STATE VP VOICE | BY HUI JUN TINA WONG Contact: wong@afsa.org | (202)-647-8160 Consensus Building Creates Effective Teams From day one of our Foreign Service careers, we are part of the State Department team. We are also embedded into the matrix of agencies that make up our executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. As team members in myriad organizations, we need one vital skill to influence both policies and people: consensus building. There is no “Consensus Building 101”; we develop the skill using approaches we bring from our own cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, learn in various Washington statecraft and leadership courses at the Foreign Service Institute, and acquire on the job. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) defines consensus building as one of the necessary conditions for “team members’ ability to make decisions and solve problems as a group.” We create consensus by pooling opinions, listening effectively, discussing ideas and differences, and coming to an agreement everyone can live with even though they don’t get all they want. Consensus is not bargaining. It is also not a unanimous or majority vote. Consensus at AFSA. While our union does engage in bargaining, I want to focus on our track record for building consensus with State Department counterparts so our Foreign Service workforce can use this skill in the field. We are always willing to uncover challenges and bring them to the department’s senior management. When some FS-1 and FS-2 members had trouble fulfilling aspects of the Foreign Service professional development plan (PDP), we listened to the workforce and gathered data on its pain points. We pick our battles, focusing on achieving long-term goals for reform and modernization of the Foreign Service. Our dialogue with the department usually results in a common understanding of the best approach at that time, given the totality of all the circumstances. On the PDP issue, reaching consensus has meant the department and AFSA aligned on an approach, stepping up the frequency and quantity of information that helps educate our workforce on the requirements to reach the Senior Foreign Service. We, of course, have more to do to ensure PDP pain points continue to be addressed. Approaching Consensus. AFSA’s actions in driving consensus do not translate into departure from our core mission to advocate for the long-term health of the Foreign Service. Rather, we are always looking to improve mutual understanding while respectfully challenging institutional views, with the goal of delivering reforms that address workforce needs, whether it is a pay issue, a promotion issue, or personnel regulation. Waymo engineer and former Google DeepMind strategist Vincent Vanhouke describes the ways of building consensus as (1) agree to disagree, (2) agree to agree, and (3) disagree to agree. The first, agree to disagree, is the most frequent type in the U.S. workplace— and in the State Department—where consensus is reached even when all parties state that they remain in disagreement. Under this scenario, people avoid overt conflict in favor of deferring difficult discussions, discussing issues offline, or escalating to an authority figure. The second type, agree to agree, can be more efficient but can lead to dismissing issues too early in the discussion. For this strategy, stakeholders often agree to save face and avoid disagreement, even when no enduring consensus is reached, because anything other than full agreement is extremely uncomfortable. The last approach, disagree to agree, begins with opposing views, but favors robust discussion of all views to work toward a compromise. This often doesn’t drive toward an explicit consensus, instead reaching an implicit consensus by the total sum of perspectives in the room. This approach is a great way to clarify one’s thoughts, create rich debates, and elicit out-ofthe-box ideas, but can lead to exhausting conversations. Find the Right Approach. Like Vanhouke, I believe there is no single “right” approach to consensus building. But a diverse, intergenerational team must be able to flexibly deploy any of these approaches to build trust in the workforce and generate innovative solutions. At AFSA, we continue to step up our consensus building work within the organization and externally with our agency counterparts. As an organization that promotes constructive dissent and serves as the voice of the Foreign Service, we take the time to engage in consensus building through every approach. n AFSA NEWS We pick our battles, focusing on achieving long-term goals for reform and modernization of the Foreign Service. 58 DECEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL
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