How do you test a Soldier's moral character?

For all of us at every level of leadership, how do we go about in realistically gathering a measurement of someone's moral fiber?

I think the BLUF on this is to look for courage: put people in positions or situations where there is opportunity to be courageous. And to be clear for the sake of conversation, I am defining courage as facing down something dangerous or painful and in turn proving where your commitments lie.

A Soldier must not only have the talk, but the walk. You must know what right looks like and then... do what is right. Even if it's hard or costly. In fact, especially then. This somewhat harkens back to that old Army model: be, know, do. I would love to hear from the Drill Sergeant community, especially those still on the trail. And I would also greatly appreciate voices from the other branches, and those who served in Desert Storm and earlier, just before the Army started putting so much stock in character development with things like the seven army values and all that.

Naturally, this "test" looks different at various levels of leadership and context does matter. Regardless, I have come to believe that courageous action and behavior is the testing point of one's moral beliefs and values. Someone can speak to you all day and make you believe they're squared away, but only when the chips are down and things have hit the fan will you actually know what they're really about. Or even further, someone can have weak character and yet have the potential for great moral fiber. Like a muscle that needs to be developed so you can finally max that deadlift on the ACFT; our moral character is something we can and should work on, and even test each other on. I think most of us would agree that the Army is in fact ALWAYS trying to test moral character.

Consider this when we put our Soldiers into situations where they might fail, knowing full well they might fail. Sometimes, we are just looking to see how a person handles their mistakes. You could argue this is the predicament of every 2LT, and that is in fact a major expectation of 2LTs, baptism by fire and all that. This would support the concept of courage as vitally important in gauging character, because it's not the mistake itself that matters most. As every seasoned Soldier knows, it's the response to an error that is most important. A mistake does not have to define you so long as you respond with humility and courage. And I'm not implying combat alone. Normal day to day provides plenty of opportunities to discover whether someone has strong character or is actually for themselves and their career, for example. I am being vague here, trying to leave wiggle room in this line of thought as context in any moral situation always matters.

I think this is simple. "Why bother with the question at all then?" you may be thinking. Because this simple lesson seems to be muddled the higher up we look. And because I may be wrong. This is one of those questions I like to take to RP. The leaders with the strongest character that I seek to emulate are the ones that wisely tell the emperor they have no clothes or fight like hell when everything in a situation says they can't win. So, what do you think?

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"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point" - C.S. Lewis

"Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance." - Augustine

"Circumstances do not make the man, they only reveal him to himself" - Epictetus

"Partial commitment changes everything-it reduces the sense that the mission comes first." - Gen. (Ret.) James Mattis

"I think the rewards for moral courage are promotion. … Any institution gets the behavior it rewards.” - Gen. (Ret.) James Mattis

"In these pages I have written much of generals and of staff officers; of their problems, difficulties, and expedients, their successes and their failures. Yet there is one thought that I should like to be the over-all and final impression of this book- that the war in Burma was a soldier's war. There comes a moment in every battle against a stubborn enemy when the result hangs in the balance. Then the general, however skillful and farsighted he may have been, must hand over to his soldiers, to the men in the ranks and to their regimental officers and leave them to complete what he has begun. The issue then rests with them, on their courage, their hardihood, their refusal to be beaten either by the cruel hazards of nature or by the fierce strength of their human enemy. That moment came early and often in the fighting in Burma; sometimes it came when tired, sick men felt alone, when it would have been so easy for them to give up, when only will, discipline and faith could steel them to carry on. To the soldiers of the many races who, in the comradeship of the Fourteenth Army, did go on, and to the airmen who flew with them and fought over them, belongs the true glory of achievement. It was they who turned Defeat into Victory." - Field Marshall William Slim , "Defeat into victory", p460