The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

Amb. Bushnell spoke about her time as chief of mission in Nairobi, during and after the 1998 embassy bombings. “There are times when I still have symptoms of post-traumatic stress,” Amb. Bushnell confided, “and that’s when [resilience] becomes really impor- tant. I get myself out, and I start walking. Or I call my friend.” Her advice to others in leadership positions during times of great stress is: “Take care of your people, and the rest will take care of itself.” Amb. Bushnell wrote about her experience in Nairobi for the July- August 2018 Foreign Service Journal . Her new book, Terrorism, Betrayal and Resilience: My Story of the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings (Potomac Books, 2018), was available for purchase at the event. Dr. Wilson Young talked about the adage that an oak tree will break in the wind, while a willow can bend and survive. Foreign Service officers, she said, need to have the ability to bend, but “it’s not just important to be able to survive. Our goal 62 MAY 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA NEWS Resilience in the Foreign Service On March 19 AFSA hosted a panel of experts to discuss “Resilience in the Foreign Service.” AFSA President Ambassador Barbara Stephenson served as moderator. Speakers were Ambassador (ret.) Prudence Bushnell; FSO (ret.) Beth Payne, director of the Center of Excellence in Foreign Affairs Resilience at the For- eign Service Institute; and Dr. Felicia Wilson Young of the USAID Staff Care Center. Ms. Payne, who wrote an article on resilience for the March 2019 Foreign Service Journal , spoke candidly about her experience mov- ing from “yellow” to “red” on the stress spectrum during a difficult time during her career. She discussed ways individuals can ensure they stay in the “green” zone as much as possible when it comes to managing stress. “I went to Iraq in the yellow,” said Payne. “I’d been to Rwanda after a genocide, I’d been through terrorist attacks in Israel. … So when I was in a rocket attack [in Iraq] that was life threaten- ing, I was vulnerable to having a mental health condition, and I was in the red.” She asked: “As Foreign Service officers, how do we actively foster an envi- ronment, for ourselves and for the people who work with us, so that we’re always in the green? … We have to ensure that our community, the foreign affairs community, stays highly resilient, in the green, so that we can manage these stressors, so that we can achieve our foreign policy goals despite the craziness of life in the Foreign Service.” is to thrive. True resilience is the ability to thrive … under the unexpected incidents that we face” as members of the Foreign Service. She introduced the idea of building a “culture of ethical care” to encourage institutions to work inten- tionally to create an environ- ment where their employees feel valued. “The ethic of care is about building relationships, not just caring about your- self in the outcomes, but also caring about the people you work with,”Wilson Young explained. It’s about “recog- nizing that the work that we do is impacted by our ability to function and perform as a whole to reach the goals, and that the organization also has a responsibility to us.” A recording of the event can be viewed online at afsa.org/video. n AFSA/DONNAGORMAN AFSA/DONNAGORMAN AFSA/DONNAGORMAN Beth Payne on staying “in the green.” Amb. Bushnell talks about the importance of friends. Dr. Wilson Young talks about the “ethic of care.”