This is the first thing you need to understand. It is possibly the most important thing you need to understand at the very start. When people hear the word “diplomat”, their mind tends to project images of the bad guy in Lethal Weapon 2, the Ferrero Rocher commercial from the 1980s/90s depicting a diplomatic reception, or world-renowned personalities like Henry Kissinger, Wang Yi, Bilahari Kausikan, and Tommy Koh. The latter two are more specific to the Singapore context.
I have seen my own former employers work very hard to emphasise that it is not an easy life that awaits if one decides to join the foreign service. They also tried to temper that instinctively negative message so that people would actually apply. Anecdotally, it seemed to me that foreign services around the world had problems trying to strike the same balance.
You have to be prepared to work long hours. The foreign service is not the only job which will require its employees to work late with different levels of frequency across departments. But it seemed to me that many of my younger colleagues were somewhat caught by surprise when it happened.
There is also the disruption that comes which relocating from one country to another. Generally, foreign services will require their officers to be prepared to serve a few years on an overseas posting after the intial phase i headquarters. The pattern will continue throughout your career – unless you have been deemed unsuitable for posting.
For me, it was three years in Singapore, followed by four years in Abu Dhabi, then just over a year in Singapore, then one year in London for my Master’s degree, then again just over a year in Singapore, and then a little bit over three years in Riyadh. Between 2008 and 2018, I spent a total of just over three years in Singapore and made intercountry moves six times. Each of those times meant preparation and packing. It was very tiring, especially once we had children.
The work of the foreign service demands an adaptability that not everyone has. An aspect of it is covered in the previous paragraph about moving from one country to another. Another aspect is being able to react to situations fast. For political work, it means being able to quickly analyse a situation and formulate your situation reports for headquarters on post. From headquarters, you might have to do the same and also be able to generate the important questions that you need answered to facilitate the work of your colleagues overseas.
When coordinating visits, there is an infinite number of things that will not go according to plan. You must be able to make quick decisions on how to best remedy a situation that has gone wrong or is close to doing so.
The thing is – it always seems funnier after the fact. These occasions become the foundations of the war stories foreign service veterans like to tell. Also, you can pick up skills that will help you along the way if you keep an open mind towards learning from the experience of your colleagues. But it will not be easy, and it will always remain a hard life.
I’ll elaborate on the specific difficulties I have mentioned here in future posts.
[…] there were two impressions that have stayed with me. First, there was near universal consensus that life in the service was often very hard. The second was that it was not uncommon for the foreign service to have a rigorous process of […]