The Foreign Service Journal, October 2010

Essay Contest, now in its 11th year, is to stimulate awareness of the ForeignService among American high school students across the country andabroad. AFSApro- motes the contest widely through direct mailings to college counselors and social studies teachers, aswell as through listings onvariousWeb sites, including Facebook. The 2010 contest generated more than400 submissions fromhighschool stu- dents nationwide. Studentswere asked to analyze and explain how Foreign Service members promoteU.S. national interests by participating in the resolution of today’s major international problems. The contest is open to all students in grades nine through 12 attending a pub- lic, private, parochial or home school, or participating in a high school correspon- dence program anywhere in the U.S., as well as U.S.-citizen students attending schools overseas. Studentswhose parents are members of the U.S. Foreign Service or have served on the advisory commit- tee are not eligible. AFSA’s Perri Green deserves much credit for ably administering the contest since its inception in1999. Formore infor- mationabout the essay contest and to read he most effective way to improve organizational performance is to improve first-level supervisors.” That quote is from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board’s recent- ly released report, “A Call to Action: Improving First-Level Supervision of Federal Employees.” The report (available on theWeb) carefully describes the longstanding problems that federal agencies have had in selecting supervisors, developing them, providing feedback for themandhold- ing them accountable. Why haven’t those problemareas already been addressed, given the multitude of reports by the Govern- ment Accountability Office, Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management, not tomention the private studies of federal managerial problems? The MSPB report notes that agencies face “uncontrollable” factors — inadequate funding and staff, change of administration every four to eight years, the exploding pace of tech- nological change and complex personnel systems among them. However, the report also identifies many “internal” factors: a lack of awareness of how important super- visors are to an agency; human resource staffs that are ill-equipped to advise the agencies; and, finally, the entrenchment of traditional attitudes and approaches that make agencies highly resistant to change. Hmm, sounds like the Foreign Service to me! Most foreign affairs agencies take a “Who, me? Develop the newbies?” approach and hope new FSOs will learn through “on-the-job” training or by random work-life experiences. The MSPB report notes that OPM has developed a Supervisory Qualification Guide outlin- ing 14 competencies that new supervisors should have. Some of these — cus- tomer service, interpersonal skills, oral and written communication, human cap- ital management, conflict management and problem solving—can be developed and refined during formal training or on-the-job experiences. Other qualities — including accountability, decisiveness, flexibility, integrity and resilience — are not likely to be developed in this way, though. So agencies need to select people who already have those characteristics, carefully encourage them to develop the skills theymay not have, support them through their careers, and provide feedback by holding them accountable for their decisions. This last point is especially important as the supervisors become managers and executives. After we hire and train new FSOs, we have to retain them through a long career — a challenge I will discuss in my next column. ❏ Most foreign affairs agencies take a “Who, me? Develop the newbies?” approach and hope new FSOs will learn through “on-the-job” training or by random work-life experiences. V.P. VOICE: FAS ■ BY HENRY SCHMICK Train and Retain 46 F OR E I GN S E R V I C E J OU R N A L / OC T OB E R 2 0 1 0 A F S A N E W S Essay • Continued from page 43 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signs a photo- graph for 2010 high school essay award-winner Evaline Bai on Aug. 11. Bai wrote an essay titled, “Challenges to theU.S. Foreign Service: Rebuilding Afghanistan.” MICHAEL LAIACONA “T