The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

46 MAY 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FOCUS A piece of advice that I have occa- sionally offered to younger Foreign Service colleagues is that if you mess up, fess up, preferably as quickly as possible. We all make mistakes, and I believe it is much better for a super- visor to hear promptly and directly from you about your goof or over- sight than later from someone else. The most memorable occasion when I had to follow my own advice occurred late in 1994, while I was chargé ad interim at the U.S. embassy in Bucharest. It was customary for the local NATO chiefs of mission to meet monthly at different embassies, and it was our turn to play host. On the appointed day, and according to our usual practice, three embassy officers met the arriving excellencies at the front gate and escorted them individually past the Marine guard to the Retired Senior Foreign Service Officer Jonathan B. Rickert spent the majority of his 35-year career in or dealing with Central and Eastern Europe. His final two overseas posts were as deputy chief of mission in Sofia and then Bucharest. He served as Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson’s staff aide at Embassy Moscow from 1967 to 1968. A retired FSO reflects on the utility of a piece of advice he took to heart during his career. BY JONATHAN B . R I CKERT ON PROFESSIONAL DIPLOMATS: LEADERSHIP & LESSONS If You Mess Up, FessUp ambassador’s second floor office. I greeted them there, and we drank coffee until everyone was present and the meeting could start in the nearby conference room. This time, however, all escort officers were occupied with other envoys when the ambassador of France arrived and pre- sented himself to the Marine guard. Not recognizing the ambas- sador, the Marine correctly asked to see his ID and inquired where he was going and for what purpose. The ambassador was still engaged with the guard when an escort officer came and led him upstairs. As soon as he saw me, the ambassador steered me away from the rest of the group. Red in the face and quaking with indigna- tion, he castigated me over his outrageous “mistreatment.” In all his years of working with Americans—most recently as his country’s deputy chief of mission in Washington—he had always been treated with respect. It was inexcusable that he had just been dealt with like any visitor off the street, he sputtered. He concluded that he knew our new ambassador would be arriv- ing shortly and promised to tell him exactly what had happened and about my diplomatic “failure.” The verbal onslaught took me completely by surprise. What could I say? I apologized profusely, assuring him that no disre- spect had been intended. All of the escort officers had, unfortu- nately, been occupied when he arrived, and the Marine guard was simply following standard procedure. However, it was my U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE