Coaching practices for Moral Exemplar Practice
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Moral Exemplar Practice, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep telling myself to "be more patient" or "be kinder" and it stays a vague slogan
- I have abstract ideas about the kind of person I want to be, but in a hard moment I freeze because I don’t actually know what that looks like in practice
- I’m standing at a choice where I can feel myself about to take the easy, lesser road, and abstract principles aren’t holding me
- There’s a spot where I keep quietly cutting corners when no one’s really looking, and I want to live like the people I admire actually are watching
- I stand up and tell my team what we value, but I’ve started to wonder whether my own choices actually match the words
Practices that may help
- Learning through exemplar study
Study the conduct of a person you consider exemplary and identify one specific behaviour you can emulate.
Confucian Self-Cultivation: The Mencius Approach - Choose and study role models deliberately
Select a specific person whose character in a specific domain you want to internalize, and study how they act — not just what they say.
Virtue Ethics, Made Practical - Act as if sages were watching — the practice of the philosophical community
Before any action, ask: would a person I genuinely respect — who embodies the values I aspire to — approve of this?
Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises - Act in ways that might elevate others
Make choices with the awareness that others may be watching and may be lifted by what they see.
Elevation: The Emotion That Lifts You - Model the values you expect (idealized influence)
Become a living example of the values you want your team to hold.
Transformational Leadership, Made Practical - Embed your virtues in a practice community
The virtues needed for excellence in any serious practice (craft, sport, relationship) are real virtues — find the practice that calls them out.
Virtue Ethics, Made Practical - Virtue Ethics, Made Practical
Virtue ethics, developed by Aristotle and extended by thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre, holds that ethics is primarily about who you are rather than which rules you follow or which outcomes you produce. The practical core: identify the virtues a flourishing human being needs, and train them through deliberate habitual action — because character is what you repeatedly do, not what you occasionally decide. - Name and wrestle with your besetting weakness
Identify the one recurring moral failure and choose a practice that confronts it daily.
The Eulogy Virtues: Building a Life of Character - Ground ethics in love and compassion, not rule compliance
Let care for others — not fear of violation — be the engine of your moral conduct.
The Perennial Philosophy, Made Practical - Noticing and extending compassionate impulses
When you feel a spontaneous impulse toward compassion or fairness, act on it rather than suppressing it.
Confucian Self-Cultivation: The Mencius Approach
Related concerns
- Moral Exemplar
Select a specific person whose character in a specific domain you want to internalize, and study how they act — not just what they say.
Choose and study role models deliberately
- Moral Role Model
Select a specific person whose character in a specific domain you want to internalize, and study how they act — not just what they say.
- Acting As Role Model Virtue
Select a specific person whose character in a specific domain you want to internalize, and study how they act — not just what they say.
- Moral Inspiration Daily Practice
When you feel a spontaneous impulse toward compassion or fairness, act on it rather than suppressing it.
Noticing and extending compassionate impulses
- How To Practice Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics, developed by Aristotle and extended by thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre, holds that ethics is primarily about who you are rather than which rules you follow or which outcomes you produce. The practical core: identify the virtues a flourishing human being needs, and train them through deliberate habitual action — because character is what you repeatedly do, not what you occasionally decide.
- Moral Exemplars Relationship
Make choices with the awareness that others may be watching and may be lifted by what they see.
Act in ways that might elevate others
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