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From university classes to families to political leaders, many people have been using the Zoom video conferencing app to work and connect while being stuck inside their own homes during this pandemic.
However, on Thursday, Saskatoon Mayor, Charlie Clark, had a bit of an unusual Zoom experience, when a surprise guest speaker was introduced on a conference call – former United States President, Barack Obama.
“It was very cool. I was kind of in awe of being in that moment. You’re actually on the line with leaders from around the world and President Obama and he’s just talking to us as mayors and sharing in a very casual but experienced way,” said Clark.
“When he shares advice of how to be a leader in difficult times you have to take it seriously and it was pretty valuable to be able to feel that sense of being part of this much larger network of people that are all going through this same thing.”
Clark is part of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative that connects mayors from around the world with each other, Harvard professors and other world leaders to share practices that can help solve complex problems.
Of the five points laid out by Obama as things important for leaders to remember during crises, the ones that stood out most to Clark involved building the right team and telling the truth.
“One is how important it is to listen to expert advice and to work with experts even if they are telling you things that are hard to hear. You need to come to terms with the truth and make sure you are not just relying on everybody’s gut instinct but on what the evidence and science is saying,” he said.
“And that this is the balancing act that we have to play as leaders to be truthful and honest about what is hard to hear but also support and maintain the morale of your citizens and your teams and make sure people are feeling confident about a future but not sugar coating the truth either.”
Facetime with the 44th president of the United States wasn’t all that Clark got out of the conference call. He also got some ideas that he’d like to bring back to Saskatoon moving forward.
“I want to see what we can do with community partners to make sure that we are reaching out proactively to seniors and touching base and finding out if there is anything that can be done. Because it is really important that we keep seniors at home right now but that can be hard and so we also need to support people emotionally,” he said.
“The other is there is concerns about domestic violence and even in some cases, child abuse. If families are getting stressed in these difficult times, we don’t want this to have a negative impact on kids. So we will also be paying attention to what we can be doing with community partners to support families through this.”
Above all, Clark hopes that Saskatoon residents don’t feel alone during this difficult time.
“Even as a city we’re connected now to this international network and I think we are really in one of the best places in the world to be going through this given that we have locked down early and we are containing the cases from what it looks like,” he said.
“We have a very strong community and we have the ability to draw on the best ideas in the world to get through this.”
