The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2017

24 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL agency talents and resources toward shared goals, the focus had to turn outward. Before the bombing, transforming policy into results meant disciplined use of people’s professional skills, not their staff assistant abilities. The bombing showed that our Embassy Nairobi Country Team was in fact a team, not just another name for senior staff. We suffered a 50-percent casualty rate in the chancery on Aug. 7, 1998. Forty-six employees died, among them 12 Americans, and literally no one escaped without wounds, many of them life-changing. Yet it never occurred to any of us to close down operations. Most American employees decided to remain at post following the bombing. Kenyans had no choice but to stay. The lesson that practicing leadership means getting over yourself to focus on others came as a whack upside the head a few weeks after the attack. I was asked to speak at an unexpected remembrance ceremony for a beloved col- league. I was burned out from funerals, memorial services, anger and sadness. Physically and emotionally exhausted, I actually felt a stab of resentment. Whack: This is not about me! During the Rwandan genocide, it was all about us. Wash- ington policymakers acknowledged that we were the “world leader” in the international arena, but when it came to this crisis, practicing leadership was the last thing we did. We spent almost all of our time talking about “us”—i.e., what the U.S. government could/should/would not do. Instead of harnessing our brainpower to come up with innovative ways of halting a genocide absent military boots on the ground—if such a thing is possible—we argued. Meanwhile, more than 800,000 children, women and men were massa- cred. When the U.S. did practice lead- ership—the Marshall Plan is a good example—results were transformative. This was not the case in Rwanda, and President Bill Clinton later apologized. 2 The best strategies come from asking good questions and listening, especially to dis- sent. I learned the importance of good questions while doing evacuations and crisis work in the Africa Bureau. When we were bombed, I had no idea what people needed in order to survive at ground zero. I was in the building next door and then at our crisis control center. The survivors who turned themselves into first responders were the ones with the information. My job was to understand their reality and represent their needs. That part never stopped over the next 10 months. Leadership is “the process whereby one individual influ- ences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal,” accord- ing to Peter Northouse in Leadership: Theory and Practice (Sage, 2013). I saw it practiced at every level; and at mine, I needed to get accurate information and honest feedback. No one seemed to have a problem with that, and as a result, we avoided important mistakes. Near the end of my tour in Kenya, I had to informmy colleagues that we had lost the argument with Washington to create a park on the site of the bombed embassy. It was leased property from the Kenyan government and would have to be returned, I advised. “You can’t do that!” came a voice from the other side of the room. “Land grabbers will plant another building on the busy corner,” he continued. “And there will be nothing to commemo- rate what happened.” Everyone in the room knew he was right. We made a plan, encouraged private means to build and maintain a park, and I lobbied President Daniel arap Moi’s government to donate the I could not heal a wounded community, but I could help create an environment in which healing was possible. U.S.OFFICEOFTHEDIRECTOROFNATIONAL INTELLIGENCE A view of the wreckage after the Aug. 7, 1998, terrorist bombing of U.S. Embassy Nairobi that left hundreds dead and wounded.