Learning Leadership

One of CAA's loyal readers is a new FSO stationed somewhere in The Great Abroad. He or she really liked something I had posted, specifially:

"For all the great stride the Department has made towards improving State's traditionally dismal leadership culture, we're just not there yet. New officers are getting leadership training from the very beginning, with reinforcements throughout their careers. It's still not inculcated the way the uniformed services do it (and they have their own,
recurrent, problems) but we're getting there. It's the more senior folks, both on the Civil Service as well as the Foreign Service sides, who sometimes fail to get leadership isn't just one of those management fads that comes along periodically, like Six Sigma, just-in-time-inventory, or TQM."

She or he provided the following words by email, posted here with kind permission:

"I couldn't agree more. Having been in the military, I am finding myself feeling at times like a fish out of water here at State; chafing at some folks' inability (or outright refusal) to deal with problem employees, as well as make unpopular but necessary decisions. Earlier this week I was grousing with a colleague about the EER process, recalling how in the military evaluations were a top-down process. Your supervisor or CO tells you what's right with you and what's wrong with you, and that's it. The EER at State is like the grown-up version of zero-outcome soccer. Everybody's a winner, just some people are bigger winners than others. Everything is a collaborative effort, even when you are being evaluated. Given the amount of time I have spent so far on my first EER, I would much prefer to receive an assessment based on my supervisor's impression of me, and not something that I have cooked up myself. The whole process seems to have been born of a reluctance to criticize.

I did see eval inflation in the military also, though- but your eval and how your CO dealt with you on a daily basis were two different things. One of my old skippers ripped me a new one so many times I thought I was a knob back in college, but come eval time he made me look like the best thing since sliced bread. I think that is the difference between DoS and DoD. It's rainbows and puppy dogs all the time at State. At Defense, your CO will generally tell you when you are screwed up, but won't depth charge you on your eval if you fix your problems after they are pointed out."