The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2013 17 Even a short interview would help reveal each officer’s ability to live up to Senior Foreign Service precepts. principal officers, the Foreign Service Institute covers 34 leadership themes organized in broad categories: execut- ing, influencing, relationship building and strategic thinking. Of these, “influencing” is argu- ably the most fundamental to the art of diplomacy. Yet the specific skill, often described as the ability to “woo,” is never identified as a strength pos- sessed by course participants. That may be because this vague yet powerful aptitude can surely only be assessed in action (as in an interview), not in writing. Other global organizations follow well-developed best practices in select- ing their top executives. At Fortune 500 companies, it is common for at least one of the promotion decision-makers to personally know the candidate and have firsthand experience with her or his performance. Corporate leadership experts includ- ing McKinsey & Company, author of the State Department’s “War for Talent” report, note that an executive’s future potential must be based on personality, fit within the organization and listen- ing skills. The department should be benchmarking itself on these kinds of thorough vetting processes. Implementing a threshold inter- view need not be costly or difficult. The Career Development Program already includes several requirements an officer must meet before opening her or his window. Once promoted to FS-1, offi- cers have years before they are consid- ered for the senior threshold, during which time they would certainly serve in Washington or be there for consulta- tions. With this in mind, the Bureau of Human Resources should establish a roster of senior officers assigned to Washington who have volunteered to serve as “threshold interviewers.” One can envision a system under which an FS-1 officer contacts HR two months in advance to schedule the interview with an ad hoc committee of three senior interviewers. A simple format could be established, with perhaps a menu of 20 questions interviewers could choose from. The 30-minute interview would be video-recorded and added to the officer’s performance file. In addition to reading the file, senior promotion panels would watch the videos and take them into account in ranking candi- dates. Time for a Change For all these reasons, I believe the time has come to update the threshold review process. Not only would more mistakes be avoided, but several candi- dates stuck at the FS-1 level would no doubt find their live performance tips the scales and gets them into the Senior Foreign Service. Above all, a simple 30-minute interview would improve promotion panels’ ability to choose who should cross the SFS threshold and lead the State Department in the future. n