward it.
    We have to create physical space in the Capitol. We had a 
dinner a couple of weeks ago, months ago. And it was wildly 
challenging to get 12 Members to have a dinner on this complex. 
It was wildly challenging. And when we thought we figured it 
out, they wanted $7,000. And that is just not going to work. 
So, you know, there is physical space all over the Capitol. You 
should be able to walk off the floor and have a cup of coffee 
with a Member and have a conversation about these things, not 
go home turf, home turf. ``Come to my office.'' ``I don't want 
to go to your office.'' ``Come to''--you know, it is--the 
physical space cannot be overlooked in this conversation. And, 
again, you got to have more time. You got to have incentive 
structure.
    So that is where I have been thinking about these things. I 
would love to have--can't wait to hear your thoughts on these 
issues and how we can really fix this problem. It is, I 
believe, the most important thing that this committee will do. 
And I just really appreciate you-all taking the time to travel 
this far distance and look forward to hearing from you.
    And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    So we are joined today by three experts who are here to 
discuss how Members who pursue a civil, collaborative, and 
leadership-oriented approach to their work in Congress are 
better able to achieve success.
    Witnesses are reminded that your written statements will be 
made part of the record. Our first witness is Dr. Allison 
Craig. Dr. Craig is an assistant professor in the Department of 
Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her current 
book project, ``The Collaborative Congress,'' examines how 
rank-and-file Members of Congress work together to craft 
substantive and successful policy proposals in a polarized 
Congress.
    Dr. Craig worked for several Members of Congress, both on 
the Hill and in district offices, from 2001 to 2012.
    Dr. Craig, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENTS OF ALISON CRAIG, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF 
 TEXAS AT AUSTIN; SHOLA RICHARDS, CEO AND FOUNDER, GO TOGETHER 
        GLOBAL; AND LIZ WISEMAN, FOUNDER, WISEMAN GROUP.

                   STATEMENT OF ALISON CRAIG

    Ms. Craig. Thank you, Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and 
committee members for inviting me here to speak with you today 
on an issue I care a great deal about.
    So, when I tell people that I study collaboration in 
Congress, it usually prompts a joke along the lines of ``how 
can you study something that doesn't exist?'' So I always like 
to start by just saying that, you know, despite what people 
think, you know, there is actually a lot of evidence of Members 
do--looking for opportunities to work together both within 
their own party and across the aisle.
    You know, nearly every Member of Congress engages in at 
least some degree of collaboration. And the average Member has 
about 15 people that they work with in a given Congress. And 
that is going to include both policy, working on legislation--
includes everything from writing legislation to chairing a 
caucus.
    But, obviously, there is a lot of room to grow. About 7 to 
8 percent of bills introduced are the result of bipartisan 
collaboration. Given the substantial benefits of collaboration, 
of working together on legislation, that number should be 
significantly higher. Bills that are presented as the work of a 
pair of Members are significantly more likely to pass and 
significantly more likely to be enacted. So, if you just 
exclude post offices and all commemorative legislation, the 
average House bill has about a 10-percent chance of passing the 
House over, you know, a lengthy period of time. And it goes up 
to about 15 percent if it is a partisan collaboration, so if it 
is two Members of the majority party working together, and 20 
percent if it is a bipartisan collaboration.
    So, yeah, so Members and staff know that bipartisanship is 
how you get things done in Congress. You hear Members say that 
all the time, that, you know, this is how you get things done 
around here is to be bipartisan. And so then the question is, 
why don't we see more of it?
    You know, I have had a lot of conversations with Members 
and staff on how they decide to reach out to other offices to 
work together on a bill or a letter. Over and over again what I 
hear is that Members wants to collaborate more. They want to 
work across the aisle, but they don't think they can find 
someone in the other party to work with. They assume it is not 
going to be worth the hassle. And, at the end of the day, it is 
easier to just write the bill that you want to write and 
introduce it yourself.
    So then thinking about how to get a more collaborative 
Congress, you know, Members work together when you expect that 
the payoff is going to be worth the effort. Right? It is cost 
and benefit. So you need to both increase the incentives, as 
Vice Chair Timmons said, and also remove obstacles of working 
together.
    In term of incentives, obviously ``your bill is more likely 
to pass''' is going to be a bill one. But whether it passes or 
not, you know, the sponsor is going to get most of the 
recognition there. It is their bill. So someone who is the, 
like, lead cosponsor may not get credit for passing or even 
introducing the bill unless they promote it themselves.
    So one of the things that I would suggest to kind of 
improve the incentive structure is allow two Members to be 
listed as the sponsors of the bill. It is going to 
significantly increase the benefits of being the number two and 
let them get more substantive recognition for their work. You 
could even limit it to bipartisan pairs and say this is the 
sponsoring Democrat and this is the sponsoring Republican. Or 
you could say any two Members to--in the first case to 
highlight that it is a bipartisan bill.
    Other incentive-based strategies could include committee 
chairs prioritizing bipartisan legislation, promoting the 
benefits of collaboration to new Members, and increasing 
transparency around the suspension calendar.
    On the other side of the equation is making it easier for 
Members to work together, and this is where I think that there 
is a lot of work that can be done. You know, Members need to be 
able to find someone to work with and ideally before there is 
even a bill, because collaboration is a lot easier behind 
closed doors. But this requires connections, which is one of 
the reasons that collaboration actually significantly increases 
once Members are in their third term because now they have the 
personal connections and the relationships that they can tap 
into more easily.
    When you start thinking about how who you could team up 
with from the other party, you naturally go first to your 
friends. You go to the people that you have worked with before. 
And so what do you do when your connections are limited? Maybe 
you are in your first term. Maybe your go-to guy on energy just 
retired. You know, there are a lot of situations in which, you 
know, Members need some help facilitating those connections.
    So my other set of suggestions revolve around providing 
tools to make it easier for Members and staff to find someone 
to work with. You know, committees could create, like, a 
nonpartisan Member liaison position who Members and staff could 
reach out to if they are looking for someone else on the 
committee to work with, like, who would be good on this issue? 
The committee staff would be kind of a matchmaker. And since I 
am on a ``collaboration is like dating'' kick, you could also 
set up an anonymous but moderated sort of messaging board where 
staff could go out and post things like ``in search of Democrat 
on E&C interested in cybersecurity for possible letter'' and 
try to facilitate that sort of, like, very early collaboration 
in that regard because staff also really do play a big role 
here.
    Vice Chair Timmons mentioned the issue of time. Well, the 
staff are here a lot more than the Members are. And a lot of 
the times, if a Member doesn't have a connection, you naturally 
then go to your staff and say, ``Okay, well, who do you know 
that we could work with?'' And so anything that can facilitate 
additional connections among staff would also, I think, 
translate to the Member level. And so, you know, creating a 
sort of, like, coworking space, places for staff, improving the 
ability of staff to get together would also I think be helpful.
    The Members in all these cases still have to decide to work 
together. They still have to agree on what a bill or a letter 
would look like. But this is going to get over that first 
hurdle of scrolling through 435 Members and cold calling 
someone that you think might be interested.
    And that brings me just to my final point, which is that 
collaboration breeds collaboration. You know, one of the things 
I find pretty consistently is that once--you know, the Members 
who start to collaborate then collaborate more because mutual 
friends facilitate connections. If you have a lot of 
relationships, you will make more. Members who work together 
successfully on one project are more likely to work together on 
another, and Members who have more extensive personal networks 
or staff that have more extensive personal networks are more 
likely to know, you know, the right person to go on an issue. 
And that is going to, again, really increase the collaboration.
    So the easiest thing--it is not actually that easy--but for 
individual Members to do is to start by reaching out to someone 
that they want to work with.
    So, thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Craig follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thanks very much.
    Our next witness is Shola Richards. Mr. Richards is an 
award-winning director of training and organizational 
development, as well as a sought-after keynote speaker for 
commencements, conferences, and government events. He is the 
author of two books--this is part of this committee's 
Amazon.com sales effort--``Making Work Work'' and ``Go 
Together,'' which introduce strategies for replacing 
divisiveness and incivility to create positive living, working, 
and leading communities. Prior to starting his own consulting 
businesses, he served as the director of training and 
organizational development for UCLA Health.
    Mr. Richards, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

                  STATEMENT OF SHOLA RICHARDS

    Mr. Richards. Thank you, Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chair 
Timmons, members of the select committee, and staff and 
personnel who helped to make this very important hearing a 
possibility.
    As a keynote speaker and consultant, I am often asked why I 
choose to engage in the difficult work of civility. There will 
always be mean and rude people. A drama-free and respectful 
committee meeting won't travel as far on social media as a 15-
second sound bite would. And, you know, as they say, nice guys 
finish last. Right?
    That is why when it comes to civility specifically in 
Congress, when I told my friends that I was coming here, they 
said to me, what is the point? What is the point?
    To me, that is like asking, what is the point in showering? 
You are only going to get dirty again. True, right? Well, 
similar to showering, civility also is best used when it is 
done consistently.
    So what is civility? Civility in its simplest form is a 
sincere and consistent demonstration of respect. Without a 
baseline of respect, there can be no trust. And, without trust, 
communication among team members will deteriorate rapidly. And, 
without trust, respect, and effective communication, committee 
meetings will devolve into dysfunction; highly-skilled staff 
members will quit; and, most importantly, the American people 
who rely on this institution to improve their lives will become 
disillusioned, and they will lose faith in their elected 
officials.
    On the other hand, people who consistently demonstrate and 
practice civility are not only viewed more positively by others 
based on the research and are more productive, they are also 
more effective leaders as well. More on that to come.
    So, in this hearing, I would like to share a recommendation 
on how Congress can use civility to create a more positive and 
productive institution that truly serves the American people. 
It is my hope that every committee will consider beginning each 
new session of Congress with what I call civility norms. To be 
clear, this is not a code of conduct. Code of conducts 
traditionally are created by the leaders of an organization 
with the expectations that those within the organization will 
follow said codes.
    Civility norms, on the other hand, are very different. They 
would be created by the members of each committee for the 
members of each committee. This would ensure that each 
committee's norms would be specific to that committee's needs. 
So, for example, it is likely that the civility norms for--that 
are created in the Ways and Means Committee could be very 
different than the civility norms created in the Armed Services 
Committee.
    And that is exactly the point. Generic civility rules for 
large organizations such as the House of Representatives, for 
instance, rarely work in the long term due to their lack of 
specificity. In my experience in the work that I have done, I 
have seen much greater commitment to actively practicing these 
norms when a smaller group of people, for example, a committee 
or a subcommittee within the House, play an active role in 
creating those norms. Additionally, there is greater 
willingness to hold their peers accountable to those norms 
because they are the once who agreed to these norms in the 
first place.
    To create these norms is simple, and the process is simple. 
Ideally in a committee's first organizational or planning 
meeting of the new Congress--and, of course, to be very clear, 
this meeting would be bipartisan--the members should answer two 
very simple civility questions. The first one: What are the 
behaviors that demonstrate respect and should be reinforced 
during each of our committee hearings? Some examples of 
responses that I've seen in my work here, for example, can be 
actively listening and showing respect while others are 
talking. It could be something as simple as disagreeing with an 
idea without attacking the idea who presented the idea.
