The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2013 15 M ost State Department readers of The Foreign Service Journal will just have wrapped up their Employee Evaluation Reports when this issue lands in their inbox or mailbox. No doubt many of you are mulling over parts of the process you would like to change or abolish, since I think we can all agree that the process is imperfect. Even when written well, an EER presents an incomplete picture of an officer. It also leads to imperfect results. As objective and fair as the promotion panels attempt to be, year after year we all know deserving colleagues who are passed over. Most of us also know some unworthy officers whose observed performance does not explain their pro- motions. In particular, I’m sure many of us have had occasion to wonder how in the world some Senior Foreign Service officers ever managed to get across the threshold. With thousands of officers scattered at hundreds of posts worldwide, the State Department has had no alterna- tive but to depend on performance files for our merit-based “up-or-out” system. This means the only time an officer is assessed in person is at the oral inter- view prior to entry. Perhaps this is unavoidable for most career promotions, but the decision to welcome an officer into the top ranks of the most elite professionals in the United States government should rely on more than a folder full of reports of uncorroborated praise. There should also be a live interview to get at the real- ity (from excellence to inadequacy) of each officer, because the senior thres- hold is at least as important as entry into the Service. Would the Department of State hire new officers based only on writ- ten statements? Never. So why should acceptance to the Senior Foreign Ser- vice be different? The Value of Interviews The current senior threshold review process gives promotion panels inad- equate data for making crucial deci- sions, even though the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review emphasizes the importance of depart- ment leaders in Chapter 10, Chief of Mission Oversight: “Given the wide array of U.S. agen- cies at our embassies today and the cor- responding need for coordination and leadership, all chiefs of mission must be both empowered and held account- able as CEOs of multiagency missions. We must select the best candidates for COMs and for their deputies. We must prepare them fully for their positions, empower them and hold them account- able .” (Emphasis added.) How important is a 30-minute inter- view? What would it add to the evalu- ation process? Ability and potential in some areas cannot be appraised adequately from written reviews, but a short interview would be very instruc- tive in revealing each candidate’s ability to live up to Senior Foreign Service precepts such as the following: • Is an effective team motivator and leader, who inspires staff to par- ticipate and contribute. The ability to motivate others requires clear commu- nication skills and the ability to articu- late the mundane and sophisticated. To “inspire” requires presence, poise and other intangibles that take years to develop. None of these qualities can be demonstrated beyond doubt in a writ- ten text, but all of them become evident (or remain absent) in a short interview. • Establishes and clearly communi- cates organization-wide performance expectations. The DS-5055 form is a It’s Time to Update the Threshold Review BY BR I AN T. NEUBERT Brian T. Neubert is currently economic section chief in Ho Chi Minh City. Since joining the Foreign Service in 1998, he has also served in Kinshasa, Hong Kong, Antananarivo and Washington, D.C. SPEAKING OUT I’m sure many of us have wondered how certain Senior FSOs ever got promoted.