Your Virtue Self-Assessment

An application of the Anatomy of Virtue framework for a happier and healthier life

At the Busch School, we have placed great emphasis on studying the role of virtue in business education and life. In his “Anatomy of Virtue” framework, Dean Abela has identified and categorized 50 virtues according to St. Thomas Aquinas’ Treatise on the Virtues. He calls them “Superhabits” for making life easier, happier, and healthier.

Here, we share the Greatness Diagnostic, a self-assessment for each of the 50 virtues, to help you identify a virtue (or habit of excellence) that you'd like to grow in, asses where you are at in living that virtue, and then provide practical guidance on how to live that virtue well, habitually.

Inspired by the Four Stages of Competence¹ management framework used in training to grow in a specific skill and Aristotle’s stages from vice to virtue, this assessment identifies four stages necessary to grow in a particular virtue. In the assessment, you will find the virtue, its definition, its opposing vice, and the intermediate steps from vice to virtue. If you see yourself at the “unconscious incompetence” stage, it indicates that you are not good at that virtue and you are not even aware of it. The first step would be for you to move to the “conscious incompetence” level, at which point you know you have to work on that virtue and are working on it, but you are still not good at it. In the “conscious competent” stage, you know about the virtue and are good at it, but you still have to pay attention to it. Finally, when you reach the “unconscious competent” point, you do the right thing or the habit automatically, without thinking about it, and are really good at it.

Acquiring 50 superhabits may seem impossible, but after evaluating where you are on these 50 virtues, prioritize those where you marked yourself in the ‘vice’ direction. Take these to your prayer, pick one or two, and get working on them! If you want to follow a specific order to the diagram below, one suggestion is to start working on temperance, then courage, followed by justice, and finally prudence. But what is important is that you work on a virtue, and as long as you are working on a virtue, you are growing as a person.

The practicality of the Greatness Diagnostic is that it is comprehensive: every aspect of human experience is covered, and it will help you achieve excellence because virtue is about human excellence.

Download the Greatness Diagnostic virtue assessment here.

You may also listen to Dean Abela’s breakout session at the 2023 Napa Conference on this topic here.

1. De Phillips, Frank Anthony; Berliner, William M.; Cribbin, James J. (1960). "Meaning of learning and knowledge". Management of training programs. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin. p. 69.