Boring, He's Not

Flamboyant and Swiss are adjectives not often found in close proximity to each other, particularly when the individual being described is a career diplomat. Thomas Borer, who is both these things and was until April his country's ambassador to Germany, thinks this is a problem. "If you're a diplomat of a small country like Switzerland, you have to work on bringing a new image across, on raising the country's profile," he says. "You can only do this through your own personality. You have to make people have an interest in you."

During his three-year stint as Swiss envoy to...