    The second question, equally important, is: What are the 
behaviors that do not demonstrate respect and should not be 
tolerated during any of our committee meetings? Some examples 
could be making derogatory remarks about other Congress people 
during a meeting or on social media, disrespectful body 
language, like eye rolling while another member is speaking, or 
intentionally ignoring another committee member.
    The answers to these questions should be agreed upon by the 
committee members, recorded, and used as the committee's 
civility norms going forward. Additionally, each committee 
should also determine how they will incentivize behavior that 
promotes civility in the committee meetings. An example, for 
example, would be posting a civility score on the committee's 
website or on their social media for committee members who 
consistently adhere to the committee's norms.
    Let's be real. Committing to this process may seem time-
consuming. I get that. But couldn't the same be said about 
sitting in committee meetings where toxic conflict, incivility, 
grandstanding, and dysfunction is the norm? Civility is too 
important to be left to chance. That is why it needs a real 
process.
    I am deeply grateful to the select subcommittee for 
ensuring that civility is finally given the attention and 
respect that it deserves.
    And, with that, I yield back.
    [The statement of Mr. Richards follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Richards.
    Our final witness is Liz Wiseman. Ms. Wiseman is a 
researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership to 
executives around the world. She is the author of, 
``Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter,'' 
and, ``Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New 
Game of Work.'' Her forthcoming book, ``Impact Players,'' will 
be available this October. Ms. Wiseman is the CEO of The 
Wiseman Group, a leadership, research, and development firm 
headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. She has been 
listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and in 2019 was recognized as 
the top leadership thinker in the world.
    We are grateful that you are with us. Ms. Wiseman, you are 
now recognized for 5 minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF LIZ WISEMAN

    Ms. Wiseman. Chairman Kilmer and Vice Chair Timmons and 
members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to 
share a few ideas.
    I have been asked to share a few of the best practices of 
what leaders and the business world and the nonprofit world do 
to build an environment where work is productive, where people 
are empowered, where people are deeply engaged, and where 
people find work fulfilling. And I want to start by sharing a 
few principles that I think underlie some of those practices. 
And these are truths that I have learned studying some of the 
best leaders in the organizations in the world, as well as 
studying some of the worst.
    And what we find is that, even in organizations that are 
deeply hierarchical, where there are very clear reporting lines 
and rules, the best leaders don't lead with formal authority. 
They don't lead with threat of repercussions. And they lead 
through influence. And they lead in a way where people 
volunteer their best thinking and where people hold themselves 
to the highest standard. The best leaders clearly lead through 
influence.
    The second is that people in all types of jobs at all 
levels and all types of organizations come to work wanting to 
contribute everything that they have. They want to do work that 
is meaningful, and they want to do work that has an impact. It 
is like deeply embedded in us to have this kind of impact, and 
the best leaders in some ways simply allow that to happen. They 
remove the barriers for people to make a contribution.
    And the third principle that we find is that people tend to 
do their best work in a climate that is both comfortable and 
intense. And so what the leader's job is to create an 
environment where there is an equilibrium between safety, where 
people feel they can speak out and contribute, where they feel 
accepted, but also where they feel compelled, where they are 
stretched, where they need to do their very finest work.
    Let me share a few of the practices we see from the very 
best leaders on this.
    The first is that, instead of just giving people work, the 
best pleaders delegate leadership and ownership and 
accountability. Most leaders want to involve people, give them 
sort of a say and participation. But when ownership is unclear, 
people tend to default to the leader; they tend to stall and 
tend to get disengaged. What we find that the best leaders do 
is they give members very clear portions of work, so even small 
portions of the larger committee's work, and they give them 
full ownership of this.
    One of my favorite practices on this comes from John 
Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco. When he was a fairly new CEO 
to Cisco, he was making his first executive--he was hiring a 
vice president of customer support. And he says to him: Doug, 
when it comes this part of the business, you get 51 percent of 
the vote, and you get 100 percent of the accountability.
    And I just don't know a clearer or a simpler way to tell 
someone else that you own this, that you are in charge. Just 
give someone 51 percent of the vote.
    The second is that the best leaders tend to encourage their 
members to set and achieve stretch goals. You know, it is very 
easy for a manager to assign work based on people's current 
ability and to give people goals or objectives. But we find 
that, in that case, when you give people goals and it is in 
their wheelhouse, people tend to do the usual. And we know what 
the usual looks like in this setting. But people are most 
deeply engaged when they are given a challenge, something that 
is a question, not a directive, and something that is beyond 
their current capabilities. It is something that feels a little 
bit like a mission impossible.
    One of my favorite examples of this is the former CEO of 
Gymboree, the children's clothing company. When he took over 
the helm, he could see that there was room for improvement on 
earnings per share. And, rather than give targets out to his 
management team to cascade through the organization, he set a 
mission impossible. And he said: What would we need to do 
across the organization to improve our earnings per share by a 
dollar this year?
    And people got thinking. And soon everyone had a mission-
impossible goal, something that could contribute to this larger 
goal. That year they massively overachieved. They set a new 
mission impossible, which the next year they massively 
overachieved. And, within 4 years, they had five times 
increased their earnings per share.
    So, you know, a good practice for doing this is to not give 
people goals or objectives but to give people puzzles to solve. 
And maybe the most visual example I can give is to ask you to 
remember the scene from the ``Apollo 13'' movie where they are 
trying to return the astronauts back. It is the iconic scene 
from this movie, not ``Houston, we have a problem,'' a 
different one. It is the one where the engineering manager 
pulls together his team. He dumps out on the table all of the 
parts that are available in the lunar module that is now 
filling up with toxic gas. And he says to his engineering team: 
We have got to find a way to make this fit into the hole for 
that with nothing but these resources.
    And it is actually the architecture of a great way to issue 
a challenge, is to give people a puzzle. How do we do X by Y 
with nothing but Z resources? And what happens is people tend 
to respond because they don't know how to do that, actually. 
And so people start to find answers. And it puts the ownership 
on the team, rather than it sitting with the leaders. So the 
best leaders ask the questions rather than give directives, and 
they create puzzles for their team to solve.
    A third leadership practice would be to create tough and 
fierce but really healthy and civil debate. Leaders typically 
in business and in other settings tend to rush to debate where 
they have fire for the deed, when opinions are high. They tend 
to debate opinions or issues and topics, but the very best 
leaders treat debate a little bit like surgery. They do it very 
selectively and very carefully, and everyone prepares. And they 
debate well-framed questions with clearly defined options.
    One of my favorite examples of this comes out of Microsoft, 
an executive named Lutz Ziob. In running his business, when 
there becomes a vital issue--not every issue. Delegates a lot 
of those. But, when there is a vital issue, he pulls the team 
together. He says: This is an issue we need to debate. Here is 
why it is important. He frames it. He poses the question. And 
then he says: I want you to come back in 2 weeks, ready to 
debate this. And everyone is asked to come with two things: 
one, evidence; and, two, a point of view.
    When he starts the debate, he lays the ground rules. I want 
this to be fierce. I want people to push hard on these issues. 
But I want it to be civil. He defines that, and then people 
start to go. He asks people to come with a position already 
established. They argue for their point of view. And then, when 
thing are starting to settle into kind of a pattern, a decision 
is becoming clear, he mixes it up. And he says: I want you to 
switch points of view. You know, Marcus, you have been arguing 
for this. You know, Amanda, you have been arguing against it. 
Amanda, you are arguing for it. Marcus, you are arguing against 
it. Go. Or, Marcus, you have been looking at this from 
marketing point of view. And, Sunir, you have been looking at 
this from a sales point of view. Sunir, you are about 
marketing. You know, Marcus, you are all about sales.
    And it is very unsettling, but the team gets very used to 
it. And, in the end, the team comes to a decision that the team 
agrees to. And it is unclear who was the winner of that debate 
because he has mixed it up.
    My very favorite debate practice is the simplest one. It 
comes from third graders arguing, debating the merits of great 
literature in the Junior Great Books program. It is three 
questions. I will add a fourth question. It is that the leader 
of the debate should ask the question and not give an answer. 
Two, they should ask for evidence. No one gets an opinion 
without bringing evidence for it. Three, they should ask every 
person to weigh in on it. And, fourth, the one I would add to 
this is to ask people to switch. The switch creates amazing 
things.
    Lutz also opened up his debates. He has the members of the 
debate around the team, but he opens up the debate to other 
people in the organization so that they can observe the debate.
    The best leaders don't tend to assign work based on 
people's skill sets or job responsibilities. The best leaders 
tend to look for what each member of the team is naturally and 
natively good at. I call it someone's native genius. It is just 
like what our minds are built to do. It is what we can't help 
but do. And they find a way to tap into that.
    I see so many leaders who do this as an entire team at the 
onset of a project, which is, like, let's first see what kind 
of capability we are working with. And everyone understands 
people's genius. At first I thought this was sort of a little 
bit of a hippy practice. I come from California. We are prone 
to hippy thinking. I thought this was a bit strange. Every 
group, every single group I have seen do this, where they 
identify the native genius of each member of a team or a 
committee, has said, ``It is the best thing we have ever 
done.''
    The last one that I would like to just sort of end on is 
this idea of creating transparency. I think and what I have 
seen is the best way to create civil debate and collaborative 
practices is to create transparency and put good leadership on 
display. When Alan Mulally had taken over Ford and they were 
hemorrhaging losses in the billions, he would tell you that the 
secret to that success was he stopped one-on-one meetings with 
his executive team members. He established a joint meeting 
where they dealt with issues as a team. They had a simple color 
coding system to deal with the severity. And then he opened up 
those meetings to members of Ford. Everyone was to bring a 
guest. And it was remarkable how the behavior of the executives 
changed instantly.
    I think there is a number of ways that congressional 
committees can take--can put their leadership behavior on 
display because people tend to lead at their very best when 
they know that people are watching, particularly young people.
    There are several other practices in the testimony I am 
happy to answer questions about. Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Wiseman follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    The Chairman. Thanks very much.
    I now recognize myself and Vice Chair Timmons to begin a 
period of extended questioning of the witnesses.
    Any member who wishes to speak should just signal their 
request to either me or Vice Chair Timmons. Or for those who 
are joining virtually, if you want to use ``raise hand'' or 
just tug the ear, or as you wish. Exactly, there you go.
    One, I really appreciate the testimony from each of you. It 
seems like we sort of covered three different themes all around 
how to make the place function a little bit better: civility, 
collaboration, and leadership. And I thought maybe the 
committee could start by just pulling on the threads related to 
civility.
    I presume that Vice Chair Timmons will ask a little bit 
about incentives since in his opening remarks he spoke about 
that. I think one of the things that this institution struggles 
with is this notion of sort of what we owe each other in terms 
of standards of conduct. As part of this effort, I reached out 
to a sports coach who had taken over a team that had a pretty 
dysfunctional culture. And he said the rules are what governs 
us when we are at our worst, and the norms and culture are what 
keeps us at our best.
