Apolitical Foundation COO Kimberly McArthur: Wellbeing of politicians is important for our societies
Kimberly McArthur serves as the Chief Operating Officer at the Apolitical Foundation. She has a diverse international background, having lived and worked in various countries from Australia to Germany, and including experiences in Burundi and Haiti. McArthur is a lawyer and non-profit strategist by profession. She has contributed to the establishment of non-profits and is known for her ability to work with diverse groups to address complex policy challenges facing societies. She is particularly interested in cross-sector collaborations.
Mayors of Europe recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Apolitical Foundation, being happy to contribute to their most recent project, which aims to raise the awareness of the importance of wellbeing of politicians. We are therefore bringing the scope and importance of the project, and inviting you to participate in this landmark survey.
Apolitical Foundation, a global non-profit who works to support ethical, trusted and courageous 21st century politicians, is currently mapping the state of mental wellbeing among political leaders around the world and spotlighting initiatives and opportunities to improve it. This project has the potential to help politicians do their job well—all the better for the citizens they serve. What was the inspiration for this important and much needed project? Do you have other projects focus on upskilling and empowering politicians for future?
The Apolitical Foundation has focused on helping to get new, more diverse and better prepared people to go into politics since it started in 2017. Being a politician is an incredibly important responsibility, but it’s also one that most have no preparation for. We initially set out to create a network of training programs around the world to attract more diverse people to politics and support them with the personal leadership, policy-making and political skills they would need to run for office. We came into contact with many aspiring leaders, current leaders and political leadership entrepreneurs while working in this vibrant field, which we labeled the political leadership entrepreneurship space. People regularly told us the extreme difficulty of being a politician: how stressful, how draining and how–especially for women of color–how unattractive it was as a profession. It became clear that we needed to look at the level of mental wellbeing in politics and what was being done to support it. Politicians deserve good mental wellbeing because they are people, and because their decisions affect all our lives every day. We need them to be mentally and physically well and able to perform at the peak of their capacity.
Being a politician is hard, we all agree.
With threats and abuse on the rise, being a politician is an increasingly high-stress, high-demand calling. Research highlights the unique stressors of the profession. To solve issues like the climate crisis, growing polarization and pandemics, we need courageous and trustworthy decision makers able to perform at the top of their game.
Tell us please about the research and what are you aiming to create after the research for existing and future politicians.
Our research covers two topics:
- the current state of mental wellbeing among politicians globally, and
- how the job of a politician affects this.
We’re looking at how the different stressors of the job impact the wellbeing and performance of the people doing it .
To gather data, we’ve created an anonymous survey for current and former elected politicians in four languages: English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.. LINK. We are also conducting interviews with politicians about their experiences and talking to academics who work on psychology in politics, political party representatives, political leadership entrepreneurs and anyone else connected to or expert on political leadership.
In addition to collecting new information, we have also completed an extensive review of existing research related to this topic. Two of the most notable academics on this topic in Europe – Dr. Ashley Weinberg and Dr. James Weinberg (yes, they’re related!) – are on our Expert Advisory Council.
We will publish an insights and learning report and make it available to the public. We hope our work will help break down the stigma associated with discussing mental wellbeing in politics. We also want to offer new frameworks and ways of understanding political leadership and mental wellbeing. Additionally, we will spotlight the approaches and initiatives that exist to support mental wellbeing and explore where there is opportunity to do more. Importantly, we wish to create a tool that allows people to act, regardless of whether they are a politician, political party representative, political leadership entrepreneur or a citizen.
We at Alliance of European Mayors are supporting this project and we strongly believe skills and support for any profession are important, which includes politicians. We are inviting all the local government represenatives to take part in this important survey so we can all have better understanding of how to empower our elected frontrunners to be sucessfull role models for their citizens. Tell us how politicians can contribute to this survey?
We really appreciate partnering with you on this work! Our research shows that peer-to-peer support and networks, such as this one, play an important role in helping politicians navigate their challenging roles and maintaining good mental wellbeing.
It is very easy to contribute to the survey – simply click this link and you can select one of the four languages on the top right of the screen. The survey takes just 15-20 minutes to complete. It’s totally anonymous, though you can tell us who you are if you wish.
We are also conducting interviews throughout July. if you’re interested in taking part, please email me me directly at kimberly@apolitical.foundation.
