[MUSIC] >> Perseverance is important. Patience is extremely important. Really, being creative, the ability to take risks. That's also very important, because sometimes you do something that feels counter cultural, but it works because you understand the situation so well and you understand the people so well and you can never give up. You have to know sometimes when you have to take people off separately, to try to get a resolution. How you bring in people who may be in your broader network. There's a combination of skills and timing is crucial. So you might have a really good diplomat strong negotiator, because I think negotiation skills are crucial as well. But it doesn't work, because the timing's not right. >> The ability of digital mats to cross those boundaries and those divisions, and maintain communications, and have a certain level of admiration for the other side is very interesting. And of course, that's what makes the maintenance and the management of international relation work within a diplomatic framework. That no matter the other side is your enemy, is your ideological enemy or enemy of your nation, that you can still maintain a dialogue in certain areas is what makes it work. >> You have to have great integrity and trust [INAUDIBLE]. You have to be creative. You have to be able to think of ways in which a deal might done, ways in which you might be able to link one deal to another deal in order to make the negotiation more attractive to others the resolution more attractive. And then sort of a sense of good humor and remaining to some degree, calm. >> Think as well, what's really important to them, is the feeling that they've actually got the backing of the people they're representing. I've seen a number of times at the OECD, diplomats who, particularly there's been a change of government. In other words, they've had a change of masters. It's always very tempting to see that Foreign Affairs just carries on irrespective of who the government is, but I've seen it before where they've got a new Minister of State or whatever it is that they're representing. But all of a sudden, there's just that little bit more uncertain about what it is that they are now representing. What we see in International Relations, we tend to see national interest is very fixed and unmoving. But in actual fact, I think a number of diplomats, well, they would sort of move towards that. But international, sorry, that's national interest are to some extent sort of unchanging. There's always some sort of wiggle room around the edges and they seem to be very sensitive to that. >> There needs to be a balance between knowing when to get involved and when to sort of step back. I look at it this way. I think the politics of it come into it as well, knowing how to sort of portray this. So ultimately, the achievements then become perceived to be achievements, but they're not constantly of becoming a political football. So I think those skills, which are very, very difficult sort of knowing the right balance. And I think the other major difficulty, of course, that you have in trying to sort of really establish who is a good and who is a bad diplomat is looking at the underlying realities behind the process as well. They're clearly are occasions when it's just easier for leaders to come into agreement. So if you can contrast cancer and I would say, it's sort of who had the weaknesses of his strengths almost, you can contrast with Reagan in the 1980s. Now, its very easy to come up with the clear assumption that Reagan was the opposite. He wasn't a details person. He was very successful, but was he successful, because he was a great diplomat and he had some very good people around him or was he successful, because of the chaos that was beginning to unfold in the Soviet Union? Again, going back to measures of success and failure on what is good, what is bad. I think it's hard to come up with any hard or fast rules, but my own starting point is really this knowing when to get involved and when to step back. When to basically or how to basically sell this as a package, domestically. We're looking at the moment with camera engaged and a number of the diplomatic arrangements or interactions with these European partners. Now that process would in large part be or the success or fate of that would in large part be governed by what the outcome is then subsequently, domestically, very obviously in the referendum. So not only is it Cameron's ability to deal with his European partners, but it's also his ability then to come back and create domestic constituency. And those two things going together, I think are a crucial way of ascertaining whether someone's a good or bad diplomat. [MUSIC]