Trustworthiness and courage are important qualities for all human beings. When people trust your words, they follow you. When a senior officer is trustworthy, subordinates even follow his oral orders faithfully. When a junior officer is trustworthy, senior officers assign him important responsibilities and value his advice. Trust builds team and enhances the performance of the organisation.

Fortitude or courage is important to take difficult decisions in public life. The government officers often have to take actions against senior politicians, businessmen and even bureaucrats. There may be serious consequences of taking strong actions against powerful people. The courage of public servants is reflected in the way they take fair and just decisions in all cases for all people.

If the junior officers have acted on the oral orders of the seniors and things go wrong, the senior officers must own up their oral directions and accept the consequence rather than shifting the responsibility to the juniors. Such actions manifest the trustworthiness and courage of public servants. (166 words)