Two Senators Not Engaged in a Shouting Match — And Why it’s Newsworthy
“In this moment he and I should be colleagues.” - U.S. Senator Tina Smith used this belief to let go of the voice of fear and develop action confidence. Photo: Eleanor Mueller, Politico
Last week, my US Senator did something remarkable.
Senator Tina Smith chose not to counter a series of hurtful, ignorant tweets with a factual barrage, an emotional meltdown or a public condemnation. Instead, she opted for a personal conversation between colleagues. Instead of a call-out, she opted for a kind, respectful, honest conversation - a “call on” her colleague to be his better self. It required some courage, or what’s called “action confidence” in Theory U change-making circles. It’s a master class in how we can communicate “across the aisles” of our lives.
She later debriefed the interaction in an interview on Minnesota Public Radio. Let’s examine what she did through the combined lenses of Calling On and Theory U:
1. Open Heart/Pause and calm yourself
Given the viral nature of the tweets, Senator Smith needed to respond quickly. However, she did take time to collect herself after Sunday morning’s tweets before initiating her conversation Monday afternoon. After all, she was grieving the loss of her longtime friends, fearful of an armed and dangerous killer still on the loose, worried about the colleagues who survived the attack, and in shock that such a thing had happened at all. Pausing allowed her to connect with her heart to sort through this jumble of feelings. By the time of her interview she was able to Identify those feelings in a succinct summary: “Well, the things that he put out on social media were so disturbing and so painful to those of us who love and respected Melissa [Hortman], and I wanted to tell him directly how I felt about what he had done.”
Calling In author Loretta Ross also talks about deciding in that pause whether you are the right person to have this conversation, and whether now is the right time. In Senator Smith’s shoes, many of us would not have had the wherewithal to do anything but lash out with an escalating tweet. This moment to take a breath and understand your own feelings prepares you to speak — now or in the near future. And it can be as brief as a deep breath if you’re in the middle of an in-person conversation when the need for accountability arises.
2. Open Mind/Don’t respond directly to the words
Senator Smith never refuted any of what her colleague had put out on social media. Instead she focused on the effect of his posts. “I approached it by saying, let’s have a conversation about this. Because I think that the impact of your words on me and people in Minnesota [is what] I want you to understand.” This took the conversation out of the frame of debate — where each person’s job is to refute the other — and into a structure that invited connection.
Getting to an open mind requires suspending the voice of judgment in your head - and the idea of not responding directly to the words allows us to get there.
From personal experience I can tell you this can be difficult. Some part of me always believes that if the other person only understood this fact they would see things my way. But this simply isn’t true. Think of how it feels to be on the receiving end of a fountain of facts - most of us take that as a cue to dig in our heels on our own ideas. At the very least, we scrutinize each idea, activating the parts of our brain responsible for judgment. Getting to an open mind requires suspending the voice of judgment in your head - and the idea of not responding directly to the words allows us to get there.
3. Open Will & Action Confidence/Call them to their better self.
Once Senator Smith had paused to ground herself and open her heart, then sensed beyond the words to open her mind, she seems to have found a state of open will or “action confidence.” Action confidence doesn’t mean that you have formulated a whole giant plan, just that you’re confident enough about your next step to let go of the voice of fear. Notice that she wasn’t exactly fearless, so much as she was entirely clear on what she wanted to express and what she wanted him to receive. After the photo of the two senators in the hallway went viral, enough people commented about his potentially intimidating posture that the MPR interviewer asked Smith about it directly. She responded, “You know, I felt so clear about what I wanted him to know and what I wanted him to hear from me that I honestly didn't notice that until I saw the picture later. I actually felt like I was a little bit taller than he was when we were talking to one another, and I didn't feel the least bit intimidated, because, you know, in this moment, he and I should be colleagues.” It’s not so much that you let go of the voice of fear in order to sense what to do, more that in deeply sensing what is yours to do the embodied presence of fear slips away.
It’s not so much that you let go of the voice of fear in order to sense what to do, more that in deeply sensing what is yours to do the embodied presence of fear slips away.
And with her action confidence, she did call him to his better self. This step required both the open-willingness to have the conversation, and the open-heartedness to drop the cynicism that says “He’ll never change.” It required seeing him as a human being who is deserving of her personal attention, and who is capable of learning, growing, and doing better. Her choice of a personal conversation in a quiet stretch of hall conveyed her belief that the two of them were capable of being, and behaving, like colleagues. And from the photo, you can see that she’s leaning in but has her head tilted in a less head-on direction. Her hands are gesturing as if to offer a gift. She spoke to him “. . . to tell him that he was making it worse and not better, and that his words have consequences.” This implies that he can choose to make it better. In Loretta Ross’ words, “From there, perhaps I can move beyond the surface-level conflict . . . if I realize throughout the conversation that what he really wants is something else: to feel welcomed and reassured that it’s not too late or too hard for him, too, to do good.”
