I’d never wanted to be a boss. Managing myself was stressful. I was quite happy to outsource it to others. Others did a better job.

When I won the election, I felt prepared to be a politician, but ill-prepared to run an office.

I knew that my success as an MP depended on having a team that was happy. If they were happy, they’d be motivated. And if they were motivated, they’d be effective.

Over the course of my working life, I’d had the gift of working with some great managers who appreciated my strengths, were patient with my weaknesses and made work a joy. One of them came to see my maiden speech in Parliament and another one let me get married in her backyard!

But I’d also worked with some total moles. One of these moles was particularly nasty … She described her leadership style as “democratic”. A politics lecturer of mine once said if any country has “democratic” in its title, it’s not democratic. This boss was further evidence.

She didn’t acknowledge the things I was good at. She undermined my abilities and qualifications, while inflating her own. She would refer to me as her “subordinate” and nitpick the sh*t out of irrelevant, innocuous details that just didn’t matter.

After putting up with it for 18 months, I resigned. I packed up my desk with tears in my eyes. I loved my job and I was p*ssed off she had won. But the upside of being so badly despised was she paid me to stay away for my notice period. I’ll pay that as a win :)

I’d heard that some newly elected MPs hire consultants to help get their offices set up, recruit staff, assign roles, design systems etc. But I thought it wouldn’t be necessary. Although I felt out of my depth, I was cautiously optimistic that everything would fall into place given I’d appointed a good bunch of people who were smart and capable.

It didn’t exactly fall into place. The last 12 months have been a rollercoaster as we have scrambled, under pressure, to find our feet. We have rejigged roles, re-written position descriptions, moved out of the office, moved back into the office, made tough decisions, welcomed new faces and said some difficult goodbyes.

As an MP, you need a special combination of attributes in a staffer. You need people who are competent at their tasks (obviously), but they also need to share your values (as every task is overlaid by values) and most importantly – you must be able to trust them.

We work in a high stakes environment where missteps or mistakes can spell major headaches, or worse. It’s vital that your staff have your back. At the risk of sounding like Fat Tony from The Simpsons, loyalty is everything.

In the past 11 months since the 2018 election, my team has lived up to every one of my hopes and expectations. It has taken time but we got there.

After one particularly difficult week in the first part of the year, we sat down together to debrief and regroup.

I said we needed to set high standards, that we had a lot to prove to the electorate and that every one of us had to be on our A-game every day. I acknowledged that we were in a pressure cooker environment with high levels of scrutiny from all quarters – the media, our political opponents and especially our constituents.

I acknowledged that I expected a lot from myself and from them. But I also emphasised this: For all the stress and intensity, we had been given an extraordinary privilege and all our blood, sweat and tears (mainly sweat and tears, though Jimi did put a staple gun through his finger on election eve 2014), it would be all worth it for a phone call from the Premier saying we got our hospital back, or a new school, or drought assistance, or a safer road.

I looked around the table and they were all nodding in agreement – these incredibly clever, capable, highly educated individuals who believed in me enough to join me on this daunting, unchartered journey.

I am blessed to work alongside every one of them. Their commitment to the cause is iron-clad.

I know they’ve got my back, and they’ve got yours too.

*Pictured: Jimi and I, before we became serious politicians.

#behindthesceneswithTeamAC #gotyourback #politicsispersonal