The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

46 SEPTEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Employee Evaluation and Self-Promotion The Foreign Service employee evaluation is an annual exer- cise of “walking on water,” which benefits white men because their culture of entitlement and privilege facilitates self-pro- motion, while minorities and women are less likely to self- advocate. Inflexibility in the process is designed to maintain the status quo and not consider gender and cultural differences when evaluating performance. The department’s desire to sus- tain what has existed for decades will never progressively move the organization’s culture toward supporting all groups. To contribute fully, minorities and women must see a pro- portional flow of mobility within the ranks, starting with tenure. According to an official I spoke with recently, there is ample and strong statistical evidence that demonstrates minorities and women in every category are given tenure at much lower rates compared to white men. Why is it that minorities and women achieve tenure at much lower rates compared to white men? Where, exactly, in the tenure review process are minorities and women experiencing greater difficulty? In general, self-promotion is extremely important for career advancement, whether within the department or externally. The ability to promote oneself skillfully is a learned talent, and I do not call for disincentivizing the behavior. I also do not believe anonymizing the evaluation process will greatly overcome the gender and cultural differences in the tone and custom of how underrepresented groups promote themselves. I do, however, advocate developing a completely new evaluation process and system. The current process was established in the 1980s, and its design is antiquated. The evaluation process is designed to look at past contribu- tions to determine future success and readiness for promotion. But research shows people are inconsistent in rating other people’s skills, while they are not so inconsistent in rating their own actions. If promotion is based on identifying the future capacity of officers to lead, inspire and innovate, then the entire evaluation system needs to reflect that. Based on the “core precepts,” officers’ evaluations should not focus on knowledge, skills and proficiencies, but rather look to the future and potential of each officer. The evaluations should address questions such as these: Did the rated employee have a chance to develop skills useful for advancement, and use their strengths and talents in the assignment to drive the mission forward? How did the rated employee demonstrate capacity for leadership? In addition, the rating and reviewing officials themselves must be evaluated on how they develop and mentor the officers they supervise. The evaluation for their sections should address questions such as these: How did the rating and reviewing offi- cials facilitate growth and development of the rated employee? What substantive and/or institutional knowledge have the rating and reviewing officials contributed to the development of the rated employee? Managers would need to be trained on how to develop employees and properly assess the leadership and leadership potential of those they supervise. The subtle shift here is in asking what did the supervisor do with their team, not what did the manager think of the employee. While this requires a cultural shift, doing so increases the effectiveness and value of the performance management structure for all, and truly places managers in a position to lead, coach and inspire their staff. That’s what leadership is all about, right? Where Are the Barriers? Issues relating to promotion and diversity within the State Department were reviewed in 2019 by the Government Accountability Office. The resulting January GAO report, “Additional Steps Are Needed to Identify Potential Barriers to Diversity,” highlights the statistical relationships between pro- motion and minority and gender status and the extent to which the department has identified any barriers to diversity in its workforce. The report documented that the odds of promotion from FS-4 to FS-3 were 12.8 percent lower for minorities than whites. The department commented on GAO’s report, stating that the high Pickering and Rangel attrition rates at FS-4 “skew” the promotion statistics to show a lower promotion rate for minorities entering the FS-3 rank. How could minority fellows statistically distort the promo- tion rates from FS-4 to FS-3 if roughly 60 Pickering and Rangel Fellows, who are not all minorities but include white men and women as well, enter A-100 each year? If we look at the attrition At the heart of many State Department problems is bad management and, in particular, a permissive attitude toward bad managers.