Tradecraft > People-Centric Leadership

Jim Herman

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Create safe spaces—for creativity, failure, and building trust—over time

Creating safe spaces to take risks or test new ideas is the antidote to mediocrity. Each of us, especially managers, should create an environment where people can take risks and fail. If I’m not making mistakes, I’m not learning. Managers should learn to create environments where people can excel, delegate appropriately, support their decisions, and not blame them when things go wrong. It’s part of the learning process and where solutions to really difficult problems can emerge. It’s also through these kinds of experiences that, as an organization, we can foster more creative problem-solving and think outside the rigid system. 

How to do this? The short answer is that it is very difficult to do. I designed the ICASS survey as a way to force conversations between management and staff, and to figure out metrics that people agree to that can change the organization. It was always meant as an opportunity to learn what’s important. Now, ICASS is not so much a conversation and mainly focuses on numbers. I learned that an individual can try to change a lot, but changing systems is really difficult. 

Doing this requires a shift from leadership as a transactional process to leadership as relationship building. I have to start at the personal level. For example, I can always tell that I’m creating a safe space when my staff can tell me when I’m wrong. At one post, I was tasked to take over a section because there were management challenges. I promised something that I didn't deliver on, and an entry-level officer called me on it. I righted the wrong, but more importantly I knew that at least I had created a safe space for her to speak up. 

Learn to use different tools and models to lead, manage, and solve problems

I define leadership largely as influence, from any position. Leaders need to network so that they can have an impact on the organization, so that people know them and trust them, and so leaders can ask for help. Leaders need to influence their bosses and protect staff from issues rolling down hill unnecessarily. 

My personal leadership style for the last 10 years is rooted in a north star leadership approach. It’s about focusing on ourselves and what we as leaders bring to each situation. Become aware of your own goals as well as your personal traits, and how those impact your people. For example, in my seminars I often ask, how do your communication and listening skills show up to others when you're a manager or leader? Through this self-awareness, we can also recognize that we have choice and agency. 

Managers should learn to use different tools and models and when to apply them. By way of example, tools that I often use are polarity management, six thinking hats, monkey management, appreciative inquiry, and many of the 1CA tools. 

With polarity management, you undertake an exercise where you analyze extremes - for example, centralization or decentralization of visa decisions. Polarity management is a dialectical approach that allows you to recognize what’s good or what’s bad with each extreme, and settle on a more central solution.

I like approaches that require brainstorming among staff because brainstorming sessions create opportunities to develop safe spaces while also improving awareness of how things are going. For example, with the “6 thinking hats” approach, everyone has to say something negative, and everyone has to say what’s working. Then you can categorize and identify, together, what is the best about this situation and where there are issues. By analyzing the negative aspects, you can also see a list of things going wrong that you can now mitigate, and establish “tripwires” in case things start trending that direction. By analyzing the positive aspects, you have a list of ideas that work as your pitch to leverage opportunities and see what could work. And through this process, you’ve created space for dialogue, developed trust, and demonstrated to your staff that there is room for ideas, creative thinking, and taking risks. 

I also like using monkey management because it helps de-personalize the tasks and invites slightly humorous imagery about them. In essence, tasks become “monkeys” that members of a team have to handle. Instead of having to say to your boss or a colleague, “this task is bad and I have too much on my plate,” it can be easier to say, “boss, you’ve given me too many monkeys.” Whatever the issue is, it makes it feel non-threatening and can make the conversation easier to broach, and again, builds trust between people. 

Appreciative inquiry is another great approach because it’s a way of facilitating difficult conversations that doesn’t focus on the problem, but first on what’s going well. Staff can define what we want to work on, building on strengths. This comes to mind as helpful for diversity discussions as well—it’s more helpful to think about how to get the best people around the table—more of an appreciative inquiry approach around change management that has to happen in our organization. It creates an environment of problem-solving. 

Be a kind manager 

We should ask ourselves, what is our goal in the public service world? So often the goal becomes the evaluation, the promotion, and the next assignment. Managers should create a culture of kindness, empathy, and creativity. I like Adam Grant’s discussion of this in his book, Give and Take, in analyzing how, when people reach the level of leadership, did previously wonderful people lose their minds when they reached a position of power? In my view, it’s partially an institutional culture where egoism is passed on from one boss to the next. Instead, I would encourage people to think in terms of servant leadership—you as the boss, what value do you add? How are you giving safe spaces to people to take risks and make mistakes? What bureaucratic processes add value or don’t add value? 

The good news is that we each have the ability to be kinder and more empathetic. Each of us should take responsibility to not perpetuate ineffective managerial behavior. We can come up with solutions that resolve issues. Also, people should not wait for the system to create courses or opportunities for you. Read a book and take classes, even if you have to pay for them. Focus on volunteering for tasks that give you real skills and spend the time developing your management experience. Although it’s really difficult to change the system, it’s up to individuals to create changes that are within their reach. 

How to achieve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Department

We have been tinkering with these issues the entire time I was in the Foreign Service (28 years!) and we're still struggling with it. In 16 years of my career, people of color and/or women were running the Department who personally experienced the issues of lack of diversity and exclusion—Albright, Powell, Rice, and Clinton. Unfortunately, diversity in the Department still did not improve at the lower ranks and all the same issues were perpetuated—although things certainly got better, just not by much. Why? 

Part of the problem is that we just like to surround ourselves with people like us—it’s human. And when corridor reputation and networking are how jobs and promotions are generated, we exacerbate the problem. We have to train ourselves to not be solely in-group or out-group people; we have to consciously choose people different from us. I would challenge every person to be with people who are unlike you and to encourage conversations about out-group networking.

I would also encourage people to think of diversity in terms of transformational change rather than as a transactional process. This starts with asking better questions. Having conversations. Figuring out what the issues are. Figuring out what’s going well. Brené Brown discusses this and it’s worth reading up on. 

Consular work is about people

Consular work is all about people. Maura Harty said: “We touch people’s lives.” If you want to connect with and help people, there is no better place to do that than in consular. If you don’t care about helping people, you should choose a different cone. 

One way in which a people-centered approach was useful was when I served as the Consul General in New Delhi. We came up with “5 key things” to guide our work: 1 team (of 315 employees); 1 week (the time each applicant would get an appointment); 1 time (we should handle each case just once); 1 person (we treat each individual with respect); and 1 hour (the time in which an applicant would be in an out of the Consular Section). This kind of metric was helpful to focus on the experience of individuals (employees and applicants) in the context of the system. We could identify how to get more staff from the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA), establish offsite data collection, and ultimately get more funding to achieve these “5 key things” despite CA not necessarily agreeing with the metric. 

Make decisions about assignments based on what’s important to you, your goals, and your life

When people ask what is the one tour you would recommend to an FSO, I always ask first: What do you want to be doing in five years? 10 years? My answer depends on the answer to that question. Too often people take assignments because they are supposed to or because they allow other people’s values to drive them. If you are super ambitious, go to the Operations Center or a desk. If you want to be an ambassador, go to Africa. I chose to take tougher management jobs than leadership jobs because that was important to me. A consular friend, who loved American Citizen Services work and was a horrible manager, was pushed into doing visa work and managing large sections because it would be good for her career. She was miserable and never got better at managing. She made it to the rank of FS-01 and got stuck there. She would have been so much happier and a better officer if she had just done American Citizen Services work. So, know the answer to my first question of where you want to be in five to ten years, and revisit that question with every tour because your opinions will change.

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