Analysis | For the State Department’s generalists, when is quitting the answer?
(Asking for a friend)
This piece is part three in a miniseries on the importance of generalists to the mission of the U.S. State Department — and how the department’s leadership can work to retain them.
It is part of ISD’s series, “A better diplomacy,” which highlights innovators and their big ideas for how to make diplomacy more effective, resilient, and adaptive in the twenty-first century.
“After 10 years in the foreign service, it’s really tough to rationalize staying,” Max Kendrick, a friend and former U.S. diplomat told me. He eventually left to attend business school and now runs a startup in New York City. The longer you stay at the State Department, the higher the odds of getting stuck in one place, he explained. “The skills you develop after the 10- or 12-year mark — they’re not transferable,” he said. Echoing this sentiment, another former diplomat told me bluntly, “We are specialized in following rules — we are box checkers extraordinaire, we are specialists in admin.” Yet, despite their frustrations, both stellar diplomats had a strong emotional bond with the State Department. “When people add me to their phones — Max is a common name in New York — they put ‘diplomat’ next to it,” my friend told me. Similarly, my other colleague confessed, “[The State Department] picked me up when I was in my 20s, so it was a filial relationship. Leaving felt like the death of a relative — there was a mourning period.”
Leaving a career you love is never easy, but for some, it is nonetheless the best course of action for long term career growth. Thinking through the ramifications of leaving public service for another sector can be daunting. Hearing from those who have walked the path of career pivots can help.
Saying goodbye is hard
Conversations with over half a dozen current and former American diplomats validated what many know intuitively: that leaving public service is a weighty decision. Adding to this tension, many Foreign Service Officers (and indeed civil servants) fall victim to “identity foreclosure,” in which one’s career defines their sense of self, and in some cases, worth. Having to part with a diplomatic commission is no small matter, “you go from being a diplomat to being just another employee somewhere,” one former colleague told me. And most hope to return to public service one day, though they remain skeptical of meaningful improvements in working conditions at the State Department.
When Max and I entered the Foreign Service together, we were told repeatedly (justifiably) that we were never “off duty.” You were always representing your country, always expected to uphold the highest standards of integrity, to be a living embodiment of American values. With this awesome responsibility often comes a strong sense of duty and identity. An identity that can lock people into a career despite deep dissatisfaction. The oft quoted Winston Churchill line on not quitting frequently excludes the caveat: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
Phone your future self
Playing into this inability to see oneself as anything other than their current profession is the colorfully named “end of history illusion” investigated by psychologist Dan Gilbert and colleagues, in which people mistakenly assume that who they are now is who they shall forever remain (author David Epstein dedicates a section to this in his book, Range). That is, when you ask people to reflect on how much their tastes, personalities, friends, and preferences have changed in the last 10 years, they frequently describe significant change (try this on yourself now). But when you ask the same people to imagine how they might change in the next 10 years, they drastically underestimate the possibilities. “In other words, people may believe that who they are today is pretty much who they will be tomorrow, despite the fact that it isn’t who they were yesterday,” Gilbert and colleagues write in Science.
Diplomats (and public servants in general), already plagued by identity foreclosure, wrapped in the warm protective embrace of the bureaucracy, might have an especially difficult time imagining themselves doing anything else. I confessed this nagging trepidation to author David Epstein in a conversation earlier this year. “I used to hear this exact sentiment from the people I worked with at the Pat Tilman Foundation — ex-special forces and the like,” he said. “You all undervalue your experiences, because they’re common in your context — everyone is a diplomat, everyone has lived in multiple countries, but I promise you outside of that context, you have valuable skills and experiences that are rare.” Welcome news for many self-described paper-pushers such as myself.
Marketing yourself as a talented operator– and not just a bureaucrat
A colleague and actively serving Foreign Service Officer told me recently, “I don’t think I know how to do anything else,” confessing he had been unhappy with his work for years but remained despite the disappointment. With the work of diplomacy so cloaked in stereotypes and the brand of “bureaucrat” haunting many fine civil servants, one could be forgiven for skepticism on a former diplomat’s employment options. This is a question I posed to an array of ex-diplomat colleagues: can someone who has spent over a decade at the State Department, embassies, foreign ministries, and war zones present a compelling argument to would-be private sector employers?
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you don’t have the skills — that you’re ‘just another government person,’” my friend Max chided me. “If you come out with three or four tours under your belt, you can draw on those experiences — like the perspective that time in Baghdad gave me, or I can fall back on my time as a negotiator at the U.N. — all that experience is applicable to the private sector,” he said.
This begs the question: what are the skills that U.S. diplomats and talented civil servants (and indeed most of our global tribe) possess in spades? How does a life in diplomacy and government translate into anything other than more of the same? In separate conversations, my cadre of former foreign service officers coalesced around key themes: the ability to grow into a role quickly, to craft policy, and to engage with a broad range of diverse stakeholders in a meaningful way. That is, the best diplomats can understand the problems that vex an organization, devise a strategy to address them, and cajole disparate actors into action. Whether that is navigating a complex regulatory landscape, forging a path where ethics, sustainability, and good governance (ESG) are at the company’s core, or leading a multinational company’s public engagement, diplomats have the breadth of experience and the oft-neglected soft skills to be effective operators.
Banish excessive fear and self-doubt
A significant caveat to any discussion of career change, of course, is that for some Foreign Service Officers, the mission, the adventure, the talented colleagues, and perhaps family members who prefer life overseas, all outweigh the downsides of a career at the State Department (I counted myself in this particular camp until recently). The public servants who remain in government are no less talented or committed than those who leave, or vice versa. And yet for those who find the career drawbacks have grown and the opportunity cost multiplied, pivoting to a new industry is a daunting prospect. “A lot of people are scared of leaving security, leaving pensions,” a former colleague told me. “The comment I got was, ‘you’re so brave.’ Like I was skydiving. A lot of the sentiment is: they would do that, but they were too scared. So don’t be afraid, you’ll succeed, you’re qualified.” Epstein’s advice to me was similar. “Pivot. Be opportunistic when opportunities arise.” In his book, he highlights the famed management scholar Peter Drucker and his most cited essay “Managing Oneself,” which (in one print version) begins with a summary, “It’s up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years.”
As for myself, I look back with gratitude and fondness for the last 12 years representing the United States at home and abroad. The adventure, the skillbuilding, and the relationships I have forged are irreplaceable. And yet, as I look at the 12 years ahead and apply Drucker’s advice, it seems the path to engagement and productivity might be outside the diplomatic service. One can hope that the powers-that-be remedy some of the shortcomings inherent to the career, but this seems unlikely, at least in the next decade.
Zed Tarar is a career member of the U.S. Foreign Service and is currently serving in London. He is a contributing writer for The Diplomatic Pouch.
Disclaimer: While Zed Tarar is a career U.S. diplomat, the views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State or the U.S. government.
Read the rest of our Generalists miniseries:
Read more from The Diplomatic Pouch’s “A Better Diplomacy” series:
