The Foreign Service Journal, June 2005

T he Career Development Pro- gram laid out by Director General W. Robert Pearson in 05 State 11747 (see p. 16 for a summa- ry) presents State Department gener- alists with a challenge. If we wish to make it into the Senior Foreign Service, we will need to fulfill a num- ber of requirements along the way. Some of these are familiar (leadership training, etc.), while others are not yet fully defined (e.g., operational/crisis response). All will require us to make some difficult career decisions: What positions should we fill? Which lan- guages should we study? Which pro- fessional development opportunities should we pursue? There are two perspectives from which to consider the program— that of the individual officer and that of the Foreign Service as a whole. As individuals, we must recognize that the program will not be to every officer’s advantage. Just as there were no guaranteed promotions to the high- est level before, there are none under the Career Development Program. Some of us will not make it into the Senior Foreign Service, either because we are retired due to time-in-service or time-in-class rules, we choose to pur- sue another occupation, or we decide not to compete for promotion to the SFS for personal reasons. Some officers may face family situ- ations — for example, I have a spouse who is a corporate executive — that make it difficult to fulfill the require- ments. Others may not be able to travel to and work in some posts for health reasons or they may simply wish to spend as much time as possible in the U.S. And some may not be in- terested in checking all the program’s boxes, perhaps because they are inter- ested in staying in one region or spe- cializing in one language. Those (per- haps mythical) officers who go from one cushy European post to another will now have to move outside their comfort zone. Those who specialize in difficult East Asian languages will have to taste the cuisine elsewhere (either overseas or in the department cafete- ria) if they wish to advance to the SFS. However, the requirement to serve in multiple areas can benefit everyone. The E.U. multilateral trade specialist can bring her expertise to African countries’ WTO negotiations; the Asia economics expert can observe the Far East’s increasing resource demands first-hand in Latin America. The other side of the coin is the management perspective. In consid- ering the needs of the Foreign Service, the State Department faces a significant work-force challenge: to fill demanding positions in very difficult places, we need people with the right qualifications to get the job done, sometimes on very short notice. The Career Development Program is an attempt to facilitate and encourage the generalist corps to develop those qual- ifications. The program will, in princi- ple, provide more candidates for those positions in especially demanding places. Pros and Cons Is the Career Development Pro- gram too rigid? Or maybe not rigid enough? A review of the individual requirements, both mandatory and elective, provides further insight. Leadership and management training; significant and substan- tial supervisory responsibility. These two elements I consider givens. Although the first is mandatory and the other an elective, each is classified under “Leadership Effectiveness” — and our effectiveness as leaders is clearly a key indicator of our readiness to join the Senior Foreign Service. Certainly everyone is already com- mitted to the training, thanks in large part to former Secretary Powell’s own goals for the State Department. It is not clear yet whether there will be arguments over what meets the requirement for “significant” supervi- sory responsibility (i.e., is supervising only one other person sufficient?). Those in the consular, management and public diplomacy cones often supervise large numbers of employees from early on in their careers. How- ever the specifics are worked out, I think we can all agree that what we don’t need are deputy chiefs of mission who are managing sizable staffs for the first time. It’s usually too late by then for them to acquire the necessary skills. Language proficiency. Jumping to the most difficult of the require- The new program sends a helpful message about the skills FSOs need to acquire to advance. Guideposts for Generalists: The Career Development Program B Y J OSH G LAZEROFF J U N E 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 15 S PEAKING O UT w