It’s just 2 weeks since I got back from the annual Leadership Conference which draws together all our Heads of Mission from across the world. It’s the 6th I have attended in a row, which does lead me to reflect on how they’ve evolved.
As always, it was extremely useful to hear from and share experiences colleagues across the world, and a fantastic opportunity to meet old friends. But for me, it does feel as if this was a very different Conference in 2 important respects.
On style, the FCO felt considerably less formal than previous events with plenty of interaction which kept the energy levels up. While there are loads of growing and increasingly unpredictable global challenges – including Syria, Russia, and ungoverned spaces (a cause close to my heart given the 4 years I spent in Cameroon grappling with issues across the Sahel, including most obviously Chad), it felt as if the FCO was up for it. I don’t remember a time when as an organisation we seemed as flexible and ready for new, as probably yet unseen challenges, working together for the whole of the British government.
The other major change was the focus throughout on diversity.This time we met the next generation of diplomats who are considerably more confident, sparky and cool than my colleagues and I ever were. And the courage of those who wear their difference – gender, sexuality, disabilty, etc – much more easily than I ever did make me proud and a little jealous of my own attempts earlier in my career to fit in rather than just being me.
Diversity matters to me for some pretty obvious reasons. When I joined in 1995 I was chuffed that 12% of that year’s ”mainstream” entrants were from an ethnic minority background. It was only at the induction that I realised I was THE ONE out of 8 successful candidates. And it was just 4 1/2 years ago that I became the first Hindu/Indian origin Ambassador when I was posted to Cameroon.
But even more gratifying than the number of women and ethnic minority Heads of Mission (I counted 5, but maths isn’t my strong point) at the top of the office was the fact that the FCO’s understanding of diversity has transformed beyond the visually obvious gender and race, or even aurally evident – my Man of Kent accent is never far beneath the surface. Diversity of thought and background matters just as much. Like many of my colleagues, I attended state schools. Much less commonly, I went on to study business and hotel administration at Middlesex, and only became a diplomat at 26 after 4 years in the private sector.
I bring a different set of experiences and skills to work with me. That makes me a very different animal from the traditional diplomat. I don’t claim that my skills are any better, but they’re definitely different and looking at my career so far, they seem to be working for me. But as the FCO has evolved in the last couple of decades, the more comfortable and confident I have become in representing my country, understanding that my differences are also in many ways my strengths, and why I can deliver where sometimes others haven’t .
For pretty much the whole of my career, I’ve known that I have the very best job in the world. But there is a lot of extra satisfaction of knowing that I work for an organisation that values those differences, makes a huge difference.