The Next Three Feet

The Next 3 Feet

The Last 3 Feet book discussion proved to be intellectually stimulating and answered many outstanding questions I had about the field of public diplomacy. Although many of my questions were answered, I walked away with more questions about the sustainability of public diplomacy.

There was a great deal of emphasis placed on the term, “The Last 3 Feet". I would like to take the discussion a step further and place more emphasis on “The Next 3 Feet". In our constantly changing Foreign Service, U.S. Diplomats are required to rotate out to a different country every three years. Three years is not a long time considering the amount of work necessary for a public diplomacy officer to establish genuine and credible relationships with the host government and local community. Doing the work of public diplomacy is about building trust with your audience. Trust is not built overnight, and in some cases, not even three years. When some Foreign Service officers finally build a legitimate relationship with the local community, their time at post has reached its date of expiration and the NEXT Foreign Service officer is left with the responsibility of establishing this relationship again. One can only hope that the new officer had a predecessor that was viewed in a good light by the local community. The new officer either has to spend time focusing on damage control or placing emphasis on the “Next 3 Feet".

The Next 3 Feet is about improving training, knowledge shar,e and sustainability from one Foreign Service officer to the next. While rotating FSO's out every three years does merit obvious benefits such as new ideas and perspectives, there must be a greater focus on making sure that after a diplomat leaves post, their relationships with the host country does not sever, but continues to exist. However, this is a growing issue because new officers sometimes never meet their predecessors. In many cases, they are only left with a binder that contains past projects, reports and contact sheets. Unfortunately, these contact sheets with names and numbers cannot come to life. These names are only characters on a paper that only become credible contacts through genuine interpersonal communication. Requiring past PD officers to actually meet in person allows for discussion about best practices and achievements. Instead of the old PD officer introducing the new  officer to the Director of Youth and Sports through email, all three entities could meet simultaneously. This gives the representative of the host government a level of comfort when meeting with the new officer. Coordinating the time for the new and old PD officers to physically meet is a change in process that could result in great benefits. New officers  come from different cones, backgrounds and political ideologies. Sufficient training, knowledge share and sustainability must become significant practices if we are to improve our public diplomacy efforts abroad.