The Foreign Service Journal, April 2003

Among its many other duties, AFSA serves as an emer- gency room for wounded careers. Each year, hun- dreds of employees come to AFSA seeking assistance with falsely prejudi- cial evaluations, disappointing assign- ments, denied benefits, and other prob- lems involving the personnel or admin- istrative bureaucracy. Feeling let down by the system, these employees often comment with sad irony on the many sacrifices that they and their families have made over the years for the needs of the Service. The list of sacrifices includes things big and small: enduring long separa- tions from friends and family in the U.S.; risking injury and disease at hard- ship posts; seeing poor overseas job opportunities eat away at their spouses’ lifetime earnings and retirement sav- ings; repeatedly cutting short home leave in order to rush to the next post; working long hours doing “more with less”; losing annual leave at the end of the year due to a heavy workload caused by inadequate staffing; and receiving a base salary lower than that of domestic colleagues due to the lack of overseas locality pay. But over the long run, most Foreign Service members come to judge their sacrifices to be counterbalanced by the rewards (material and emotional) of service. This concept of balance is also important in recruiting new Foreign Service personnel. While a weak econ- omy and a superstar secretary of State may have postponed the competitive “War for Talent” about which McKinsey & Company warned the State Department in a 1999 report, recent national studies show that job seekers increasingly are looking for balance when evaluating prospective employers. Significantly, they are not only looking for a balance between the demands and rewards of the work- place, but they are also seeking a healthy balance between career and family. But is the Foreign Service, with its 24-hour-a-day national security responsibilities, a calling in which members should expect to have a bal- ance between their job and their non- work life? The answer is “yes.” Of course, there inevitably will be days, months, even whole tours during which the demands of the office will overshadow the needs of family, friends, volunteerism, or hobbies. But, over the course of a career, there must be a balance. As Secretary Powell once advised an audience, “Never become so consumed by your career that nothing is left that belongs only to you and your family. Don’t allow your profession to become the whole of your existence.” In addition to telling employees to “do your work and then go home to your families” and to “take leave when you’ve earned it,” Secretary Powell has also urged employees to “have great fun” in their assignments. Again, not every day, month, or even whole tour is going to be enjoyable. But, over the course of a career, if someone is not having fun they are either in the wrong line of work or are doing their work in the wrong way. Here, another Powell principle is instructive: “I like staff members who take their work serious- ly, but not themselves. I like people who work hard and play hard.” The Foreign Service career is best viewed as being a journey rather than a destination. In other words, the most important thing is the experi- ences that we have day by day throughout our careers rather than some exalted title or high position that we may achieve at the end of our careers. From that perspective, it is vitally important to maintain a balance between work and family. P RESIDENT ’ S V IEWS A Career in Balance B Y J OHN K. N ALAND A P R I L 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 5 John K. Naland is the president of the American Foreign Service Association. Demanding as it is, the Foreign Service is still a calling in which members should expect to have a balance between their job and their non-work life.