How to Build your Career with Constant Learning

 SUMMARY

To progress at any work, constant learning is essential. Being a career diplomat demands "forever learning" as we will hear from the experiences of former Ambassador to Germany Melita Sta. Maria-Thomeczek.  Ambassador Millie has spent 27 years in the field of international relations. She had three assignments abroad - Bonn and Berlin (Germany) and New York (USA). We gathered these tips from her career built on constant learning.

1. Have the constant interest to learn and learn and learn.
2. Be accepting, understanding and open to new learning. Any bias will hinder your learning
3. Be humble to learn new things, and learn from past mistakes. 
4. Don't just learn alone. Learn with your team. 
5. Everything is a learning. Be discerning to know which learning to keep or to unlearn.
6. Be generous to share your learnings with other people so that they also grow.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

TRANSCRIPT

Avic: I have met Ambassador Millie back in 2006 and she was then the deputy Consul General. By that time she has already been an experienced career diplomat in the Philippines. Millie, tell me what you have been doing since then?

Millie: Yes, I was a deputy Consul-General at our Philippine consulate general in New York covering the northeastern seaboard.  so we were covering Maine down to Delaware so that has been a very good experience a good posting for me. We had a very good and active and lively Filipino community there, very professional.  We were also in the center of trade and industry so we were doing a lot of economic diplomacy work. After I think seven years in New York, I came back home. I was assistant secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs in charge of personnel and administration. That was for a good three years and then I was Ambassador to Germany for three years 2015 to 2018.

Avic: Could you tell us a little bit about the qualifications to be a career diplomat or to be an ambassador?

Millie: When you take the Foreign Service officers examination, they will ask you your work experience your educational background. There are requirements for that. At this point in time there's no age limit anymore. We can be coming from different disciplines in terms of education and profession. I took up masters in public administration so I was in that track. My batchmates were lawyers, economists and lately I know that many people have passed the FSO exams who were nurses, architects, physicist, etc. You can come from any discipline as long as you pass the examinations. Then you're in. Any specific qualification to be part of the Foreign Service and to be part of government? One thing you have to have in your own self is that you love the country and you want to serve people. You want to serve the public- that should be innate in you. Your value should be able to let you appreciate the work of being in government. It may not pay so high not like if you're in private business but you want to serve and you want to have the best for your country.

Avic: It's good that you mentioned about the pay because I'm also interested to know what are the perks that are available for those in foreign service.

Millie: First of all with regards to salary scales we were grateful that during the time of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and President Noynoy Aquino, they already made moves to standardize and better the salary structure of government. We're reaping the good effects of that. The other perks we get as government officials and as regular employees are the benefits from GSIS, Philhealth, Pagibig. There are a lot of benefits from contributing to those institutions. And then abroad I can say you get a lot of psychic income also. I mean the satisfactory feeling you get when you know you have served, you have promoted well your country, you have served our Filipinos abroad. Those things cannot probably be bought by money, these feelings of joy and even feelings of peace when you know that you're contributing to what is good and you're promoting goodwill among nations.

Avic: Millie, you mentioned the service to the Filipinos abroad so what exactly does it entail?

Millie:  First, the consular tasks include the legal documentations for Filipinos abroad- passports, visas, legal documents, civil registration. We do all those things but also part of our work is really to look after the welfare of Filipinos abroad. I was able to do jail visitation of our Filipinos in jail seeing to it that their rights are respected. We try to see to it that their terms are followed and they are well treated. Actually you know when when I visited a jail in New Jersey I think that was I was also kind of very much impressed with the prisons. They had good libraries where the prisoners can go. They have air-condition. Their places were clean. They had steak for their meals. They were being served good food. They had all the little privileges in prison and I said this is really very ideal for prisoners to still feel that they can do something, that they are still useful, that they can still develop themselves- read books, stay abreast with what's happening in the world. Things like those were I think pleasant experiences for jail visitation for me.

Our Filipinos abroad in America at least in the East Coast are very professional. Our Filipinos there are doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers and they earn a lot of respect in the community. In Europe we have a different profile of Filipinos -many housewives, there are also in the service sector. We have different profiles of Filipinos in different places abroad and you just have to reach out to them and adapt to them and to their ways and get to know them. It's very rewarding to know them.

Avic: It seems to me that to be an ambassador or a career diplomat is a life of constant learning. How have you been learning. What are your strategies? What has been the easiest or the hardest part of learning?