    And so, Mr. Richards, your suggestion of establishing some 
sort of standards I think is really important.
    Now here is what is tricky in this place. One person's 
violation of standard and norm is another person's only avenue 
for exercising the rights of the minority. You know, and we 
have seen that in this place. We have seen it recently with, 
you know, every suspension bill now there is a roll call vote 
on. And, you know, and we saw that when the Democrats were in 
the minority and literally took to the floor and did a sit-in 
on the issue of gun rights or gun safety.
    So you see at times things that, probably, if there were 
those sort of codes of conduct, you know, this is--I think it 
is worth recognizing this is different than rules. Right? You 
are talking about how do we engage one another in a way that 
might lend itself to a more collaborative approach.
    So I am just looking for any guidance you have to the 
committee as we think about this and as we think about making 
recommendations, how to thread that needle, recognizing that 
it--that, as an institution, we want to be respectful of the 
rights of the minority and we also want to make sure that the 
place isn't just dealing with persistent obstruction.
    Mr. Richards. Thank you for that question, Chairman Kilmer.
    You know, since you brought out sports first--and I am 
hoping I will be the first of many sports metaphors throughout 
the day hopefully. When I look at a sports team, I think of a 
football team. And if I remember correctly, Mr. Cleaver also 
formerly played football. So I--when I think of football or any 
sport, really, what happens are rules that govern the sport. 
But there is also unwritten rules around respect, not just for 
the teammates but respect for the game. So, when you see 
someone who violates an unspoken norm or a team norm, so to 
speak, not only are the people on the other team upset at that 
person, but people within the team are upset with that 
particular player. You notice that people can fight hard and 
play hard. At the end, they are trading jerseys because they 
can still respect the game.
    So, when we come to the House of Representatives and we 
think about the work that is being done here, the reason why 
norms are important is that it is conflict with guardrails. So, 
when you see people who are engaging in disruptive behavior, 
things that make this institution dysfunctional in some way, 
there should be some sort of guardrail in terms of, ``Hey, this 
is how we are going to be working here,'' and more than just a 
Code of Conduct but really specific to each committee and 
subcommittee to see whether or not this is something that would 
actually work.
    So, in my experience, I have found, like I said in my 
opening testimony, people are more willing to adhere to norms 
when they play a role in creating them, regardless if you are 
in the majority or in the minority. This is part of--because, 
as we all know, this is cyclical. Sometimes you will be in the 
majority; sometimes you will be in the minority. But the idea 
is these norms should be constant. They make a difference when 
people actually adhere to them. And, most importantly, more 
people are willing to hold others accountable to these norms 
because they played a role in creating them.
    So, while it is hard to do this--and I know we can't 
legislate people being nice and kind to each other. I just want 
to be very clear. That is not what I am saying, unfortunately. 
But what would be nice is that if people could at the very 
least have some sort of norms, some process that they can 
remind themselves of when they show up.
    I think Phoenix Suns Coach Monty Williams said, and I want 
to make sure I get this quote right: Everything that we want is 
the on the other side of hard.
    And this is hard. This is not easy. If it was easy, this 
would already be done. So it is going to require some sort of 
process and, quite frankly, some new suggestions that I am so 
happy to get into during our question and answer. But I want to 
cede my time and share with the two fabulous ladies on either 
side of me.
    The Chairman. I don't know if anybody else wants to speak 
to that question. Otherwise, I will invite Vice Chair Timmons. 
Go ahead. And then others who want to pull on any of these 
threads related to civility, and then we will shift gears and 
talk about collaboration.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Craig, I want to talk about incentive structures, 
particularly at the committee level. We have talked a lot about 
Congress as a whole. Just--there is a lot there: 435 Members is 
very challenging. But, when you kind of go down to the 
committee level and say, what can we do to really change the 
incentive structures within committees, which is where most 
Members of Congress do the most of their work, it becomes maybe 
a little bit more manageable.
    We had Congressman Upton come and talk about how, when he 
was the chairman of E&C, they had--you know, they gave priority 
to bipartisan amendments. That seems like a pretty easy thing 
for us to recommend. Sitting interspersed throughout the dais, 
I really think that that is something that is a no-brainer, 
just creating, forcing people to sit amongst their colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle. I really think that has 
potential. Modifying the questions--the questioning structure 
is something that we talked about, actually exchanging ideas as 
opposed to just using talking points and not really defending 
your ideas. Honestly, that is one of the biggest things that I 
think is missing in really our country today. You don't defend 
your ideas. You can say things that may be incredibly 
intelligent or may not make much sense, and nobody actually 
says: Let's really get into the weeds on that. What is the 
effect of that policy you are proposing? And what about this?
    Nobody does that. You go on Fox News or CNN, and you get 
praised. There is no--there is no back and forth.
    One of the things that we talked about, discharge petition. 
I mean, you know, 218 is what you got to get. But what if there 
was another one? What if it was like a bipartisan discharge 
petition with a lower threshold? You get 100 Rs and 100 Ds, you 
are guaranteed a vote. And, you know, taking that same thought 
process to committees, you are guaranteed a hearing if you get 
X percent of committee equal Rs and Ds.
    So that causes me to say: All right. I have this thing I am 
passionate about. I got to go and sell it to people on both 
sides of the aisle because that is the only way that I can 
guarantee my outcome, things like that. I mean, throw out some 
new ideas, talk about those. I am open to really anything.
    Ms. Craig. No, I appreciate that. Thank you, Vice Chair 
Timmons.
    You know, I think that you are right that committees are I 
think an excellent avenue for a lot of collaboration to occur 
because it is, first and foremost, a smaller group and it is 
easier to get a smaller group of people working together. You 
know, I think that having, you know, actually tying into the 
idea of kind of setting committee norms, having one of the 
norms and--would work better again in some committees 
understand others--be, like, some level of prioritization of 
bipartisan legislation, you know, the committee chair agrees 
that they are going to--you know, if you get X level of 
support, yes, they are going to put it on the agenda or at 
least have a hearing. Similarly with amendments, it could 
happen that way.
    You know, I think that, in terms of kind of tying, I guess, 
the committees into, like, the relationship building, like, one 
of the things I like--well, we will see how it goes. But I 
think I like how you are doing because it is the questioning 
here in terms of it keeps people in the room more. And that 
then also, I think, facilitates relationships and more of a 
conversations and builds connections between members if you 
have that sort of structure within the committee hearings.
    In terms of kind of then when you move on to the floor side 
of things, you know, I think--toying around with the idea but 
the idea of, like, the suspension calendar, obviously, is where 
a lot of bipartisan--the main benefit of, I think, of a lot of 
bipartisanship is that it becomes much easier to get through on 
suspension. But a lot of Members don't really know how that 
works, especially, like, in the first couple of years. And it 
is not really clear.
    And so, even if you weren't to say--so all--I mean, you 
could go all the way to saying, like, yes, there is a 
guarantee. Like you can show me that you are going to get two-
thirds, that this bill will get two-thirds support, we will put 
it on the agenda. But at the very least allow Members to, like, 
submit their legislation and say: Hey, I have enough--maybe I 
don't have two-thirds cosponsors, but I have enough bipartisan 
support here that I am confident we will get past that two-
thirds vote. And allow them to kind of raise the legislation to 
the attention of the leadership to hopefully get it on the 
schedule would be another one of my suggestions.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you.
    Anybody else have any thoughts on incentive structures?
    Mr. Richards. I will jump in.
    You know, I have two young daughters. And I have learned 
that the best way to get any type of behavior to change is to 
focus on the behavior that you want versus the behavior that 
you don't want.
    And there has been some talk and some ideas around in terms 
of collaboration. But also, too, with civility is having, like, 
a civility score or something that you can actually see in real 
time who is playing an active role in getting Congress to work 
again? And this hopefully would disincentivize the folks who 
want to be difficult and be obstructionists and make things 
difficult for the institution. But, more importantly, it shows 
what this institution actually values, which is collaboration, 
which is civility, people working together, and, most 
importantly, doing this in a way that is public so that people 
can actually see what is going on, on social media or on the 
website.
    It helps to get people to think: Okay, this is important. 
Clearly this is something that is being measured. I don't want 
to be a person who is staying out of this. I want to be a part 
of this. And hopefully really engage people's better angels in 
doing the right thing.
    Ms. Wiseman. There is something I would like to add to 
that. When I look at what is done in the business world to 
incent collaborative behavior, civil behavior, you know, 
collaborating in the business world, you know, in many cases, 
is as hard as in really complex organizations where people have 
interests and very different interests. And what the 
organizations tend to do is, first, they create case studies, 
like: Here is what it looks like when it is done well.
    And they create heroes out of these people, and there are 
probably video-based case studies.
    I think there could be a lot of power in saying: Where has 
it been done well? Where are the positive examples? And let's 
put that on display and maybe continue to build this library of 
case studies of successful, bipartisan, collaborative, good 
leadership, and civil discourse. That is one thing that 
businesses tend to do. I think it could work here.
    Another is not just the kind of formal incentives but spot 
incentives. A lot of organizations use these peer-based spot 
incentives where anyone without prior approval can see good 
leadership, collaborative behavior, bipartisan legislation, 
civil behavior, and give somebody a spot award. Maybe it is a 
lapel pin. Maybe it is a sign on their door that says this is 
what--this is what the desired behavior looked like. And it is 
not only fun to receive one of these, people love giving these 
kinds of awards. It is incredibly gratifying. I think there is 
power in doing something that simple.
    Mr. Timmons. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    The Chairman. Okay. We have a flurry of hands that just 
went up. So I have got Mr. Latta, then Perlmutter, then Joyce, 
then Phillips, then Cleaver.
    So, Mr. Latta.
    Mr. Latta. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for 
today's hearing. I think it is very instructive.
    You know, I think that you have heard me say that, in my 25 
years of almost in the legislature, either in Congress or back 
in the General Assembly, I have always pushed for what I always 
call the five Cs. The top of it was civility. And you got 
cooperation and then collaboration and then camaraderie but, 
you know, working together.
    But, you know, it is a tough world out there. And I think 
that is what you had mentioned in your opening statement. Or 
maybe it was Mr. Timmons that, you know, time is one of our 
biggest enemies out there. It is getting to know one anymore is 
very, very difficult.
    And, for our panelists, maybe I could hear from each of you 
because just to get your thoughts on how--where we are today 
because, again, you know, we live in an instant world. You 
know, people are reading the scroll on the bottom of their TV 
or something like that or something off their handheld device, 
and get their information in less than 30 seconds and not 
delving into it.
    But when--you know, when you take away the thoughts of 
where we are with the internet, with Instagram, with Twitter, 
with Facebook, you know, how do we get out there to make sure 
that, you know, we are working with each other? Because, again, 
it is difficult, you know. And I objected when, you know, the 
cameras were right outside the House floor. You know, it seems 
like Members would run right out and--from the floor after they 
said something and get right in front of the TV cameras.
