The Foreign Service Journal, October 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2015 33 speakers included psychologists and corporate executives who explained what leadership meant to them and how good leaders had contributed to their companies and society’s well-being. We role-played scenarios on dealing with difficult people and motivating those who only wanted to do the minimum. And we learned early on that if we weren’t attentive to our personnel, then our enlisted staff and junior officers might leave, costing the service well-trained people who might be hard to replace. The fastest way for a senior military commander to be disci- plined or even fired is for an inspection team to report that the organization has lowmorale due to poor leadership. The same thing can happen when a State Department Inspector General teamuncovers problems at an embassy that is poorly led by an ambassador and deputy chief of mission. Until recently, inspectors were mandated to write a special performance report on ambassa- dors and DCMs that carriedmuch weight on promotion panels, for better or worse. In the case of a career officer, a bad report would make it difficult, if not impossible, to be assigned to a follow-on senior position. As director general, I received briefings on bad post inspections and, as required, consulted with the bureau assistant secretary to see if removal frompost and/or referral to a suitability review board was warranted. (Those cases, which thank- fully were rare, more often involved political appointees.) Training and Continuing Education Requirements All branches of the U.S. armed forces put a premium on train- ing, whether it is professional development courses that must be completed at each stage in one’s career or technical proficiency programs required to ensure officers stay abreast of develop- ments concerning, for example, equipment modifications. Just as the Foreign Service Institute has the A-100 course for FSOs and similar introductory training for specialists, the armed services have their own “basic” training regimens, which are fol- lowed by further specialized training. The difference is that the military requires completion of certain courses as a precondition for promotion, reassignment to a job with more responsibility, or even as a requirement for reenlistment or continuation of a career. In my case, as a junior captain I had to complete course work at the Squadron Officer School, either by attending a facility or via correspondence, if I ever expected to be promoted to the rank of major. And Air Force majors know that they have to attend the Air Command and Staff College if they expect to be promoted to lieutenant colonel or colonel, and one day be selected to attend a war college or other high-level institution. Similar requirements exist in the other services, as well. These courses stress managerial skills along with leadership development, and also focus on how policy decisions are made at high levels of our government. They offer a broader perspec- tive on the military’s national security role and train mid-level and senior officers for positions at headquarters, in the Penta- gon, or as senior military advisers on Capitol Hill, at embassies, etc. I completed Squadron Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and also took Air Command and Staff College classes by correspondence. The knowledge I gained was invalu- able, giving me, among other things, an early understanding of the importance of the interagency decision-making process and consensus-building techniques. Nothing like these programs was ever offered during the first 10 years of my Foreign Service career. In fact, aside from Spanish-language training immediately following A-100, I never returned to FSI for anything until I took the deputy chief of mis- sion course a decade later! Today, thankfully, this has changed. Foreign Service personnel can take a broad and impressive array of professional development courses that, if not directed to do so like the military, they are expected to take as part of their own career advancement. In 2014, State introduced a Career Devel- opment Program that established certain course requirements for promotion to the Senior Foreign Service. There’s another aspect to the military’s approach to train- ing that sets it apart from the State Department. Every military organization has a base or post education office that offers more than just the required professional development courses. That resource helped me obtain my master’s degree in busi- ness during a two-year assignment at Andrews Air Force Base, which helped a lot when I did commercial work throughout my diplomatic career. Military personnel deployed on unaccompanied assign- Military officers begin from the start of their basic training to read about and study principles of leadership from both military and civilian sources.