Millie: You know as ambassadors we were the official representatives of the Philippines in the host country. I will speak of in the past tense because I'm speaking from my experience. We were working for the general interest of the Philippines abroad and so that's a real mandate.

To be able to do that we were working on four pillars of public diplomacy, the four foreign policy pillars of the Philippines during that time. This was during the time of president Noynoy Aquino and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The secretary of foreign affairs then during President Noynoy was secretary Albert del Rosario. So we were working on the following pillars: (1) national and political interests; (2) we were going to do a lot of economic diplomacy work for the country in our host countries because at the end of the day we really want to help the Philippines grow economically and give jobs to our people here and then (3) we were going to look after the welfare of Filipinos abroad and then (4) a late addition to the pillars we were working on was cultural diplomacy as we believe that culture is also a tool for national development.

So given these four pillars we really had to be in a constant learning process. You had to know what was happening. You had to have updates. You had to be in contact with Manila for talking points. You had to be getting briefings from Manila all the time. You had to find ways to be imaginative and create projects that will really promote these four pillars. And for me my sources were really my own experiences, my own networking with other people, and also a constant interest to learn and learn and - to study, to read, to watch the news. You really have to be very much updated, I thought that maybe I could relax on this weekend but I had to do a speaking engagement somewhere. Then you have to do to study, you have to look at statistics financial data and updated reports.[So you don't rest you keep on learning.]

That was a mindset and an attitude I got to appreciate also- constant learning, an attitude of acceptance, understanding, open to new learnings. You also have to be in a mode of humility. You have to be humble enough to accept things and to learn new things. We do not know everything in the world and we had made a lot of mistakes in the past and we have to learn from those mistakes.

Avic: I think that's very important that acceptance because this is your career and these are the things that are entailed in doing this work. But have you ever thought with all of these challenges of changing career?

Millie: I was exhausted, I was burned out but it never occurred to me that I should change my profession or that I should retire early. No because there was that innate sense of wanting to serve. And I wanted to do what I had to do and I was not just alone on my own. I was part of this community, I was part of a system, I was part of government, and each one of us had the role to contribute. We were clear with our goals. We were clear with the vision and our mission and I felt I wanted to be contributing to that. In several occasions I really was burned out, exhausted but it's okay, the psychic feeling was there as I said earlier. [There’s psychic income in all because you know you are helping and contributing.] but most of the time I knew that a challenge had to be met by the team. It wasn't just me so it was very important for me to have a good team. It was very important for me to build networks and relationships because in government you have this all-of-government approach. You cannot just decide on things especially in matters of national interest. It cannot just be the DFA. You have to really be consulting with the whole of government so we were in that kind of work attitude in work mode. You always had to build a network. You always had to rely on your relationships with others in order to push an objective.

Avic: That's very interesting, Millie when you said that you always have to think of the service because in the end the work can be overwhelming but when you look at the goal then it becomes less tiring. And you also mentioned the community being part of a community it's not only you, you are always learning with the team. People are learning the same thing. People are facing the same challenges.

Millie: Yes that's important for diplomats to really have a good network. We’re establishing goodwill on behalf of our country. We want to sell the country in a way [as they said] we’re the number one sales person of the Philippines abroad when we are there. Then we also want to serve our people, our Filipinos who are there so it's very important.

I'll give you an example. In a powerful country like Germany where all countries are represented, all the powers are there- U.S., Japan, everybody, most of the diplomats speak German. So we in ASEAN we found out that we had at the time a better leverage when we came forth as ASEAN. So when we were coming forth as a group and we had more leverage, we could get more meetings, we could meet high officials of government better rather than them coming to us or we going to them individually. So I thought that in a country like Germany that kind of system works. Also I learned to have really good relations with our ASEAN. So it was like being at home because our ASEAN neighbors, our ASEAN brothers and sisters are really just part of our own system.

At the time I also developed a very good relation with the Taiwan representation in Berlin. I thought that was also some kind of reaching out to a country which had always been isolated before. But looking at the international developments now the United States behind Taiwan and all that you know you cannot really be on your own or isolated [because] eventually you have to really reach out and establish the goodwill and for the Philippines. I think we always have that goal of establishing goodwill to all our neighbors.

Avic: Could you tell me, Millie, what is your biggest learning experience or that learning that has really gave you a huge impact as a career diplomat.

