A Hard Day At Work

I think it will be a long time before any of us forgets seeing Chancellor Rachel Reeves crying during Prime Minister’s Questions last week. Setting aside your own personal views on her policies and decisions, it was hard to watch a person reduced to tears on such a public stage.

I have taken some time to formulate my thoughts on what happened and what we can learn from it as business leaders. But I will try my best to articulate my opinions on this one.

Emotions at work

The way I see this, is that politics isn’t the number one issue here. We know that the approval ratings for Labour, the PM and the Chancellor are at historic lows. I haven’t spoken with or met anyone who believes the decisions they are making are the right ones for business or the country. There isn’t much debate to be had about that.

The bigger story here, for me at least, is showing emotions at work. Specifically, being upset and stressed. For anyone watching PMQs live, or watching clips on social media later on, you’ll have seen Rachel Reeves visibly upset, crying mid-way through the session as the PM was pressed on whether he would continue to back her. When he did not explicitly give that support in front of hundreds of MPs and millions watching on TV, that appeared to make things even worse.

To be clear, it is perfectly fine for emotion to break through. It would be inhumane otherwise.

She went on to say that the issue on the day was personal, and the hype about whether she would continue as Chancellor quickly diminished. What followed, however, was debate on social media about being upset at work, and whether people in positions of power should be stronger than Rachel Reeves was that day.

Of course, resilience at work is always a necessity for any person in any job. Some times you have good days, some times you have bad days, no matter what job or role it is. It just so happens to be in this case that the person upset was the Chancellor, who has perhaps the worst job in the country in trying to return it to growth and prosperity. A task that many of us would not wish to have thrust onto our shoulders.

Even the Chancellor is a human being, and sometimes the pressure of the situation breaks through, no matter how hard you try to keep it at bay. I am sure many, if not all of us, have been there at some point in our working lives. I know I have. Frustration and anger can often get the better of all of us. Especially at the moment when market conditions are incredibly tough right now, and companies are struggling to survive month to month. The pressure must be intense for all of us in every position of a business.

For me, showing emotion at work is OK. Bottling it all up makes things way worse and causes additional problems. What does then matter even more so is how people are managed within the business when things do get tough.

Using the episode with the Chancellor, what came to mind is that it was a dire failure of leadership on the part of the Prime Minister.

Managing people and leadership

As I was watching the Chancellor struggle to hold it together, I wondered why on earth she was on the front bench in the first place. She was clearly upset as she sat down ready for PMQs to begin, and things only got worse for her during the half-hour or so of questioning. All the while Keir Starmer seemed utterly oblivious to her unfolding emotional battle. Which I found bizarre, as you could tell by the stony faces of the rest of the Ministers on the front bench that they knew Rachel Reeves was seriously struggling.

Indeed, the day after Keir Starmer confirmed to the media that he was not aware that his Chancellor was upset at the time or before, and that it was a personal issue that caused the upset. For someone who was getting up and sitting down next to her for over half an hour, to not even get an inkling of her distress shows a remarkable lack of leadership and empathy. Essentially, he left her on her own to fend for herself in a situation she was clearly struggling to manage. Very poor on his part indeed.

For those in business, leaders have a responsibility to put in place procedures and methods to ensure that what we saw at PMQs does not happen. It is important for managers, MDs, CEOs etc, to build a workplace environment where people who are stressed, who might be struggling with their mental health, or generally just having a really tough day, can find a place of safety to refocus. This is good, positive leadership and demonstrates to workers that if they were to find themselves in a bind, their place of work will be able to help them out. We know better than we ever have done before the importance of mental health, especially at work.

Perhaps now more than ever, when our market is facing one of the toughest trading environments in decades, putting a focus on staff wellbeing is the most important. That isn’t what happened last Wednesday in Parliament, and leaders in our sector and across business can use that as a lesson of what not to do, and continue to make positive progress in building and curating safe working environments for all.