How Rex Tillerson Is Remaking the State Department

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson doesn’t know what to make of news reports that morale is low at his agency and that he’s not doing a good job running it. “I walk the halls, people smile,” he says in a recent interview in his spacious office in Washington. “If it’s as bad as it seems to be described, I’m not seeing it, I’m not getting it.”

That’s exactly the complaint many Department of State employees have about Tillerson: He’s not getting it. Early on, many career diplomats were optimistic when the former chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp. took over the 75,000-person agency. He knew his way around the world and had decades of experience running a large, sprawling organization. He’d negotiated deals with heads of state in some of the toughest places in the world to do business, and he understood the delicate balance between using soft and hard power. Those skills would be put to the test by the array of urgent global issues awaiting him—including Iran, North Korea, and increasing tensions with China and Russia—when he arrived for his first day on the job in February.