The Foreign Service Journal, February 2003

Workaholism is unhealthy for individ- uals, families and organizations; it is more a sign of poor organizational and prioritization skills than dedication. I have worked for COMs who expected everyone to practically live at the office, while others chased us out to go have some fun. Not only was morale much better under the second type, but more productive work was accomplished. (Work really does expand to fill the time available.) This means employees, especially at hard- ship posts, should be encouraged to take their full R&R, home leave, etc. One encouraging trend is that Generation X and Y employees believe it important to balance their lives between work, family and recre- ation. Accordingly, ambassadors who abuse their employees’ time will find their best talent leaving, and very little will get done. There is an old Foreign Service adage: “Ambassadors look up, while DCMs look down.” In other words, the ambassador should handle the substantive landscape and cultivate relations with the host country, while the deputy deals with “mundane” management issues. This was never good advice but it is complete non- sense now. It simply doesn’t work. More than ever, the level of morale affects every facet of mission perfor- mance and community life. And it is the ambassador’s responsibility to work ceaselessly to make it as high as possible. Ambassador Tibor Nagy recently con- cluded his tour as chief of mission in Ethiopia and is currently the Diplomat-in-Residence at the University of Oklahoma. Among many other assignments since enter- ing the Foreign Service in 1978, he served previously as ambassador to Guinea, and deputy chief of mission in the Seychelles, Togo, Cameroon and Nigeria. F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 15 S P E A K I N G O U T