Chapter 2: Public Virtue and The Ethical Dimensions of Leading

This paper presents a normative account of ethical leading as an agent centered form of public virtue. Public virtue involves an individual using focused reflection and judgment that emerge from a disciplined pattern of self-awareness. Self-aware leaders concentrate intentional thought through four dimensions of public action. These four dimensions grow from the personal responsibility entailed by the ethical consequences of leading. Individual leaders structure their reflection in a way that creates mental frame models that shape intentional cognitive, emotional and perceptual actions and judgment. The paper integrates traditional understandings of virtue and action with modern cognitive understandings of how the mind and mental frames work and this integration provides a cognitive process that helps individuals practice virtue in judgment and action. The paper will examine the four dimensions that shape virtuous reflection and examine their understanding by looking at two masked but real life case studies.