Interviews > Marc Grossman

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How can leaders at all levels foster team cohesiveness, a sense of mission, and good communication?

Leaders need a sense of mission and then they must work to communicate it. Leadership skills can be learned, practiced, and studied. If you're born with leadership skills that’s great, but for the rest of us, you can practice and study leadership by reading and through training. Colin Powell and Stan McChrystal’s autobiographies are both very instructive. Former Secretary of Defense Mattis’ new book charts his path from captain to four-star and offers practical lessons in leadership.

In Kissinger on Kissinger, Secretary Kissinger highlights that the first thing a leader should do is determine how to take his or her organization from where it is to where it has never been. Building a vision of that future is critical to leadership. 

You have a lot of experience in coalition-building from your time at NATO and work on Iraq and Afghanistan. What are some of the conditions and approaches that you found lead to the most success in coordinating major multinational efforts?

The most important thing is what former Secretary of State George Shultz called ‘tending the garden.’ To engage regularly with allies and friends to make sure they understand American objectives and are there not just at the end, but that they're in from the beginning. The more effort that you put into keeping people informed, the more effort you put into listening to other people, the more effort that you put into considering other people's ideas, the more it pays off in the end, even if everyone does not agree with every detail of this or that policy.   

Sometimes you must thank people for their views but tell them America is headed in another direction. Even then, people will feel their views had been heard and respected during the consultation process. It's very important to convey that you respect others’ views, you respect their organizations, you respect their culture, and you respect their objectives as well. 

We used to joke at NATO that Europeans were always unhappy when the United States came and said, ‘here's what we're going to do’ but they were even more unhappy when Americans came and said, ‘we don't know what to do,’ so we looked for something in between as the sweet spot for diplomacy. 

What would you most like to see change about State and particularly about the way we conceive of the work of diplomacy looking into the future?

When I joined, Foreign Service officers’ main duty was to observe and to report. My job as a first tour officer was to follow domestic politics in Pakistan. That’s still a very important part of the job because you need to understand the nation that you've been assigned to. But the difference today is that we ask people to act on a wide range of issues: promote sustainable development, stop human trafficking, fight terrorism, deal with the drug cartels, protect American citizens abroad, support American businesses, and promote our values. All these things are programmatic and active and very much frontline diplomacy. 

I think the great excitement now for those in the service and for those who are thinking about joining the Foreign Service is that you have a chance to be diplomatic pioneers. With social media playing a larger role, the hierarchy will evolve, and officers will have both expanded opportunities and challenges. It will be your generation’s project to turn this organization into one which has the speed, the power, the agility, and the strategic approach to execute effective programmatic diplomacy at high speed. 

Have you ever dissented and, if so, how?

I never had a boss who tried in any way to suppress my thinking or suppress other ideas. One lesson I learned was that if people were prepared to listen to me, I should be prepared to listen to other people. What do you recommend to officers who disagree with policy or the administration?

It is important to answer the question: What is it I will not do? No one can tell you what your answer is to that question. It’s a personal matter. But you need an answer. It's a very important question for everyone who's taken the oath to then struggle with the question of where their line is. These are questions of morals and values. 

This is a profession which offers a chance to represent the values, diversity, and strength of the United States. This is a profession that's vital to the promotion and protection of America's interests, values, and citizens around the world. Kissinger said that diplomats should aim to achieve America's objectives with a clear understanding of their interlocutor’s history, culture and goals. That’s a great description of the work we signed up for. When people ask me ‘should I join?’ I tell them yes.

You spent a lot of time encouraging and developing good writing. Could you please share some insights about writing?

First, even in my work today in the Cohen Group, we value people who can write quickly, accurately, and persuasively. We give a writing test to candidates because our world and the world of diplomacy is not a world of 140 characters, but a world of persuasion; good writing persuades. Writing is also a skill that can be learned. Good writing is a matter of practice. Repetition with a good teacher is the key. I remember my very first Ambassador, Arthur Hummel, would sometimes stick his head in my office and ask if I wanted to come with him to see the Foreign Minister and take notes. He worked with a green crayon and I would get back my draft all in green, but he would call me in and say, ‘here's why we do it this way, here's what's good, and here's what's bad.’ I got better at it over time. 

The most important thing for Foreign Service writing is to try to put yourself in the reader’s shoes. If you're writing something for the Assistant Secretary, think of what the reader wants. Usually, senior readers need two things: First, they need to know, why is this important? Second, they want to know what you think they should do about it. Think of answering those questions every time you write.

Could you share some tips for how officers can more effectively manage the interagency process?

Sometimes, we think we are defeated before we start because of the imbalance in personnel and resources with DOD, CIA and others. That’s very often not the most important factor in the interagency. What matters more is that the person with the best idea can win. It is critical to send your leader to an interagency meeting with a solution or a way to solve whatever problem is being discussed. I understand that the clearance process makes this difficult. But you must fight through it. The second thing you can do is to make some calls and try to get some people in other agencies on your side by explaining what it is that you're going to do at the meeting. Don’t forget to use the diplomatic skills you have learned during the interagency policy process. ‘Tending the garden’ is important here as well.  

Can you discuss the value of staff work can be in developing as an officer?

A staff assistant or special assistant’s key job is to help set priorities and to make sure that things that go to principals are ready for them. A vital skill for a staffer is to be able to put yourself in the other person's shoes. When I was a staff assistant, it was hard to imagine myself as the Assistant Secretary, but I had to ask the questions he would ask to do my job well. When I was a desk officer, I knew how to write a memo that would make it to the Assistant Secretary’s desk. As a chief of staff, you get to see leaders lead and make tough decisions and see how they set priorities. These are critical lessons to learn working for career or non-career leaders. I think staff work along the way makes for much better officers because they know what it takes to be a decision maker and to be a leader because they had a chance early in their career to see it up close. 

Could you tell us about your experience working as Director General (DG)?

I had the good fortune to be DG when Colin Powell was Secretary of State. He asked me to visit him early on in his tenure and said, ‘what can I do for you?’ I had prepared an answer to that question and it was from that answer that the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative was born, and 1,100 new Foreign Service Officers were hired over three years. I said we needed a 15% float for training and he agreed and gave us 90 million dollars and we hired the new staff over three years. We did not get the training float at the time because of 9/11, but we were able to support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan that we would not have been able to without the new hires.

The hardest thing for a DG is dealing with discipline. People get in trouble and they make bad decisions and they do dumb things and so it was a challenge to deal with these issues in a way that was respectful to the individual but also protected the institution. 

What are the most important skills folks should develop if they hope to join the State Department?

The most important skill is to be persuasive, in oral and written communication. But just as important is to have a curiosity about how other people live, how other people make decisions, and how other people set the priorities in their lives. A deep patriotism and a desire to represent the United States of America are also enormously important. Successful officers have a presumption toward action. We should want a State Department full of people who get up every morning thinking about what they can do that day for the American people.

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