Michael Barnett: Parliament is a workplace too

Parliament House. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION

I can remember when funding from the Labour Government and support from my good friend Bev Cassidy Mackenzie enabled the Auckland Business Chamber to create a conversation around mental health and wellbeing.

For so many years we were aware of the impact of stress and pressure on business managers and leaders, and the consequences of those behaviours in their homes, but it was a conversation we didn’t have out loud in case it became a judgment on our leadership capabilities or damaged the value of the brand we led in the market.

Once we started the conversation, we quickly learned there were signs that should send a message to us that something was wrong. The times when we snapped at team members or partners when normally we would have been more considerate and rational – damaging business relationships was one thing but extending that to family was and remains unacceptable.

The drink we had at night that went from one to many as a means of coping could be joked about but the signal it sent could not be ignored and the delaying tactics we introduced as a means of coping instead of fronting issues and dealing with them – they were all signs that something was wrong and that, as leaders and managers under pressure, we needed help.

Some of us took the help and became better managers and leaders - better people. Others took convincing or carried on without facing up to the issues and their impact.

Taking the help meant a different communication within our workplace and in our homes, and it required a change in behaviour from all parties. Once all parties accepted there needed to be change, we all started seeing different results.

Today in business, the issue of mental health and wellbeing, pressure and stress is an open conversation and has required the introduction of better feeding of people and their needs along with a better style of management and demands we place on people.

And then the new year shone a spotlight on the pressures and demands of another workplace, the world of politics. And have we approached the possible consequence of pressure and stress and mental health in the same way as we did for business? Or did we suggest that stealing is stealing and if you can’t survive in the playground, get out?

Some have seen it as the potential for a new shooting gallery of political cheap shots and overlooked the weaknesses of others we have witnessed over the past decade.

I was reminded that both politics and the playground are places for people, which unfortunately means hiding places for bullies, point-scorers and persecutors. Our leaders need feeding and support – they all have different attributes and talents to offer but none is perfect. Parliament is a workplace and could be a place for bullies, but as we have found in business there is no reason why we shouldn’t make it a safe place to work and to talk openly about mental health and wellbeing – the people there are human and fallible.

Michael Barnet CNZM is the former chief executive of the Auckland Chamber.