Q&A > Robert Blake
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What inspired or motivated you to become a diplomat?
First, diplomacy was something of a family tradition. My grandfather was a career FSO and Ambassador. My Dad served for 35 years at State and retired as an Ambassador to Mali, and my Mom’s brother was a career FSO, capping his career as Amb to Laos and Thailand. So I grew up imbued with a deep respect for public service and the sense that a career at State would be a wonderful way to make a difference for others, serve my country, and have an interesting range of experiences.
Who was your best boss and why?
I have been blessed with many great bosses who taught me a lot: I served my second tour as staff aide to Ambassador Frank Wisner in Egypt. He taught me: 1) the value of proactive personal diplomacy, both in-country and influencing Washington thinking and decision-making; 2) the importance of immersing yourself in the language, history and culture of the country in which you are serving so you can establish yourself as an expert but can also earn the admiration of your foreign interlocutors to help you achieve your Mission goals; and 3) the importance of treating everyone in your Mission: gardener, Embassy guard, and senior Country Team members with a combination of respect, fairness and friendliness that will earn you their respect and loyalty.
Describe a day you felt you made a difference.
Difficult to choose one! Here are a few I will remember: The day five of the largest palm oil companies in the world representing more than half of global production signed at the UN the Indonesia Palm Oil Pledge, a private sector initiative that I and my great team in Jakarta conceived and executed with key Indonesian stakeholders and NGOs to significantly reduce Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Multiple times when Sri Lankan individuals came to personally thank me for intervening in their human rights cases, without which they probably would have been killed and their bodies disposed of without a trace. I still withhold details of these to protect them.
Likewise, my personal intervention with the Government of Sri Lanka to successfully press for the end of shelling of IDP camps during the end of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war.
What has a colleague done for you that made you wish all of us had a colleague like that?
Executive Secretary Kristie Kenney took the risk to appoint me as one of her Deputy ExecSecs, even though I was not at grade, giving me my first opportunity to supervise a lot of people, and organize multiple trips for the Secretary of State.
What was the mistake you learned the most from?
Although I made countless mistakes of my own, it was the mistakes of a few bad supervisors that I learned most from. One supervisor cynically put down all attempts of mine to come up with new ideas for reporting, stifling my initiative and enthusiasm. I vowed I would never do that to a subordinate. Another was a PDAS who shall remain nameless who painstakingly rewrote demarches and briefing memos rather than taking the (much shorter) time to explain to me what was wrong and then let me do the work to correct it.
What was your best and worst experience working with the interagency?
Worst: when I was senior Turkey desk officer trying to get interagency agreement to sell attack helicopters to Turkey, the only NATO country that was providing concrete military support to the US effort in Kosovo. The human rights bureau had some legitimate concerns that we could have satisfied, but they managed to tie the process in knots, and the 7th floor resisted the idea of a split memo for a more senior person to make a decision.
Best: When I was Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, I had the benefit of wonderful NSC and DOD colleagues with whom I worked cooperatively and successfully to get a Congressional human rights waiver allowing us to provide non-lethal defense equipment to Uzbekistan so they could defend themselves from attacks by Pakistan-based terrorist groups to punish Uzbekistan for allowing the transit of goods on Uzbekistan’s rail lines to support our troops in Afghanistan.
What is the one tour you would recommend FSOs consider?
Every FSO should spend regular time in Washington so they understand and can influence the Washington policy process. The best perch for that is to be a country desk officer where you are responsible for driving that process.
If the state department had a mascot, what animal should it be?
It should be an animal that understands the value of cooperation to achieve objectives but is also capable of using its own speed and agility to achieve its objectives—the lion?
What was the biggest challenge of FS life for your family, and how did you manage it?
Two challenges: one is finding good employment opportunities for one’s spouse overseas. We managed it by waiting to have kids until we could count on several overseas tours in a row when we could benefit from less expensive child care and my wife wanted mostly to spend time with our young children and not work.
The second is ensuring your children can stay in one place during high school and not have to move in junior or senior year. One way is to find a place with a good American or international high school where you can serve three years and extend for a fourth. In my case I decided to retire after serving as Ambassador to Indonesia so all of my daughters could count on going through high school in one place without interruption.
What is your leadership philosophy?
Set overall goals for your subordinates in a collaborative fashion, let them figure out how to achieve those, and offer your full support and advice whenever they need it. This both empowers initiative but establishes a safety net to help those who might need a little help.
Do not micro-manage but do meet regularly with subordinates to gauge how they are doing in meeting objectives, and what help they may need, whether they ask for it or not.
Deal with problems quickly before they fester, and make sure you do so in as transparent and fair-minded manner as possible.
Conversely, be sure to take the time to recognize good performance: send an email to a reporting officer for a great cable; write a desk officer after they managed a successful trip by a 7th floor principal. These little things take 30 seconds but mean the world to a younger officer.
What would you change about the State Department?
Improve training at all levels by incorporating training and advice into the FSI curriculum from the best senior retired FSOs (an initiative I am helping with now).
What were your pet peeves?
Officers who avoid dealing with problems, do not take advantage of opportunities to travel and learn about the countries in which they serve, and do not treat everyone they deal with at all levels with dignity, fairness and respect.
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