    And, you know, it is the way we address each other on the 
floor. I am a big stickler for that. One of the things in Ohio 
that we had as a rule is that you never addressed anybody by 
their name. It was always by where they were from and, you 
know, to keep things on a nonpersonal basis just on that.
    But I am just kind of curious. You know, in this instant 
world that we are in today, how do you all see that we can get 
this civility? Because, again, with time being a problem, 
getting to know people, having that ability, how do we address 
that in today's world? Thank you.
    Mr. Richards. I will take that.
    Ms. Wiseman. I will follow.
    Mr. Richards. Perfect. It is so interesting when we talk 
about time. And, you know, I think we have to get creative when 
we think about time, how we use it, how we use it within this 
institution and maybe, quite frankly, maybe outside of it.
    So, creatively speaking, what would be cool--and I am using 
that word intentionally because I don't think this is happening 
now--is an idea where folks from either side of the aisle could 
invite a person from the opposite side of the aisle out to 
dinner. Now, I want to be very specific about this, because 
this is not just some idea of, like: Hey, let's go have dinner 
with someone from a different party. This is very intentional, 
and I want to be clear when I say this.
    So the idea behind this to make this work because then it 
is hard to find time when you have multiple committee meetings 
and different competing priorities, I get that. But what would 
be great is you could have a dinner once a month that is 
actually expensed by this institution. Now, not the $7,000 
dinner that Vice Chair Timmons was talking about in his opening 
remarks, but it could be something like $50 or $100, whatever 
makes the most sense.
    But what is important about this particular dinner is you 
are off-site. You have an opportunity to connect with someone 
that is not really based on, ``Hey, will you sign off on this 
bill,'' and things of that nature, but leaving work aside and 
having an opportunity to get to know someone based on the 
relationship-building that Vice Chair Timmons was mentioning in 
his open.
    It should be branded, though. And this is really important. 
It is not like: Hey, we are going have dinner. You could call 
it something like, just naming a President, a Jefferson Dinner. 
Hey, I am going take someone out on a Jefferson Dinner. Now the 
idea behind this is that, when you brand something, you give it 
a name, there is an expectation behind it. So it is, like, when 
we have this dinner, the expectation is I am going to take 
someone out from a different party, and we are going have 
dinner expensed on this institution where we can get to know 
each other and finally build that trust away from the cameras 
that you see after a hearing where people run out to their 
favorite cable news station and get in front of a camera and 
say: Look how I did. Look how I did.
    This is more around getting people to understand each 
other, to start humanizing people, and taking the time to get 
to know people and build those relationships.
    Maybe most importantly though, once you find that friend 
from the other side of the aisle, it is easy to say: I will 
just keep taking this person out to dinner every single time.
    It should switch. So it should be a new person every month 
in order to be able to get this expensed.
    This is a very simple, powerful way to do this. Businesses 
all over the world use this as an opportunity to get people to 
know each other. I am surprised that this is not built into 
this institution, knowing that it works. So once you get the 
opportunity to build this, it can create bonds that go far 
deeper. And it hopefully will alleviate the challenges of time 
that Mr. Latta was speaking about earlier.
    I have more, but I just want to stop there for that.
    The Chairman. Anyone else want to swing at that?
    Ms. Wiseman. I would like to add something to this. You 
know, it is no secret that we are--there is a lot of 
performance going on, performing for cameras, performing for 
social media, performing for constituents. You know, it is 
happening with our young people performing for social media. I 
think we know how damaging this is.
    I think there is some interesting thinking that can be done 
about, how do you allow people to perform for a different 
audience, and I know there is a practice of allowing school 
children field trips to come in and watch. And I just wondered 
what would happen if committee meetings were open not just to 
whatever classes happen to be by but there was active just 
reach to bring in middle school field trips and not just have 
them come and go but to look for teachable moments. And perhaps 
these norms of behavior, as they are codified or we say, ``Here 
is what good leadership, civil, collaborative, productive 
leadership looks like,'' I would think, like, put that on a 
piece of paper and give that to each kid who sits down. And 
maybe make a bingo card out of that. Maybe you make a checklist 
and give them a pencil and say: Just circle every time you 
notice that behavior.
    And then maybe the teacher has a conversation about that 
with the students. Behavior would change.
    Maybe you structure in more teachable moments where there 
is a chance to talk to the school classes that come down about 
what it means to be a steward and not just a representative of 
geography or a constituency but what it means to be a steward 
of a democratic process and the obligations and the higher 
obligations that come with being a public servant.
    And I think if you create an audience that people value, 
people will perform at their best. I think you could also bring 
peer observation in, or there is a slew of external executive 
coaches who I am sure would be happy to come in on a pro bono 
basis and observe and coach and help people lead at the very 
best. But I like bingo cards for school kids myself.
    The Chairman. That is fun.
    Ms. Craig. Well, I would like to add to that, just because 
I am really sad I did not give my students bingo cards for this 
hearing because I am making them watch.
    But just to briefly chime in on the role of time, you know, 
I think that is one of the reasons. You know, there is a lot of 
conversations. You hear a lot of people talking about how, you 
know, part of the problem with Congress is that no one lives 
here anymore; no one plays--you know, the kids aren't playing 
on the same baseball time. Like this is a very common refrain.
    We don't actually have a lot of evidence to say that that 
is what kind of caused the decline of civility. So I want to 
caution with that. But I feel like sometimes we get so hung up 
on these conversations of, like, well, no one living here, so 
we don't hang out, we are not friends, that no one thinks 
about, so how do we adapt to the new world in terms of finding 
new ways to make connections and finding, you know, new ways to 
have these conversations. I think, you know, going out to 
dinner, the dinner idea is fantastic. This is one of the 
reasons that I also emphasize staff because, again, the staff 
are here all the time. And so, if you can facilitate 
connections between your staff, the staff can then be a bridge 
to make connections between Members. And, yeah, I mean, I think 
just generally.
    The other thing I would say is that, in terms of kind of 
the instant response, it is also why I think part of it is 
getting--part of what would increase civility is to have a lot 
of these conversations happen behind closed doors and then come 
out as a joint, united front and make that the announcement, 
rather than having, you know, ``Oh, here is an idea,'' and 
then, you know, go through some back and forth and place 
different, competing proposals on the table. Instead, just come 
out as a united front of, like, ``Here is our idea,'' and 
really take joint ownership of it.
    The Chairman. Mr. Perlmutter and then Mr. Joyce.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Is that on? Yeah.
    I guess just in trying to put these in silos, I am not 
sure. You know, civility, collaboration, leadership, they are 
all part of the same thing.
    So, going back to the sports analogy, you know, the 
Broncos, two of our fiercest competitors were the leaders of 
the team, Peyton Manning and John Elway. Okay? And I mean they 
wanted to win. Period. And made it a better team. What we have 
under this--in this room under the dome is we have two teams 
competing. It is different than Microsoft and everybody getting 
in the room and debating, you know, towards a thing. They are 
part of the same team.
    So what has been difficult for all of us is the team 
element has become more and more pronounced over time.
    So I just open it to the three of you because I think you 
are all talking, you know, from the leadership, you know, the 
more competitive the leader, you know, all of a sudden, you are 
going down one path. And I can pick a couple of my committees 
where I have just the fiercest competitive leader in one 
committee versus a more collaborative leader in another 
committee. And you get different results. There is no question 
about it.
    So, in the setting that we have, which is difference than a 
corporate setting, you know, it is--we are sort of in the game 
the whole time. How do you manage that? How do you bring out 
civility? How do you bring out the collaboration? I guess that 
is my question.
    Ms. Craig. Sure. So I can jump in on this.
    You know, I think--I do think there is a perception issue 
more so than--I mean, yes, there absolutely are competing 
teams. Don't get me wrong. I am not going to come in here and 
be, like, no, no, everyone really gets along. But the--I 
actually do have a fair amount of research showing that the 
majority of Members are mostly just focused on, you know, 
creating policy solutions and/or district advocacy, you know, 
like the majority--a bare majority--but the majority are 
focused on that end.
    And so that is where I see the role of collaboration I 
think being really impactful is actually getting those, like, 
rank-and-file Members who are less concerned about the partisan 
fighting that is going on over here and more concerned about 
working together and making these connections and because, like 
I said, you know, kind of collaboration facilitates more 
collaboration.
    So, if you have these two Members that are really concerned 
about policy working together and then, oh, they are 
successful, like, other people will hopefully try to imitate 
that behavior and expand the, you know, value, the norm of 
collaboration within the Congress by just demonstrating good 
behavior or collaborative behavior anyway.
    Mr. Richards. Can I jump in, too?
    Thank you for that Dr. Craig. I am--I just love sports 
metaphors because, I mean, using Peyton Manning and John Elway 
is a great example for this. And I know your district is 
obviously in Colorado. And the idea--right? The idea is when 
you talk about John Elway and Peyton Manning, the two things 
about them, besides being Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks for 
the Denver Broncos, they also are not just fierce competitors, 
but they did something that could also be duplicated within 
this institution.
    You mentioned before that there is fierce teams that are 
separated, and they are fighting for their cause. So the one 
thing that could help interrupt that is intraparty policing 
where there is someone within the party who is willing to say: 
Hey, listen, you can fight for your cause and fight hard, but 
still let's remain within these guardrails.
    It is more--far more powerful hearing it from someone 
within your own party who is willing to say: Hey, this is not 
okay. Like I understand that you are fierce. But to get on 
social media, to run to said news network, and just start to 
disrespect or humiliate someone is not advancing this cause.
    And this is going to take courage. Quite frankly, and I 
know courage is a relative term, but the idea is this is going 
to require people to put their necks out a little bit. I think 
if you are in a, politically speaking, a safe district where 
you are most likely to be reelected over and over and over 
again and because, for whatever reason, there is more people in 
your party there, it is either deep blue or deep red, there is 
less of a willingness to engage for sure, if we are going to be 
honest. But the idea is, if someone from the party within the 
party chooses to hold someone accountable, this is beginning 
the process of turning the ship around that has been so off 
track for so long.
    And that is what Peyton Manning did. That is what John 
Elway did. They went to the situation. And even Tom Brady who--
sorry--but he went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after they were 
a horrible team and in one year turned them around. And I think 
it is because the inside of the team, there is a spirit of 
accountability, which I think is sometimes absent in this 
partisan bickering that we see so often.
    The Chairman. It is interesting. I mentioned I have talked 
to a sports coach, and he talked about they have a players 
council, where it is that type of holding each other 
accountable. It is not getting sent to the coach's office 
because you violated a rule. It is, you know, it is a peer 
basically pulling you aside and saying: Hey, you know, we don't 
really do that here.
    You know, I keep wondering if there is a way to structure 
something like that in Congress. I don't know that there is. 
But I can tell you, like, if Emanuel Cleaver came up to me and 
say, ``Hey, you know, that is--you were outside of the lines 
here,'' like, that would probably change my behavior. Right? I 
mean, he would be the chair of the players council.
    Mr. Joyce.
    Mr. Joyce. Unmute. They we go.
    The Chairman. There we go. I knew you could do it.
    Mr. Joyce. You would think, after 16 months, I would know 
how to work this thing.
    When I--you know, you touched on a good point, as always, 
Derek. But I thought that maybe I would have those 
conversations with some knuckleheads, who aren't here, when 
they said stupid things that reflected poorly on all of us. 
And, on top of them, you know, giving me grief, then they 
turned around and said crazier things.
    So you would like to think that, you know, peer-to-peer 
discussions would work. Maybe with some they do. But certainly, 
in this instance, I see it as more--and I think--I am sorry. 
But the last speaker touched on it, the idea that the, you 
know, that Tom Brady or the coaches, in other words, the 
leadership has to bring and be incentivized to bring that to 
the team. And I was wondering if any of the panel had an idea 
on how that might be accomplished or how the team could search 
for the leadership to actually make that happen.
    Ms. Wiseman. I will comment on that.
    I don't--I think I first want to acknowledge that I 
understand that the business world has a different model. I 
don't think the leadership dynamics are any different, that 
people are people. However, the organization's structure 
creates a very different dynamic because, in the business 
world, as well as the nonprofit world or our school systems, 
there tends to be a unifying leader.
    And, in this setting, there is an absence of a single 
unifying leader. There is competing teams and which means that 
the unifying force has to come from within the organization for 
there to be a functional process.
    And I want to share just an observation and then maybe a 
resource. The observation would be, you know, so much of my 
work is studying power inside of organizations. And I have been 
thinking a lot about this question over the last months, and 
the conclusion I come to is probably a conclusion that everyone 
in this room has already come to. But I want to share it 
anyway, which is, in absence of a unifying force and if the 
peer-based leadership dissolves, people need clear leadership. 
And I think what is happening is we will, as a country, trend 
toward authoritarian leadership. Like we will see that this 
vacuum is filled. If it is not filled in Congress, it is going 
to be filled more and more with leaders who take very 
authoritative position. And I think more and more, as our 
citizens, the electorate, people like me see a lack of peer-
based unifying leadership in these buildings, the voters are 
going to want leaders who are authoritative and dictator-like, 
and I think this is a disturbing trend. I don't think we want 
to see that on any party. And so we have to find a structure 
where this comes from the middle of the organization or from 
the top of the House, so to speak.
    That is probably an obvious conclusion. But I feel like 
shared--like that is the only conclusion I can come to is we 
will move more and more to an authoritative society. And that 
troubles all of us, I believe.
    The resource I would point you to is there an organization, 
I think you are familiar with, the Partnership for Public 
Service. And I am a member of their advisory board. I have been 
serving with them for the last, I don't know, 2 or 3 years. 
And, as part of that work, they have and we have built a 
leadership model that takes some of the best thinking out of 
the business world, that looks at what are some of the 
peculiarities and challenges of being a leader in the public 
service space. And it is centered in the idea of stewardship 
and public service, and I think it is a tremendous resource to 
say this is what good leadership looks like in this context.
    And I think you will be talking to some members of that 
group next week, but I would encourage you to look at that 
leadership model in particular.
    The Chairman. Dr. Craig.
    Ms. Craig. I just wanted to jump on here real quickly 
because the answer is that that is a really hard thing to do, 
frankly. I mean, you elect party leaders whose job is to keep 
your party or get your party into the majority. I mean, that 
really--that is who you elect to be your party leaders are the 
ones that you think are going to be, you know, keeping your 
party in the majority. And that requires distinguishing 
yourself from the other party, and it rewards conflict, and so 
on and so forth.
    So I am, with respect to Liz, I am not sure it is the right 
idea to try to change kind of how the leaders are. But maybe--I 
am really into this, like, council of--now I don't want to call 
it council of elders, but that is because I am--like, you know, 
kind of another sort of--create a new leadership position that 
is a little bit more bipartisan, that is elected--I really--in 
a majoritarian institution, this is so hard to do. But find a 
way to create it so that it was absolutely a bipartisan 
position and have them be someone who is, like, providing, 
setting this norm of collaboration and voice that isn't 
necessarily the partisan--the party leaders. Or hire a staff 
member or hire, like, a parliament--the parliamentarian version 
of the civility director.
    Mr. Richards. May I add one small thing to that too and 
just to add on to kind of what Dr. Craig was saying? I also 
think there has to be a reimagining of our leaders around, who 
is their audience? You know, we have to think about this more 
deeply. We have an idea that your base are the people who are 
on Twitter, who make up, what, like 20--I think only 20 percent 
of Americans, according to Pew Research, are actually on 
Twitter. So that is not your audience. That is maybe the most 
vocal minority who is speaking up, and there is a need to 
placate those people, and there is way that that kind of moves 
the conversation towards the fringes to satiate that base.
    But what would make more sense is to reimagine the audience 
of the remaining 80-plus percent of people who may consider 
voting for you, may consider working with you, maybe consider 
pushing your agenda if you were to behave in way that was maybe 
more civil, more thoughtful, and can engage more people. It 
just may be time to reinvent that and think about it 
differently.
    The Chairman. Mr. Phillips.
    Mr. Phillips. Mr. Perlmutter and I were just reflecting on 
the proposition to have children, you know, attend everything 
and how beautiful that would be even in our caucus meetings 
because it would change. Then, again, we have plenty of 
children already, I would argue.
    There is so much to unpack. This is my favorite 
conversation in Congress because I was reading Chairman 
Kilmer's tweet this morning. And he wrote, quote: Research 
shows that leaders who practice civility and who take a 
collaborative approach to their work are able to produce and 
achieve at higher levels.
    And having come from the private sector myself, that is 
exactly how things worked until I got Congress.
    And I thought a lot about this. You know, there are 435 of 
us. You know, if we were in a private enterprise or a business, 
surely each one of us would have been fired already for 
insubordination at one time or another. But only--and a 
handful, clearly, if there was accountability, would probably 
be terminated for poor behavior. Growing up in a household, you 
know, we had a parent who provided accountability. In schools, 
we had a teacher or principal. In business, we have a boss. 
And, here, as I reflect on rewards systems and the incentive 
structure to all of your respective points, it is actually 
antithetical. It is the opposite rewards, which is so terribly 
confounding to me.
    You know, so a couple of questions. You know, voters are 
electing dividers to Congress. And then those elected to 
Congress are electing dividers to leadership positions. That is 
just pretty clear. It is true on both sides of the aisle. A 
couple of questions and one reflection.
    You know, I think we have this vice happening in America. 
We have got angertainment on one end of the vice that is 
thriving, using us as pawns to divide. And then we have 
gerrymandered districts, as you, I think, reflected on, Mr. 
Richards, that reward deeply blue or deeply red behavior. And 
then all the rest of the country is in the middle of this vice.
    I want to better understand the psychology behind why both 
Americans might be electing dividers, why we in Congress seem 
to be elevating the wrong people. And then, secondly, what if 
hypothetically there was a third caucus? How would that change 
the behavior, do you think, in the institution, a more 
moderate, a combination of thoughtful Democrats and Republicans 
perhaps that would be a triangulation, if you will, of power? 
Would that change anything in the U.S. Congress?
    So, two questions: the psychology behind why and how some 
internal dynamics might change with a third entity instead of 
just two teams.
    Ms. Wiseman. I can speak to a little bit on the psychology 
of why. One of the things that I study is, I mean, leaders I 
call multipliers who bring out the best in others versus 
leaders who are very smart and capable but have a diminishing 
effect on others.
    Mr. Phillips. Uh-huh.
    Ms. Wiseman. They tend to be very divisive leaders. And 
often they have staying power in organizations, and they have 
success. And I have spent a lot of time trying to understand 
why people keep working for them and why people follow them, 
and I think it addresses a couple of your concerns. And what 
happens is, when people feel voiceless and they feel like their 
voice is not being heard: Nobody is listening to me; I am going 
to get behind someone who people are listening to. And, even if 
I in some ways abhor this person, this is my only avenue for 
voice.
    And it is what happens in the business world is people tend 
to follow them.
    The other dynamic that we see out in the private sector is 
that these leaders tend to have a diminishing effect on others, 
and others get intellectually weakened around them. We become 
lazy. We will--I will just defer thinking to them. I will let 
them do the hard stuff. I will just sort of be hands and legs. 
And people actually become less capable around these leaders. 
So they are less capable of standing on their own. So they 
become places where people degrade around, and then they become 
dependent on them for any kind of influence.
    And so I think it is a very--it is a very disturbing cycle 
of degeneration. And I think it is--I see it happening all the 
time in the workplace. And I think it is also happening in our 
political system.
    Mr. Phillips. And just--and to my second question about 
just this notion of these two teams, you know, what happens if 
there is a third team in a construct like this? What do you 
think?
    Ms. Wiseman. Probably changes everything.
    Mr. Phillips. How so?
    Ms. Wiseman. Well, it gives more options. And, you know, 
you don't have a mortal enemy. And you have to form--I don't 
know. I don't want to purport that I understand anything about 
the political process, but I think it creates more options and 
more like a market system perhaps. But I don't know. This is 
not my expertise.
    Mr. Phillips. I appreciate it.
    Ms. Wiseman. So we are over the edge of my expertise.
    Mr. Phillips. I appreciate it.
    Ms. Craig. I think I am, like, obligated to jump in here as 
the political scientist at the table.
    So I am sitting here, trying to imagine a third party. And 
I just can't get to the point where it exists. Just in terms of 
thinking about the House, the way, because of the Members that 
are elected right now, you have--you know, if you imagine 
everyone on kind of on a left-right continuum, obviously, there 
are issues that go on other dimensions. But right now there is 
actually such a gap between the two that filling in the middle, 
like, Members who are even at the more, you know--like 
conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans are probably 
better off with still, like, their own party preferences than 
going all the way to the other party. The further apart the 
parties move, the less incentive there is----
    Mr. Phillips. Of course.
    Ms. Craig [continuing]. To cross the aisle, obviously.
    So, yeah, so I get really stuck on the where does the third 
party come from because ideally you would have, like, a middle 
component. And we don't really anymore. I mean, that is really 
true that the--for a number of different reasons actually, you 
know. A lot of moderate Members are losing their seats. And 
then that also, I think, leads to a more polarized Congress.
    In theory, though, you know, and it is a theoretical 
version of having three parties, I mean, it definitely changes 
thing because all you have to do is, you know, look at 
parliaments where you have to start, look ahead to these 
coalitions. So, okay, we are going to try to forge weird groups 
to try to get a governing majority. And, I mean, you know, I 
like a good parliamentarian, just a parliamentary system. But 
that is kind of the dynamic that you would get where you would 
have--force--it would force people to kind of break outside of 
their group in order to get a majority.
