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Don't narrow your career focus
Curiosity First
Foreign languages matter for work overseas, but curiosity and adaptability matter most. The goal is to navigate societies in ways that help decision-makers choose better and outcompete China and Russia, for example by navigating an African country or a Western Hemisphere country better than they can.
Serendipity and Craft
New officers are often type A personalities who want to know the pathway to a really senior position fifteen years out. Serendipity plays a role. Hard work, preparation, and developing the tools of the craft come first, and then comes readiness for the moments when they apply, with good fortune and luck playing a part in all of it.
Looking Out for Others
Taking care of the people around you matters too, even with only one person reporting to you. The best teams in the diplomatic and intelligence services are characterized by people looking out for one another, and that chemistry is crucially important.
Why does serendipity shape careers?
Stanford psychologist John Krumboltz proposed a theory in 1999 that he called planned happenstance. It holds that chance events play a central part in most careers. People who stay curious, take initiative, and keep up their skills are better placed to benefit from them. Krumboltz drew on his work as a career counselor, where he saw how often decisive moments were unplanned.
Why do supportive teams perform better?
Harvard professor Amy Edmondson introduced the term psychological safety in a 1999 study of hospital teams. It describes a shared belief that a person can speak up without being punished or humiliated. In 2015, Google reported that psychological safety ranked first among the five dynamics it found in its Project Aristotle study of team effectiveness. Edmondson's original study found that teams with higher safety reported more errors, because members felt free to say what went wrong.