Millie: (Number one) I learned to understand the bureaucracy. Being in government is a real profession and public service is a public trust. In government we always have issues of corruption and things like that so you know where you should stand. And for me that was a very good learning experience. Not many know that government employees have a code of ethics and if only we follow that because once we start hearing of all of these issues against government you just really have to contribute to making government work. Number two, the different diplomatic fields that we entered into -multilateral, bilateral relationships- those were great learning experiences for me. But if you were going to make me choose I'd rather have bilateral work because there you can really focus and develop.

The other thing which also helped me in bilateral work and which I also I learned a lot when I was in Germany was public diplomacy work. At that time we put China to court remember because of our West Philippine Sea issue. And so we did a lot of work to inform government, to inform the German public, to inform the academe on why we went to court. Now because China was very good in their own propaganda work, we in the individual posts also had to work hard to let the host country understand why we went to work. And so I met a lot of parliamentarians from the Foreign Relations Committee then we set up meetings with the academe, with the Filipino community. I remember it was I think July 2017 when the positive rulings came out and a month before that the Chinese Ambassador contributed an article at the editorial portion of the very popular number one newspaper in Germany The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. And he did that and he tried to explain the side of China. What we did as the Philippines two weeks after, we also did our own article. We didn't use any PR agency or anything, we called up The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to also give us the space so that we can put the side of the Philippines why we went to court. Our basic framework is “might is not right but right is might” because we think that the rule of law should prevail and we were on the right side of the law. And so we tried to expand on that and the newspaper gave us a space.

I think this was a big blessing for us. It came out a week before, I think a week or two before the ruling came out in The Hague. And so we were very happy about that opportunity to be able to present ourselves also in this newspaper. So things like that where you really have to go out of your way and do that extra mile so that you can win points for the Philippines. And for me that was a very good learning experience.

Avic: Is there such a thing as cancelling learning? You have been involved in the defense of the Philippine rights in relation to the claim of China but right now things could be changing. The government could have a different opinion. What has happened to that learning, to all these efforts that you have made? Would you think that this learning has not been useful at all?

Millie: [In my opinion] everything is a learning and then you can unlearn some things if you realize that maybe [it’s not right it’s not the truth it won’t contribute to peace]. So you can unlearn things but everything is always a learning. And then you as discerning people I think we can segregate [really] those things that we will hang on to and those things that we can just dispose, delete, get rid of.

Avic: So some things are real learning. Others could be temporary or minimized because of politics but you always can say you have worked well at that time.

Millie: You know yes you can unlearn things [if it’s not for you] and you don't believe in it so you just don't hang on to it.

Avic: and I'm curious as an ambassador, was there a point in your career that you were not happy representing the government representing the country?

Millie: I knew [really that] we had a mandate that we had to represent the Philippines in our host country. If there were issues which I did not agree with or which were not going to help me in the work of representing positively, I just set them aside and just let it be on its own and it will work, it will have its own life you know. But I don't need to harp on that if I don't really think that it will contribute to the way I will represent the country. I was always positive that I had a role to represent the country. If I was not agreeable to anything so I just kept quiet about it or I did not have to harp on it. At the end of the day [there are still many other points to tackle to see] the positiveness of the country. I mean some issues maybe are just emanating from one agency, one person, a group of persons. But the whole picture is really that the Philippines is still a good country, you still have good people, and we still can contribute much. So little issues of personalities and agenda and agency-focused things- we will just let it have its own life and let's see what happens afterwards and then we can tackle it.

Avic: You're very lucky to be in a career where the job is immense, meaning you talk about the entire country but you can choose at a certain point to focus more on education, on citizenship, perhaps the politics may not be that good. Is that a right conclusion I'm having that you can actually choose to focus on something like fight your own battles?

Millie: Yes you can do that but also always having in mind that there are expectations also in so many areas. So you just don't attend to this all the time, to one thing. There's a whole gamut of things to attend to.

Avic: Thank you very much, Millie! We can spend hours with everything that you can share about that constant learning on the job. But I want to ask you my last question: what would be your one to three tips for people to love learning, to constantly learn.

Millie: Be open to learning. Always be interested in what people have to say. Each one has something to say too. Be accepting. Be understanding. And be humble because if you already have something on your shoulder and then you already pre-judge or you have biases, those may be hindrances to learning. And also your learning will not just stay with you. You learn because you want to share it also to others. You want to give it away also to others. The learnings from your experiences, the learnings from your mistakes- you want to learn from them because you want to help other people grow too through this learning. So it's something that you also give away. They don't stay with you. So I think at the end of the day it will also be in line with our Christian principles when you share, when you are generous and when you are accepting of other people and when you are humble enough. I think we will all be producing good fruits if we work this path. That's all learning.