    And the only other thing I would add on that is that, while 
we do not have a third group, you know, it is important to 
remember that, right now, for the time being, you do have--I 
mean, I know it is bad to talk about them on the--or Hill, but 
you have the Senate on the other side, which actually does 
serve as, to some degree, as--it does force a degree of 
bipartisanship. If you want to get something actually through 
the Senate, there are ways around it, obviously. But you need 
to get past that 60-vote threshold. And that is going to 
require, you know, Members of both parties.
    And so that is, you know, I think, certainly an element 
that can also kind of help people break out of their coalitions 
if you emphasize that a little bit more and focus on that a 
little bit more.
    Mr. Phillips. And before we move on, any thoughts on if 
rank choice voting, as an example, might change the rewards 
system for candidates to broaden their base of support perhaps 
or to not just pander to the base?
    Ms. Craig. So that is really outside my area of expertise 
in fairness.
    Mr. Phillips. All right.
    Ms. Craig. So I am really kind of hesitant to jump in on 
what--because it really varies. You know, I think it depends a 
lot on the State. It depends a lot on the districts that they 
are running in.
    I will say on the subject of thinking about the incentives 
in districts that, you know, there definitely is a line between 
the really what we call safe districts but really the strong 
partisan districts where there is, if not a disincentive, 
certainly no real incentive to be bipartisan there.
    But one of the things that I find in my research is that 
for Members who represent districts where it is not even just 
the marginal ones, they went up to about 60 percent of the 
vote, kind of that 50 to 60 percent, 48 to 60 percent range, 
the Members who collaborate more, who have larger and more 
robust networks, actually do a little bit better in their 
elections.
    So, if you have those sorts of districts that are a little 
bit more swingy, a little bit more moderate, then that 
actually--the voters end up incentivizing collaboration. But, 
when your district is 80 percent Democratic or 80 percent 
Republican, they want--they are with their team, and they want 
their team's positions, and nothing else will do.
    Mr. Phillips. Yeah, I do see a correlation between good 
behavior in more competitive districts----
    Ms. Craig. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Phillips [continuing]. You know, no question, yeah.
    Mr. Richards. Can I take a quick stab at those two 
questions, Mr. Phillips, really quickly?
    I--kind of on--adding onto Liz's point earlier around 
leadership, why people follow leaders who may be divisive in 
some sense, I think the easiest way to look at this is, when 
you see bad behavior, bad behavior is an unskilled expression 
of an unmet need. I will say it again: All bad behavior is, is 
an unskilled expression of an unmet need. So there are needs 
that are not being met, and the skill to meet those are not 
developed.
    So, oftentimes, you will find a figure who is able to 
engage the lesser angels of a person, so to speak, and, without 
the skills to manage those needs that are not being met, it is 
easy to follow someone like that.
    Secondly--and this is outside of my expertise, but I will 
take a stab at it anyway--is the idea of adding a third 
potential party to the table, so to speak. My initial response 
was I don't see how that would truly fix anything. It is like 
having a dysfunctional couple, and they are married. And it is 
like: Hey, we should add a child; that is going to fix 
everything. And I don't know if that would.
    I mean, like, the reason why I think about that is I think 
about how adding something to a situation that is already 
dysfunctional without really finding some tools that are going 
to repair the current dysfunction will be aided by adding 
something additional to it, if that makes any sense.
    Mr. Phillips. Yeah, and the reason I asked that, of course, 
is in, you know, when there is triangulation of leadership, it 
forces you, to get anything done, you need two of the three.
    Mr. Richards. True.
    Mr. Phillips. And that is--anyway, thank you all very much. 
I appreciate it.
    The Chairman. Mr. Cleaver and then Ms. Van Duyne.
    Mr. Cleaver. And thank you. This has been very, very 
interesting. I almost ran over to make sure I was here in 
person. We have so many problems. And you have been very 
articulate in giving us some reason to, you know, contemplate 
ways in which things can function better.
    We have multiple influences, and one of them is the media. 
And I understand the media. I mean, but if you want to get 
attention and want to become a national personality, I mean, if 
I, you know, took off my pants and ran around, you know, this 
building, I mean, I would get significant coverage tonight.
    Ms. Craig. Or lack thereof coverage.
    Mr. Cleaver. Yes. But if I did it, you know, to demonstrate 
that we have naked policies, you know, then I am heralded. And 
so that is a part of it that we--nobody wants to talk about 
because nobody wants the media to get mad at them.
    However, the good news is that, 2 weeks ago, a major news 
outlet--I am not going to mention them because I don't--we have 
this lengthy meeting. And I don't want--they may not be ready 
to talk about it. But they are interested in something that you 
have talked about and I have talked about here in our 
committee. And that is they want to figure out a way that their 
particular news outlet can measure civility among Members and 
recognize Members, you know, like, we are measured, as I have 
said to the committee, by every group in the world. I mean, 
the, you know, laborer, and the Chamber, I mean, everybody, you 
know. You get a 98 or whatever.
    And they are interested in doing it. We ran into a problem, 
and we talked about this. It was a lengthy meeting, and I was 
thrilled to see that that media outlet was actually wanting to 
do something to turn down the volume and or maybe more 
particularly to celebrate individuals who were not turning up 
the volume.
    And the problem that we ran into is--was--and it is going 
to be difficult to solve--and that is, you know, by 
personality, by their nature, there are a lot of Members whose 
voices are never heard because they just kind of, you know, do 
their work, get on the plane, and go home. Do their work at 
home. Come back. They are not going to be recognized by the 
media. And so, if you, you know, if you say, well, they are the 
ones who have the greatest level of civility, it is probably 
not a good way to, you know, to measure others.
    And I said to them, using a sports analogy, I said: Yeah, 
we have got to create a way to do it because you can hit 450 in 
baseball, but if you did not come to bat a certain number of 
times, you can't win the championship. You know, you have to 
have--a certain number of at bats that you have to have in 
order to be a part of the statistics. And so we couldn't--we 
were not able to get past that in the conversation. And so I am 
just wanting to throw that out to you.
    And then, to this, finally, said there are a lot of Members 
who on both sides of the aisle really want things to do better. 
I have been beaten up by a Republican friend who said: You 
know, you quit writing the letters.
    And for the newer Members, for about 5 years, I wrote a 
letter each week to all of the Members, 435 Members.
    And then I was in New York over the weekend, and another 
Member came up to me and said: You are the problem.
    I said: What?
    They said: Where are the letters?
    So I thought I would start it again. I think the chairman 
was probably here when I was doing the letters every week to 
everybody. So I am going to--I did one yesterday--2 days ago 
that is going out.
    So I know that there are a lot of people who want things to 
be better. And they don't celebrate, you know, people who are 
doing a nasty--making a nasty remark. But, on the other side, 
if you have any ideas on this system of measurement, I think 
this particular news outlet is really interested in doing this 
because they spent a lot of time with me twice and probably 
watching our meeting because that is where they first got the 
idea.
    Ms. Craig. So I can jump in on this.
    And I don't have an answer for you quite yet on how to 
measure civility. But I did make a little note for, like: Next 
project, consider finding a good measure of civility. So maybe, 
you know, a little bit, a couple of years.
    You know, I think--but you have raised several, I think, 
really excellent points that, you know, first and foremost, the 
media is driven by conflict. It is not actually their fault. 
That is what--the views. You know, it is, you know, conflict 
draws attention.
    But I will say that bipartisanship actually also gets 
coverage, like when--I mean, it is covered in a certain way 
where it is covered, it is, like, a rare show of bipartisanship 
on Capitol Hill. The number of headlines I have tracked of, 
like, The Washington Post, The New York Times that highlight 
the rare show of bipartisanship makes it kind of clear it is 
not actually all that rare. But if that is--if it gets them 
writing about it, cool. That is great.
    So, when bipartisanship is successful, you know, I think it 
does get attention. And I think the--the idea I was proposing 
about having Members have or having legislation that has, like, 
two sponsors, a Democrat and a Republican sponsor, I think 
would actually help in that it would make that bipartisanship 
much more visible. It would also make--we could get all sorts 
of scores to calculate for you if you do that on the political 
science side of things.
    But the other thing I would just say is that, you know, so 
there is a couple of political scientists at the University of 
Illinois who have done work kind of classifying Members, 
classifying all of you by your behavior in terms of not 
civility but in terms of, like, your actions, in terms of, 
like, how much do you fund raise, how much due vote with your 
party, so on and so forth. And the vast majority of Members 
fall into categories that, as Mr. Cleaver was pointing out, 
don't get any attention. It is 16 percent of the Members end up 
falling into, like, the two high-profile categories of, like, 
the party--you know, party leaders and not just leadership but, 
you know, carrying party warriors, I think is what we are going 
to call them, and what we call the ambitious entrepreneurs, 
although I really like conflict entrepreneurs, too, for that.
    But that is, you know, a small segment of Congress. The 
vast majority of them are policy--policy wonks, district 
advocates, you know, people who are focused on their policy. 
And so, you know, also doing internal work to promote more of 
that behavior, like, promote that activity more publicly could 
be part of it. Certainly passing their legislation obviously 
ends up getting more attention by making it more public that 
way, but it is a big challenge.
    Ms. Wiseman. I want to add one thought to that. I agree 
with you. You know, there is a reason why the media covers 
conflict. We are interested in conflict. It is part of our 
human nature. We are drawn to the salacious. It is interesting. 
It is compelling. And rather than trying to change that, maybe 
to play with it, double down on it, which is, you know, a great 
movie, something that we are fixated on is all about conflict. 
No one wants to watch a movie or read a story that lacks 
conflict, but what we love even more than conflict is conflict 
resolution.
    And I wonder if there is a chance to tell stories about 
conflict and then say: Here is the conflict. Here is how we 
were warring, at odds. Here was the no-win situation. And here 
is how people came together to resolve that.
    These are stories people want to read. These are case 
studies that would get media attention. So I would play up the 
conflict and add the resolution piece to it, and I think we 
could get a lot of attention for it.
    Mr. Richards. I want to echo what you just said, Liz. That 
is--I am so grateful that you said that because--and I know 
that the media is set up in a way to kind of, you know, attract 
people to drama. I understand that. But I will be just be from 
my own personal experience, and I feel like I am pretty dialed 
into the civility stuff. I had never heard of this select 
committee prior to, like, a month ago. And the work that you 
all do is so meaningful and so powerful. And, quite frankly, 
when I tell people, when I told my friends, like, yeah, I am 
going to be testifying on Capitol Hill about civility, it is, 
like, there is an amazing Select Committee on the Modernization 
of Congress that is doing really powerful work to make Congress 
work better. There is?
    So there is a responsibility. And I don't know on your 
websites if you have this front and center, if this is 
something that people can actually see, so people are aware of 
the work that you are doing. It could make a huge difference to 
know that there is hope on the horizon. There are people who 
understand this problem because I will tell you, on the ground, 
people are just, like: Yeah, this is the way Congress is 
broken. That is the way it is. It doesn't seem like anyone is 
taking the effort to fix it.
    So this hearing, hearings like this and the work that you 
all are doing needs to be publicized even more than it 
currently is.
