THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2025 41 Sarah Wardwell is a consular-coned Foreign Service officer currently serving in the Bureau of Global Talent Management (GTM) Innovation Unit. She has previously served in Jakarta, Santo Domingo, and Consular Affairs’ 1CA. Jean Akers is division chief of GTM’s Manager Support Unit. She has previously served overseas in Montreal, Kabul, Phnom Penh, and Curacao, and in Washington, D.C., in the Bureau of Consular Affairs Executive Office, at the Foreign Service Institute, in Consular Affairs’ 1CA, and in the Bureau of Global Talent Management Office of Career Development and Assignments. The Bureau of Global Talent Management has new tools to improve management practices. BY SARAH WARDWELL AND JEAN AKERS MANAGEMENT MATTERS New Tools for Middle Managers at State Being a good manager isn’t something that’s necessarily innate. It requires a set of skills that you develop over time—and these skills apply to any FS member in a supervisory position. You must be willing to take risks, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, ask for feedback, be vulnerable, and keep trying. A study by Torch Leadership Labs shows that good managers can increase employee performance by 25 percent or more and retention by 40 percent. STRAIGHT FROM THE SOURCE The State Department has a low attrition rate historically— just 4.3 percent for career Foreign Service employees in Fiscal Year 2023, including retirements. But according to the 2022 Department Stay Survey and data from both exit surveys and exit interviews, poor supervisory practices are a top driver of regrettable attrition. In 2023 the department fell to 14 out of 17 in the Partnership for Public Service Best Places to Work rankings (which are calculated based on Federal Employment Viewpoint Surveys). These statistics highlight the tremendous opportunity the department has to increase engagement and satisfaction in our agency by improving the support offered to managers across the Service. The up-or-out system of the Foreign Service encourages employees to move quickly from individual contributor to manager, perhaps before they fully understand what is expected of them as managers. In the absence of clear, consistent, and specific guidance, new managers wing it, often unsuccessfully, reverting to what worked well for them as an individual contributor and ultimately cementing bad habits over time. Recently, however, several new tools have been added to the Bureau of Global Talent Management’s resources available to all employees who want to improve their skills as managers.
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