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My career was always about working with people, and understanding issues and problems and helping them to solve those issues and problems. How you deal with people - that's what diplomacy is all about. So while I'm not a career diplomat, many of the skills I had seemed to directly translate into the diplomatic arena.

We need foreign skills to stay competitive.

For running a country, team work is important, and the person at the helm has to enjoy teamwork.

We all have skills, I guess.

Woodrow Wilson called for leaders who, by boldly interpreting the nation's conscience, could lift a people out of their everyday selves. That people can be lifted into their better selves is the secret of transforming leadership.

I'm not always the most diplomatic person.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

Diplomacy is fundamentally working with people, bringing people together to deal with difficult issues.

You learn, just as you learn good manners, how to approach things with a certain amount of diplomacy.

What gives it its human character is that the individual through language addresses himself in the role of the others in the group and thus becomes aware of them in his own conduct.