After the conversation he chose to take down the posts.
Having this conversation proved reassuring to Smith and her constituents. “I’ve gotten so many messages from Minnesotans who have basically said some version of ‘you did what I wanted to do.’” After all, not many Minnesotans would have been present at the Senate, with standing to speak with him as a colleague. Doing what is ours to do, no matter how small, does feel reassuring. She couldn’t bring back the Hortmans or heal the anguish of the state, but she could call this US Senator to his higher self by acting from hers. And, in setting this example for the rest of us, she took a step toward healing the culture of contempt and the cycle of outrage that we have developed as a nation.
Remarkable, Realistic, and Real
This is remarkable for several reasons.
First, this kind of response is no longer common. We don’t have frequent examples of it, and it’s just not the norm - even in the US Senate, which was created to be a deliberative body. Smith noted this as well: “. . . often in the Senate, it’s not uncommon for us to speak to one another through other people. But I wanted him to look me in the eye.” When it does happen, there’s no publicity dividend. Even the public radio headline juiced the interaction up by labelling it a call out: “Sen. Smith calls out Utah lawmaker’s posts about political shootings.” But it’s important for us to understand it as a Call-On so we can use it as an example to follow. (For more on the distinction between the two see my earlier post).
Second, it’s a more realistic example than others I’ve posted about earlier this year. Both Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon and Dave Chappelle’s SNL monologue were meticulously crafted call-ins to the President as he took office in January. But that masterful crafting was possible because each knew in advance they would have their opportunity for it. Most of us don’t have this luxury of time, including Senator Smith. She needed to come up with a timely response in the middle of a work day.
“People are scared.”
—Bishop Mariann Budde. Her Service of Prayer for the Nation sermon suspends the voice of judgment by not focusing on the President’s words, but their impact. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP
Also both the bishop and the comedian spoke up for groups that were likely to be impacted more than themselves - Chappelle for “displaced people, whether they’re in the Palisades or Palestine,” Budde for “people who are scared right now,” specifically working immigrants and gay, lesbian and transgender children. This meant that neither of them were speaking from their personal emotional upheaval, an important role in a calling-in culture.
This brings me to the third remarkable quality: realness. Senator Smith was in fact responding to something that had a personal emotional impact on her. She had just lost a longtime friend and colleague in a cold-blooded home invasion. What’s more, the killer was still armed and on the loose, and she had been informed that her own name was on a hit list discovered in his car. On top of her horror and sadness, she had reason to be terrified — and also furious at the person who had been so insensitive to all of this. Yet, after getting clear on what she wanted her colleague to hear, she mustered the confidence to speak to him in person.
For those who have found ourselves struggling to come up with a response in the moments after our emotional buttons have been pushed, Tina Smith’s call-on is a great example. It has made me rethink the developmental sequence of calling in and on.
“Please, do better next time.”
— Dave Chappelle. His Saturday Night Live Monologue redirects the voice of cynicism to open-heartedly call the President to his better self. Photo: NBC
Calling In as practiced by Loretta Ross and others is the gold standard of speaking up, the most transformational technique, the thing that allowed Loretta to counsel people out of the Aryan Nations and help shift the misogyny of incarcerated rapists. Yet, calling in feels really daunting right now — mainly because of the level of self-mastery it requires to initiate a dialogue of loving accountability, and then continue it through a series of conversations over a length of time. The stakes feel so high, the situations so loaded with tension — it’s hard to suspend the voice of judgment when I think that person is just plain wrong, or to redirect my cynicism when I’m already shaking my head and thinking “there they go again!” And in this climate of violence, letting go of fear can feel naive. Even people who want to try calling in don’t feel ready.
All of this points to calling in not being the entry level skill, but the pinnacle of speaking up. Instead, calling on gives us a simpler way to practice the underpinnings of the method, without the expectation of a longitudinal conversation, and also without the need to take the lead in someone else’s transformation. Senator Smith’s hallway conversation on a busy workday in a highly polarized workplace shows that we can all do it.
If you’d like to learn and practice Calling On in a supported environment, I’m developing an introductory course that gives you the chance to learn and practice these skills. Stay tuned by subscribing to monthly emails or following my Humanitix events page.