    Mr. Cleaver. The problem--I am sorry. I am from Kansas 
City. It is the home of Hallmark cards. And the Hall family--I 
am not doing a commercial, although they--the family, they are 
good friends of ours. But, Don Hall, Sr., reads every script 
for the Hallmark movies. The number one watched net--yeah, 
network during--from Thanksgiving to New Year's is the Hallmark 
Channel.
    And one of the thing that--my son is an actor. So I have 
started paying attention to this stuff. But one of the things 
you have to, if you know Hallmark--I don't know if any of you 
know the culture. I don't--every movie ends beautifully. I 
mean, I mean, whatever it was that happened, it is--it ends 
beautifully. They have to end that way. And the millions of 
people who are watching, they know how that is going to end. 
And yet the overwhelming majority of Americans watch it from 
Thanksgiving to New Year's, and they already know how it is 
going to end.
    And so people are--they are hungry for things to work out 
well. And, you know, and they enjoy it and celebrate it. And I 
think we are fighting against it here. I have a--I don't want 
to get him in trouble. I have a friend who is a Republican. We 
have traveled all over the world together. I have wiser--
friends. And I said it to him the other day. We were someplace. 
And I said: You know, I am scared to say anything about this 
because I don't want you to end up getting death threats.
    I mean, I--you know, death--I have two people in prison 
now. I don't have them. The FBI put them in two prisons. And, 
you know, we talked about it yesterday in Homeland Security. 
And so I am almost--I don't want one of my friends to end up 
getting, you know, threats. And that is where we are right now 
in the country. You know: You have violated the rules of the 
tribe, and, therefore, we are going to attack you and call you 
and tell you what we are going to do to your children and so 
forth.
    So the--I think there is a hunger for it. But if we allow 
this thing to continue to get out of--to get further and 
further and further out of control, I am--I--you know, I have a 
little 6-year-old grandson who I love more than I love myself 
most of the time. He can do some other things. We won't talk 
about it here. But I actually fear right now for what my little 
6-year-old is going to experience, I mean, in our country.
    And so I--I think this committee is doing valuable 
business. I appreciate you being here. I think that we got to 
get out of this thing where we can't even acknowledge 
relationships because we are afraid to do it.
    Thank you. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. No.
    Ms. Craig. Can I--I just want to jump in really quickly, 
because an idea came to my mind while you were talking. It does 
not solve the problem of death threats, unfortunately. But in 
terms of we were talking about the Hallmark movies. And I think 
one of the reasons that, you know, the Hallmark movies are so 
popular is because everyone knows, for that one month, you can 
turn on that one channel, and you will get a feel-good movie.
    But you could actually imitate that behavior in Congress 
where you have a sort of, like, this is the bipartisanship 
month or the week, you know, whatever it ends up being where 
you have, if you had a week that was focused on, you know, 
bipartisanship and collaboration and you kind of centralize all 
of your activities around that theme like as a House, then that 
is going to be an easier way for you to get attention from the 
media probably also in terms of these, like, small little bills 
that wouldn't get attention of themselves. But if you do an 
entire week of it, like, right now I think that would be so 
shocking that people would be, like: Well, we are definitely 
going to cover this. But, you know, you can kind of capitalize 
on that by consolidating things.
    Ms. Wiseman. Yeah, and you can play it right after Shark 
Week.
    The Chairman. I feel like this is the time where I should 
thank C-SPAN for being here, but I also----
    Mr. Phillips. We need Hallmark to cover Congress.
    The Chairman. They did a week, covering the week of this 
committee. They replayed all of our hearings. As you can 
imagine, it was ratings gold.
    Ms. Van Duyne.
    Ms. Van Dyne. I had--hit the button. It is not----
    The Chairman. There it is.
    Ms. Van Duyne. Is it on? All right.
    I appreciate the work of this committee. But I think it is 
also incumbent on each of us as leaders to take those 
responsibilities of reaching out and being everything that we 
talk about in being a leader, of being accountable, of being 
collaborative.
    As a freshman, this has been an interesting time. I think, 
as anybody in this room will acknowledge, we are probably at 
our most divisive that we have been in decades. You know, my 
third day here, we had January 6th. The week after that we were 
talking about impeachment.
    We have a lot of different characters on both sides of our 
aisle, but I don't want to give anybody death threats. But I am 
just looking across the table. And, yesterday, Representative 
Cleaver and I signed a deal inking a caucus that we are 
creating as former mayors, trying to work together. And, you 
know, when we were mayor, I didn't have a letter next to my 
name. People knew where I went to, you know, where my kids went 
to school, where we went to church, where I shopped. You know, 
we were very accessible. And so, as mayors, I think we look at 
it differently. We want to be productive.
    I don't know anybody here who is just wanting to be on C-
SPAN. I think a lot of us come here with ideas of what we want 
to do, and we are desperate to be productive, which means 
working and collaborating. And I am looking at, you know, Ed 
Perlmutter, at the bottom of the--you convinced me to join the 
Congressional Softball Game, the softball team. Thank you very 
much for the 7 a.m. practices.
    But, I mean, those opportunities, we are creating. It is 
not, you know, having a month where we are doing it, and it is 
just kind of hokey, but we are creating those opportunities.
    Last week, I was in Minnesota with, you know, with fellow 
colleague Dean Phillips. We were going around and talking to 
businesses that were in his district to find out the 
commonalities. What are businesses across the country facing? 
And I am in Texas. He is in Minnesota. I will tell you: They 
are facing the same things.
    And I look forward to having you in Texas to do those, to 
do the same type of meetings.
    I think it is incumbent on all of us to create 
opportunities to do that. Now, look, we may not be in agreement 
on a lot of our votes. But I am trying to find ways that we can 
work together. Now, as a freshman, I may be naive to be doing 
these things. I mean, time will tell if they actually are 
effective. But I think it is important that we all recognize 
that we are here to do a job, and we can't do a job if the only 
thing we are doing is just throwing axes. And I don't know if 
those are interesting ways that have been tried before and have 
failed. But what are your thoughts on some of those ideas?
    Ms. Wiseman. I think that is the essence of leadership. 
That is my thought.
    Mr. Richards. I have to jump in, too, because it is 
interesting, Ms. Van Duyne. I was in your district, Tarrant 
County, and had an opportunity to speak at the Fort Worth 
Convention Center. And there was a moment where I saw almost 
the epitome of civility in terms of what I would see from--
there was a moment where something went wrong from an AV 
perspective. And the amount of people who came in and didn't 
place blame and didn't point fingers and just collaborated to 
get everything working again, it was hard to explain because 
there was no Republican, Democratic, Black, White, gay 
straight, born-again, atheist. It was just: Hey, let's work 
together to make sure this event goes off without a hitch.
    And in my travels around the country, I have always found 
that the leadership that Liz was speaking of, you know, often 
comes up in moments of crisis. But I also want to see how this 
can continue in moments that are just a regular Thursday or, 
you know, just a normal way of operating. I think we can get 
there.
    I did want to mention, too, to Mr. Cleaver--and I am really 
sorry about the fear that you shared about your grandson, about 
potential--I mean, it hasn't happened hopefully, but death 
threats that could be something that is a problem for even 
admitting that you are hanging out with someone who is across 
the aisle. Ms. Van Duyne was talking about going to Mr. 
Phillips' district in Minnesota outside of Saint Paul to have 
an opportunity to connect, and now it is on C-SPAN.
    But the idea is we have to normalize this. And as hard as 
it is to feel like, well, you know, I would rather keep it 
private for fear of these things, if we normalize that there is 
nothing to be afraid of, of having people across the aisle have 
meaningful relationships, I think we can begin the process of 
making meaningful change.
    Ms. Craig. And I would just jump in and say, I mean, I 
think that trips like the two of you are talking about are 
really fantastic for a few different reasons. But one of them 
is because a part of working together to solve problems starts 
with agreeing on what the problem is, and I think sometimes 
that is missing. You know, sometimes these conflicts can't be 
solved because you are not actually agreeing on what the 
problem is. And then, obviously, the solutions are going to 
vary. So, if you start by doing this sort of, you know, fact-
finding and work together to actually come around on the 
problem, then I think that facilitates also collaborating on 
solutions.
    And then the other thing I would say is, again, I think it 
is a lot of work could be done in terms of just making it 
easier for Members to find people to work with, especially 
Members in their first term who maybe don't have the robust 
connections that more senior Members have. And that is, you 
know, I think utilizing the infrastructure that currently 
exists in the House, like utilizing committee staff is 
obviously one place to facilitate that. But, even if it were 
just--I mean, Zoom makes things very challenging right now. 
But, you know, having these sorts of Jefferson Dinners, which I 
also am a big fan of, to get people to meet each other, like, 
you know, once you get more--once you get more, like, personal 
connections, they kind of have more--you know, they build upon 
themselves. And I think that helps a lot.
    Mr. Richards. One last thing, back to Ms. Van Duyne's 
point, orientation, and I know it was probably very odd for you 
being oriented during a pandemic and everything like that. But 
if we can also use orientation as an opportunity to set some 
norms around civility, knowing that being new to Congress, that 
could also be a great opportunity as well.
    The Chairman. Indeed, one of the recommendations out of 
this committee was to do that.
    Mr. Richards. Oh, awesome.
    The Chairman. So we are thinking alike.
    I think we have covered a lot of good terrain. I want to 
give folks an opportunity to ask some kind of cleanup 
questions. I just want to quickly, and then I will ask--I know 
Vice Chair Timmons has a question to follow up on, too.
    Dr. Craig, I think one of the--it is not just around 
incentives in terms of the challenge of collaboration. It is 
actually sometimes just hard to find, you know, who do I want 
to work with on this? I keep thinking that there are lessons to 
be learned from private industry. I worked for a management 
consulting firm that had thousands of people all around the 
world. And I could say who has got expert--you know, I could 
literally go onto an intranet and say, who has expertise on 
this subject?
    Similarly, I don't think anything like this exists in 
Congress where I could come in and say: Hey, I am a new Member. 
I want to work on veterans' housing issues. Are there other 
Members who have self-identified as wanting to work on that--or 
rural broadband or reducing debt or whatever? It does seem like 
something like that might be useful and being able to identify 
the staff person on your team who would be the point of contact 
for something like that. Is that kind of along the lines of 
what you were thinking about when you said, you know, like a 
craigslist or something like that, you know?
    Ms. Craig. No, that is. That is really what I was thinking 
about. But another idea, similarly, along similar lines is, 
like, again, within kind of the House intranet if all of the 
Members set up profiles that were, like, here are my top three 
priorities, the things that I am really interested in working 
on, and here are my staff contacts for those, it is a different 
presentation than like what you put out on your public-facing 
web pages because this would only be for internal use.
    But, you know, we do this in academia where it is, like: 
Okay, I am looking for someone to collaborate on a paper that 
studies X. And it turns out I can pull up their websites. And I 
can find, okay, you know, they--this is their priorities, the 
priorities in their research. And so I think that would also 
translate really well if you don't necessarily want to set up a 
dating site for legislating in Congress.
    The Chairman. Vice Chair Timmons.
