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R E G I O NS I N C E 1 8 5 6

Listening, humility helpful traits in turbulent timesIt is hard to imagine it. It was

once common. Staging an Olym-pics. You attract thousands of theworld’s elite athletes, their entou-rages, 40 to 60 corporate sponsors,hundreds of suppliers. It is a grandshow — millions watch on TV,thousands in attendance. Politicalagendas are set aside for a time tocelebrate healthy competition andhuman achievement.

The life of Linda Coady, thelead facilitator of the VancouverOlympics and then the chief sus-tainability officer of Enbridge,offers us insight into the skillsneeded to get past our state ofsocial unrest, police brutality,and racial tension. She offers usa path back to civics with dignityand peaceful productivity.

But how to “become likeLinda” during these times ofpanic over street violence, politi-cal turmoil, and the pent-up ragestored up during the pandemic?How did Linda learn these socialskills in our times of relentlesssocial mischief and seriouslyinflamed divide?

Linda says she developedthese skills by listening, deeply,to the needs of two worlds: oneof science and social leadership,and one of faith and virtues.

She said one can learn a great

deal by “listening through thedifferences between a father, amother, and your siblings, letalone the range of people withinyour neighborhood—if you looklong and hard at these differ-ences each day.”

Over dinner conversations,she absorbed from her father asense of respect, social inclusion,and professionalism in debates.How doctors treat their particu-lar spectrum of humanity withattention Linda has come toembody:

Listen■Be careful■Be attentive■Be kind■Solve real problems■Sure, all doctors have tons

of data, reams of materials thatshow how your blood does not lie.Yet how a patient presents them-selves, exactly like the protestersnow in our cities, is the matter athand. How a doctor hears whatthe patient presents is often thedifference between life and death.

Coady’s mother kept order

in a house of four children; and“was clear on her intelligentexplanations on how to navigatethe world.” Her younger sister isa computer science professor atone of Canada’s major universi-ties. Her brother died early. Onesister is a nun. All this readiedCoady to celebrate diversity, atrait we all need.

Social wisdom alone like thiscan survive the chaos in ourstreets.

Coady said the second majorinfluence in her life were The

Sisters of Charity of St. Louis.This teaching order of nuns ranthe girl’s school where Lindastudied from eighth grade (whenit first opened) to 12th grade.

“Here,” she told me, “is where Irealized things are not black andwhite, that fundamental humantraits are discernible. The nunsemphasized the virtues over thevices. Here at school we weretrained in humility, inclusion,and what excellence might be.”

She added: “I also learnedfrom the Sisters somethingabout the vices — the vice ofintolerance, the dangers of arro-gance, the powerful distractionsin adhering to the preoccupa-tions with the self.”

“But,” she reflected, “thegreatest virtue the overall expe-rience of growing up gave me isthat to do my best requires focus.There is a fundamental humanvirtue in focus, the cultivatedability to bear down.” The abilityto bear down becomes a honedskill we need in our times ofprofound social unrest.

Bruce Piasecki is a Capital▶Region writer and businessmanwhose books include “DoingMore with Less.” He’s the founderof AHC Group, a managementconsulting firm. www.ahcgroup.com.

By Bruce Piasecki

viewpoint

demonstratorsmarch Thursdayin Portland, ore.Police fired teargas and foughtrunning battleswith protestersin Portland in thelatest night ofdemonstrationsagainst policebrutality and thedeployment offederal troops toU.s. cities. Arethere strategies fortranscending ourconflicts?

Photo by Ankurdholakia / AFP via

getty images

Leadershiplessons forCowboy DonI t is not true that the WhiteHouse spiritual adviser,Paula White, claimed tohave had a vision of DonaldTrump “riding alongside Jesuson a horse made of gold andjewels.” That was satire, a taleunfortunately elevated to cred-ibility by social media. There’sa lot of that sort of thing goingaround.

It’s a shame, though, becauseif the Rev. White’s vision hadbeen real, it would have markedthe only known view of the presi-dent with an animal. Trump isnot known to like four-leggedcreatures. In fact, he is the firstpresident since James K. Polk,who left office in 1849, not tohave an animal companion in theWhite House.

No dog, like his 19 most recentpredecessors. No parrot, likeWilliam McKinley (it couldwhistle “Yankee Doodle”). Notan alligator (Benjamin Harrison)or a pig (Theodore Roosevelt)or even pet white mice (AndrewJohnson).

What’s most regrettable,though, is that Donald Trump

never learned to ride a horse.Now, don’t get stuck on howcomical that image may seem.Hear me: Learning horseman-ship would have made the man abetter president.

When I first became a dad, Itold folks that all I knew aboutchild-rearing had come fromriding a horse. Later it struck meas good training for staff leader-ship, too.

That’s not to liken either thereporters in our newsroom or mydaughter to my now-departedMorgan mare. It’s just that somecharacteristics of a good rider —consistency, stability, firmnesswith a kind heart — also marktraits we should value in ourleaders.

What got me to thinking aboutthis was the president’s move tosend federal agents into severalAmerican cities, allegedly torestore order, but with the effectof inflaming tensions — that is,actually undermining publicsafety. I tell you, it’s the kind ofdumb move you wouldn’t getfrom a guy who knows some-

thing about horses.L id for a moment,

o our con-rder in what

ordered ine. We’ll get to

first, what’sal.ginning rid-are taught toep their handssoft” — tonot pull on

the reinsneedlesslyor jerkily,so to avoid

restrain-ing a horse

from movingrward. They

learn to “give a horse his head”rather than being so controllingas to make the animal uneasyand hostile. Even a strong horseneeds some length in the rein.

No, you can’t let the horse bein charge. But it’s more effectiveto be firm and consistent in theinstructions you give with bothyour hands and your legs thanto brutally pull the bit back in ahorse’s mouth.

Just now, the federal bit ischoking Portland. A phalanx offederal agents in camouflage andtactical gear have swept into thecity, constituting what the mayorhas called an “egregious overre-action” to the unrest there.

The federal presence un-leashed on Portland has clearlyswelled the numbers of peopleengaging in the nightly dem-onstrations calling for policereform. The mayor and governorhave demanded that Trumpwithdraw his troops, who areCustoms and Border Protectionofficers pulled from their usualroles. Far from calming the dem-onstrators, the officials said, the

federal agents are galvanizingthem. Video seems to show someagents inflicting violence, ratherthan restraining it.

Yet Trump is now moving tosend agents to other cities — all,surely coincidentally, led byDemocrats, a move one may seeas aiming to underscore a cam-paign message that the presidentis a champion of law and order.

But he looks to me more likea would-be cowboy I watchedsome years ago, pulling so tightlyon his horse’s reins that thecreature kept backing up, tryingto get away from the bit. Whenthe horse finally reared up and

dumped the rider, I knew whoseside I was on.

Not that we should cheer onproperty destruction or anar-chy. But a smart response towhat’s happening in our streetswouldn’t escalate violence andundermine citizens’ rights.

Beyond that, is this deploy-ment even legal? ThroughoutU.S. history, presidents havesent National Guard troops torestore order or carry out thelaw — such as enforcing court-ordered desegregation in theSouth in the 1950s and helpingcities end riots in 1968. Trump’sagents, though, aren’t police ormilitary — they’re like a separateforce, loyal only to him — and theunease he is targeting is hardlythe extraordinary circumstancethat has led other presidents towhat should be a hard choice tomobilize forces against Ameri-can citizens.

Yes, Trump’s got the reins inhis hands, all right. But his poseas a tough hombre instills noconfidence that he knows how toget us down the trail.

Riding a horse offerslessons in leadership.You can’t let the horse bein charge, but it’s moreeffective to be firm andconsistent than to brutallypull back the bit in ahorse’s mouth.

Photo illustration by Tyswan stewart / Times Union

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Rex Smith is■Times Unioneditor-at-large.Contact himat rsmith@timesunion.com.

ReX SMitH

EDITOR’SANGLE

Times Union ∙ Timesunion.com ∙ Saturday, July 25, 2020

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