The quiet courage of frank and fearless leadership

The public service ideal of being ‘frank and fearless’ meets its toughest test in today’s political climate. History, literature and leadership collide in this quiet reckoning.

First published in The Mandarin.

When truth becomes dangerous, what kind of leadership remains possible?

Today, it seems truth is optional, facts are dismissed as ‘fake news’, history is rewritten to serve the few, and leaders speak in slogans. In an era where appearance is valued more than authenticity, the frank and fearless public servant can seem like a relic of a gentler and distant time.

Australia has, for now, rejected the ‘truth is optional’ worldview in government. In the United States, where the narrative of power is rampant, there is little opportunity to offer frank and fearless advice without repercussions. Public service leaders who speak truth to power are exiled or sacrificed.

Public service leaders in these environments must decide whether to speak out or compromise their integrity, professionalism, and leadership to survive. While we like to think we’d do the right thing, in reality, choosing to prioritise principle over survival can be a tough decision.

It’s simple enough to claim that public servants should speak truth to power, but in reality, it is more complex. When we say the public service should be ‘frank and fearless’, we are portraying public service leadership as a display of moral integrity in action. 

It’s also easy for politicians to claim they are always willing to genuinely listen to facts, opinions, and views that differ from their own. While public servants would remain silent on the observation, the silence is awkward.

The relationship between truth and power is always tense, often in conflict. 

A question for public service leaders is: what occurs when that relationship breaks? What happens to a public service leader in that broken system who speaks a truth that is inconvenient to power?

The questions are not new. Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Michel Foucault, Vaclav Havel, and many others have explored the relationship between truth and power. 

It is becoming increasingly important for public service leaders to think more deeply about what it means to be ‘frank and fearless’ in circumstances when the relationship between government and the public service deteriorates when the truth is optional. The United States is demonstrating just how quickly and profoundly that change can occur.

The fragility of truth

Hannah Arendt warned that truth and power are not natural allies. 

Under regimes driven by ideology, factual truth becomes an irritation and an obstacle. Facts grittily resist the smooth stories needed for conformity and obedience. Because facts are hard to manipulate, they must be replaced, as they can’t be absorbed without upsetting the dominant narrative. And so, the truth is denied, suppressed, or replaced by myth. 

Arendt argued that the truth-teller becomes politically dangerous. This is not because their truth is wrong, but because it can’t be absorbed without causing disruption. Speaking the truth can lead to exile or sacrifice. Holding it makes one a threat. Frank and fearless leadership, when rooted in truth, starts with the willingness to stand alone.

Václav Havel, before becoming the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, was a playwright and a dissident. And while a dissident and before leading a nation, he chose to live in truth as his way to face a totalitarian system built on lies. 

Orwell and the machinery of lies

In 1984, Orwell imagined a world where truth is not merely denied but unmade. The Party does not ask for loyalty; it demands surrender. If the party says so, two plus two equals five.

In Orwell’s world, survival depends on internalising the lie. Those who stick to the truth aren’t broken but emptied. There’s no place for integrity in a system where contradiction is imposed as orthodoxy.

The sacrifice of the frank and fearless leader is not symbolic. The honest leader does not fall with dignity; they are erased and made to love the power that destroys them.

Foucault and the rituals of confession

Philosopher Michel Foucault reframes the issue. For him, truth is never separate from power because it is produced by it. Through institutions such as schools, prisons, and the public service, the government defines what is considered normal, what is deemed deviant, and what is true. Is there a place for the frank and fearless public servant in this view?

Foucault even regarded confession, which involves admitting responsibility and accountability for one’s failures, and is often portrayed as an act of truth-telling, as a means of exercising control. 

When leaders admit fault, resign, apologise, and repent, it often upholds the system rather than revealing the truth. The ritual of resignation or dismissal strengthens the legitimacy of the system. The institution endures, while the individual is forgotten. A single leader bears the blame, but the structure remains unchanged.

The sacrifice of the leader, for Foucault, is often less about transformation than containment. It is not truth-disrupting power, but power managing the appearance of truth.

Havel and the power of living in truth

It’s all a bit bleak for our frank and fearless public servant. But Václav Havel offers another way. 

In his essay The Power of the Powerless, written while he was a dissident in communist Czechoslovakia, Havel describes a greengrocer who places a sign in his shop window: “Workers of the world, unite!” The greengrocer doesn’t believe it, but he puts it in the shop window to avoid trouble, to conform. 

But if he were to take it down, say nothing, and not protest, remove the sign, the greengrocer would disrupt the system. 

Havel argued that the system is not sustained solely by terror but also by compliance with ritual lies. Every small act of untruth helps hold the fiction together. And so, every small act of truth, a refusal, silence, or withdrawal, threatens the coherence of the system.

To live in truth, Havel wrote, is not to attack. It is to stop pretending. In a regime of untruth, these small acts are revolutionary.

Havel sees these small acts of revolution as a distinct kind of hope, one that is subtle yet generative. It’s not the false hope of optimism, but hope practised as discipline and courage. Each act of integrity injects a tiny bit of uncomfortable grit into the system’s foundations. 

Havel, even as president, remained suspicious of systems. Leadership, for Havel, was not about mastery. It was about exposure and the willingness to be vulnerable, to carry a truth not because it is popular, but because it is right.

In this way, Havel reinterpreted the meaning of sacrifice in leadership. It is not about scapegoating or performing confessions. Instead, it involves a continuous commitment to authenticity. This kind of leadership does not aim to control but to bear witness.

“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect,” he wrote, “can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”

Integrity as a form of power

In our time, when we teach children about the dangers of disinformation and algorithm-driven persuasion, yet fail to equip them with the tools to be critical, the ideas of Arendt, Orwell, and Foucault remain highly relevant. 

For our frank and fearless public servant working closely with power, these ideas deepen a phrase frequently used in leadership discussions within public service. ‘Frank and fearless’ serves as a shorthand for the vital moral integrity at the heart of public service leadership. 

While it’s never easy, being frank and fearless is simpler when the relationship between ministers and the public service stays amicable. It becomes much more challenging when power intentionally undermines the truth.

In a less benign environment, Havel offers a way forward. It is not a path that dismisses risks but one that encourages leaders to actively live in truth and uphold a moral duty in bearing witness.

Living in truth, as Havel showed, means leading not through force but through faithfulness to conscience, reality, and the quiet dignity of honesty. It is to become sacrificial through presence rather than for spectacle, strategy, or self-interest. 

This fits neatly with the culture of quiet public service leadership. The work of leaders is to give hope by living in truth.