    Mr. Timmons. Chair, thank you.
    When I got sworn in, I guess this was 2019. One of the 
coolest experiences I had was a dinner in Statuary Hall, and it 
was all the Republican freshmen. And the Marine Corps Band was 
there, and it was very formal. It was just a very cool 
experience. And I know the freshmen Republicans my year, 
freshmen Republicans, they are some of my closest friends in 
Congress, and I have a relationship with all of them.
    I don't have that on my Committee on Financial Services. 
And I don't have it to the same degree even close with the 
freshmen Democrats from my--from my year.
    So we are talking a lot about just opportunities. And we 
had previously discussed the idea of having committee dinners, 
annual committee dinners. And the Library of Congress has a lot 
of space. I don't think it is reasonable to open up Statuary 
Hall for that many dinners. But there is multiple spaces within 
the Library of Congress. And you could host a dinner, for 
example, Financial Services. You invite Republicans, the entire 
committee. And you have 10 seats per table. You do four Rs, 
four Ds. And you bring in people that you anticipate will be 
speaking in front of the committee and for hearings. You know, 
we can anticipate this pretty well with Financial Services. I 
imagine it is the same for most other committees. And you just 
have a get to know each other. There is no--there is no agenda. 
It is just, what are you working on?
    So I think that is something that is an easy, low-hanging 
fruit that we can do. But there is also this opportunity of 
issues. I mean, there is 10, 20, 30 issues that are very 
important to everybody. Why not have a dinner just to get to 
know people? Hey, if you care about immigration, we are going 
to have this opportunity where it is going to be an incredible 
experience to go and have dinner in the Library of Congress--it 
is beautiful--and share a meal together. And, you know, make 
sure each table is divided, R and D.
    And these are just layouts. I mean, I think everybody can 
agree that this is something that should be going on that is 
not. So I think that we will spend some time looking into that 
more.
    And the other thing with civility, a civility officer, I 
don't know where they would go. But this is not going to be 
easy. What I am talking about is not something that you just 
say: All right, you do this.
    Somebody is going to have to be in charge of making sure 
that all the committees are scheduled right. We don't even 
populate some of the committees until a certain time. So there 
is all this scheduling. And then you have to make sure that--
you know, I know that Zoe Lofgren and Rodney Davis serve on 
four committees or five--I don't even know--five committees. It 
is crazy. So you got to make sure there is no conflict, but it 
is doable. It is very doable.
    So I think that that is a really good direction that came 
out of everything that we just talked about. So, I mean, any 
thoughts on that idea? I mean, it seems like we are taking 
everything that we just talked about and putting it into an 
action item.
    Mr. Richards. Yeah, I would happily jump in on that.
    I love the idea of the dinners and having an opportunity 
from people from different parties to have an opportunity to 
connect. There is something humanizing about breaking bread. 
There is something--this has been, gosh, since the--the 
beginning of time where people connect more deeply when they 
have an opportunity share a meal together.
    I will also on that vein share something that could be a 
potential recommendation, as well, that could be useful from 
the business world is--and Liz kind of talked about this, but 
this is a little bit different--is Bring Your Child to Work 
Day.
    Now let me explain. Not necessarily bringing your child 
into committee hearings but having an event once a year where--
because I know the challenges--and Dr. Craig had talked about 
this before--where people don't live in the District anymore. 
They live away from D.C. So the idea of bringing your family 
here for a period of time where they could have an event, where 
it is bipartisan, and there is speakers, and there is teaching 
events. But, most importantly, lawmakers and their children get 
to interact with other lawmakers and their children. And the 
children are in age-appropriate events that are things that 
they can enjoy and have an opportunity connect.
    It builds the trust that I think is so desperately lacking 
in this institution where people can feel like: Hey, my kids 
get along with their kids, and there is an opportunity to do 
this. One, it will also help to make people understand what 
their kids--what their parents do for a living, which is 
certainly nice. But maybe, more importantly, it will remind 
lawmakers to set positive examples to their children and have 
an opportunity connect to people who may ideologically think a 
little bit differently from them. And I think it is a powerful 
way to begin this process and gives people something to look 
forward to on a bipartisan basis.
    Ms. Craig. And I would just say I think also the thing of 
the committee dinners idea is a great idea. I would suggest, 
instead of trying to make it so the entire committee gets 
together, because that is going to be really hard with some of 
your bigger committees and scheduling is a nightmare, 
obviously, but if you made it so that it was just like a small 
dinner, like eight members of Financial Services and the 
members had to sign up, it also creates some scarcity, like I 
think that could also get people a little more excited if it is 
hard to get into the dinner. And so, you know, it becomes 
something that, you know, they want to do--they haven't had the 
chance to do it--and facilitate participation with the 
schedules.
    The Chairman. Mr. Phillips.
    Mr. Phillips. Just one more quick question, and we have 
spoken about this pretty regularly. Just the physical construct 
of this hearing is remarkably unique in Congress. We are facing 
each other instead of backs towards one another. And maybe even 
more important, we are all on the same level, you know, you 
testifying with all of us, Democrats and Republicans. Do you 
think the physical construct perhaps of how we do our hearings 
and conduct our meetings might even change? In my experience, 
it is a little harder to be rude to someone who is just a few 
feet from you, not to mention physically on the same level. So 
any thoughts on that?
    Mr. Richards. I mean, 100 percent, 100 percent. I think, 
Mr. Phillips, just this idea of sitting--and I am a little bit 
of a political nerd. So I do--watched a few hearings in my day. 
But, to your point, it is having layers of higher ranking 
people with more tenure sitting higher than ones who are lower 
ranking, so to speak, and talking to the backs of people's 
heads is not--not only does it not increase collaboration, but 
it is just not really a civil way of doing it.
    This is an opportunity for hopefully whoever has C-SPAN as 
part of their cable package to see how this actually works----
    Mr. Phillips. Yeah.
    Mr. Richards [continuing]. When people do look at each 
other in the eye and have an opportunity to communicate. It is 
not just the subject matter that is creating this civil 
conversation that we are engaging in, but I do believe, to your 
point, it is the format.
    Mr. Phillips. Yeah.
    Mr. Richards. I think it makes a huge difference, and I 
don't want to overstate that. I think it does make a difference 
to be able to see people and look at them when they are 
speaking.
    Ms. Craig. And I want to--oh, sorry. Go ahead.
    Ms. Wiseman. I just wanted to add to that. I do think it is 
hard to be divisive and dislike people when you are close to 
them. And it makes me think--I want to share just a small story 
because it is about sports, and I haven't been able to add to 
the sports metaphor. And it is something--a story I heard Steve 
Young tell, you know, former 49er quarterback.
    Mr. Richards. Yeah.
    Ms. Wiseman. And he talked about one of his opponents, 
Reggie White, who was this, like----
    Mr. Richards. Uh-huh.
    Ms. Wiseman [continuing] Fierce----
    Mr. Richards. Sure.
    Ms. Wiseman[continuing] Lineman and he talked about what it 
was like being the quarterback in the pocket, like, knowing 
that Reggie White, who was, I don't know, like, 6 foot 5, like, 
I don't know, 300 pounds of, like, massive offensive line 
coming at him. And he said: I could hear Reggie coming. He was 
loud, like, I knew he was coming to get me. And I lived in 
terror of this man.
    He said: But when Reggie would come and tackle me--you 
know, I think he led the NFL in quarterback sacks. He would 
take Young, and he would grab him. And he would tackle him to 
take him down, and then he would use all of his own weight to 
flip Steve over and so that Steve landed on top of him so that 
he would take him down but not hurt him.
    And then Steve said: And then, as soon as he tackled me, he 
would be like, ``Hey, Steve how you doing?''
    And Steve would be: Not so great right now, actually, but 
glad you asked.
    He would be like: Hey, Steve, how is your dad?
    And, you know, Steve is trying to shake it off. And I think 
it is this wonderful metaphor, which is you can be fiercely 
competitive.
    Mr. Richards. Yes.
    Ms. Wiseman. You can be on opposing sides. You know, Reggie 
came at him with everything he had and was ready to take him 
down, but he did it with civility.
    Mr. Richards. Yeah.
    Ms. Wiseman. And he didn't hurt Steve.
    And I think that is a metaphor for how people can work. 
Yeah, you can be competitive. You can try to be vying for a 
point of view, but you can do it with dignity and civility and 
with good leadership. It is just like we need a few more Reggie 
Whites in Congress. So that is what I would offer around 
proximity, like they are close.
    Mr. Phillips. I love that.
    Ms. Craig. And the only thing I would add is that I think 
that, you know, one of the strengths of this structure of a 
committee hearing is that it does turn into much more of a 
conversation. I mean, your average committee hearing, you know, 
you come in. You give your 5-minutes talk. And then you leave. 
You have no idea what anybody else said in that committee 
hear--not everyone but frequently you have no idea what anyone 
else said in that.
    Ms. Wiseman. No, always.
    Ms. Craig. Yeah. So, you know, this encourages people to 
stay and have this conversation. But it also encourages more of 
an exchange of ideas. And, you know, I think that talking 
about--I don't have a good sports metaphor here, unfortunately. 
I am really sad about that. But, if you think about--thinking 
about, like, navigating the fact that there is this really 
intense conflict that isn't going to go away anytime soon, 
there are still a lot of areas where there is a lot of room for 
common ground. You know, if you think about going back to 
your--you are, like, people who go back to their districts, 
even if it is a really, you know, deep red, deep blue, they are 
afraid. They are, like, oh, well, I compromised, and so, 
therefore, it is bad. The district isn't going to care if it is 
something like ``and we worked together to bring you all of 
these money'' or ``we worked together to bring you all of these 
roads.''
    You know, that is sort of like distributive politics, in 
particular, is, you know, everyone is very collaborative. But 
having the conversations I think reminds people of the areas 
where you can find common ground, and then that also then 
facilitates collaboration.
    Mr. Phillips. Terrific. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    With that, I would like to thank our witnesses for their 
testimony today.
    And, Dr. Craig, I would like to thank your students for 
watching and boosting our C-SPAN ratings.
    I would like to thank the committee members for their 
participation. You are right. The structure we are using is not 
cosmetic. I mean, it is with an eye towards trying to foster 
similar collaboration that we are talking about today.
    As always, I want to thank the staff of the committee for 
pulling together such a great hearing with three such terrific 
experts.
    And, again, thanks to our friends from C-SPAN for showing 
up.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Can I just make one point?
    The Chairman. Yeah, go on, Ed, Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. I am surprised that Mr. Cleaver didn't talk 
about Patrick Mahomes.
    The Chairman. I would like to thank the National Football 
League for the substance for the day.
    So, with that, without objection, all members will have 5 
legislative days within which to submit additional written 
questions for the witnesses to the chair, which will be 
forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
    I ask our witnesses to please respond as promptly as you 
are able.
    Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days 
within which to submit extraneous material to the chair for 
inclusion in the record.
    And, with that, this hearing is adjourned.
    Thanks, everybody.
    [Whereupon, at 10:59 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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