bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1989), pp. 5–6
by Michael Boekhoven, Alison LeClaire, Ted MacKay, Gary Miller, and Benoit Prefontaine
The first year as a Foreign Service Officer is in many ways a year of listening — absorbing everything that one hears, without always believing it. It is a time of gradual adjustment of perceptions and expectations — however hazily defined — to the reality of the work. While this process is ongoing, we would like to share some early impressions of our entrance and first year.
It is difficult to sum-up our training — since in some cases it was non-existent. Only Social Affairs officers received structured training, and that focused exclusively on the technical aspects of their work. As a generalization, there was no training in “foreign service work, but we eventually concluded that while structured orientation (which we did have) was possible, structured training was not only difficult to provide, but perhaps even impossible given the limited resources of the Department. ’Baptism by fire’ and, of course, the never tedious tales of senior officers have been our main sources of instruction.
One problem arises because not all divisions are created equal. The nature and utility of our first assignments varied widely from officer to officer. Some faced expectations of immediate transformation into a fully functioning member of the division, often with unfamiliar work and unstated responsibilities, while others were left to wander aimlessly amongst rushing bodies too busy to integrate the newcomer into the division’s work. Some assignments, therefore, provided little in the way of meaningful experience outside of exposure to different styles of management.
The “hands-on” training philosophy, with its day-to-day administrative, job-specific exigencies, also conflicted periodically with the very real need for a global, career-oriented approach to training. Temporary assignments to special events such as the Toronto Economic Summit gave some of us an early glimpse of a high level conference; others missed the opportunity due to their division’s inability to release them for a short period of time. In an effort to take advantage of such high profile and intense events and to reduce the conflict between divisional needs and officer training, personnel and training divisions should annually design and maintain a set of priorities for training new recruits.
Beginning in 1987, new officers must achieve a ’C” level (fluently bilingual) in the ’other’ official language before being posted. However, due to staff shortages, some recruits were posted without the required level of ability in both languages, while others were exiled to the language school at Carson Road for six to ten months. If the new language requirement is to have meaning, programmes for shorter, more intensive training should be developed. Currently the probation period is extended by the time spent in full-time language training if that time exceeds six weeks. While this policy is not consistently articulated or applied (some received their salary increase but remained on probation, while others were not affected at all), it remains that unilingual officers may face an effective probation period (salary and status) of up to two years; even if these officers wait out their probation year to begin training, they will still lose up to a year in performance assessments. The implications for promotion are obvious.
A “Mentor Programme” was reintroduced in 1987. While views on the utility of the programme differ, we believe that mentors could have been assigned much earlier. In most cases, new officers had already developed their own departmental contacts by the time their mentors were assigned, or met them only shortly before their departure abroad. Furthermore, some mentors were fairly inattentive to their “mentees”, either out of a lack of interest or perhaps a lack of understanding as to what the programme was all about. For maximum benefit, the mentor should be assigned and introduced soon after the recruit arrives when the chances of creating a rapport, and the need to seek advice, are much greater. The Development Assistance stream, however, does not have mentors.
We began with sense of group identity as ’the FS1(D)s’ but have noticed a growing tendency to categorize one another by stream. Having become aware of that tendency, we hope to reverse it, preferring to see ourselves first as foreign service officers and second as divided into streams. Interminable shop talk at social occasions has helped us understand a little about the work of other streams, but we think there ought to be greater opportunity to develop a real sense of professional unity in a professional milieu. FS-1(D)s in the Development Assistance stream have almost no interraction with other streams, and the Trade Commissioner stream as a whole tends to display a certain xenophobia. For new officers to enter the Department after a long and rigorous hiring process with the sense that they are joining “the Department of External Affairs” /“the Canadian Foreign Service”, and yet to end up in “stream-ghettos” without a strong overall sense of corporate identity, bodes ill for the Department as a whole. At a minimum, we would recommend mixed and cross-stream seminars and courses in the nature of the work faced by other streams. This would help us deal with problems abroad, when we will have to handle a variety of responsibilities that transcend stream lines.
Some of us joined the Department clinging steadfastly to a perhaps mythical image of the Foreign Service: intellectual stimulation, variety, exotic locales, important people and even (not now certainly, but at some distant date) a decent salary. The romantic in us assumed that we would not be mere bureaucrats.
To an unfortunate degree, senior officers greeted us with a host of attitudes not in keeping with this perception; they ranged from active resentment and frustration to discouragement and resignation. We are warned to expect at best one promotion in thirty years of work. Any enthusiasm we display is regarded a little indulgently because, as we are constantly told, disillusionment will soon set in, particularly during assignment in Ottawa. At least at post we will have more responsibility and the opportunity to enjoy a different culture. At each return, however, we will be faced with the realization that notwithstanding our discontent, we are unlikely to search for greener pastures.
Is it too soon to think about leaving? We have lost two colleagues already, due to the “multiple layers of decision-making,… bureaucratic rigidity, inadequate funding of initiatives, a cumbersome promotion apparatus, low pay, time-wasting turf fights with other Departments and a sense of non-accomplishment”. For those of us who remain, this might be too extreme a view; still it is difficult to imagine that the “best and the brightest” will remain to face a crisis of morale and limited opportunities for the future.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, we must admit that we are still enthusiastic about our new careers and the lives we see ahead of us. Even after a year of hearing about poor promotion prospects, intellectual frustration, the horrors of affirmative action, etc. we remain relatively content about what we see as our future. Nevertheless, most have undergone some rite of cynicization that has dampened our innocent sanguinity and forced us to a more realistic approach to life as a foreign service officer.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1989), pp. 5–6. Read the rest of this issue →
