Good leadership is a passion for Lee Ellis. It’s also the latest career for the Commerce High School graduate who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam Conflict.
As the United States ponders electing leadership next year, Ellis is marketing his third leadership-related book, Leading with Honor – Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton. He’ll be at the Commerce Public Library selling and signing copies of the 250-page hardback book on Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. The book is not scheduled for release until May.
It outlines 14 principles Ellis gleaned from observing the leadership in the POW camps and which he applies to everyday life in general and to his work in leadership counseling for corporations and nonprofits.
“I was junior rank as a POW,” Ellis explains in a four-minute video at www.leadingwithhonor.com that outlines the book. “I got to follow in the footsteps of some great leaders, and that really became the foundation of the book.”
After his release, Ellis went back to flying. When he was promoted to colonel, he became involved in leadership training in the Air Force. That led to a focus on leadership.
“I realized deep inside things that people don’t intuitively see in leadership,” he said in a telephone interview. “I started to formulate, to really coalesce or filter and bring together into these principles slowly over the last six years in the Air Force. In the mid-1990s, I started doing leadership consulting, and it seemed like I had a knack for it.”
The book begins with Ellis being shot down and captured and covers the next five and a half years he characterized in the video as “boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror” during which he was “learning leadership by observing guys who were really great leaders,” and noting not only what worked, but also what did not.
As a leadership consultant for 15 years, Ellis said he became like a doctor who could “get into situations, see what’s going on and kind of diagnose it and provide a prescription. I see a lot of the same issues over and over again.”
On the promotional video, Ellis describes the book: “It’s the story of our experiences. It’s about leadership, it’s about corporate America, it’s about life as we know it, dealing with real people in real situations. I don’t have any political agenda in this book. I have an agenda – to impact people with the idea of leading their lives and having the courage. I talk a lot about ‘leaning into the pain,’ to do the right thing, because it is hard to do the right thing.”
He defines courage as “doing what’s right, doing what you know you ought to do even when it doesn’t feel natural, doesn’t feel safe; overcoming fear to do what you know is right. It’s about leading with honor …to do what your duty is, that’s leading with honor.”
Ellis has authored two previous books. Your Career in Changing Times was published in 1993 and sold 11,673 copies, although the accompanying workbook, Finding the Career that Fits You has sold 57,710 copies and is still in print. In 2003, Ellis published Leading Talents, Leading Teams, which sold 8,519 copies — a disappointing total he attributes to the fact that neither he nor the publisher put any effort into marketing the book. He intends to revise and re-release it at the end of 2012. He also co-authored three other books on career planning and is a motivational speaker on the subject of leadership, team building, mentoring and career planning.
“I’ve never made a lot of money on books,” Ellis conceded. “I think there is a possibility this could be big enough to make money.”
Ellis owns the publishing company, and said he’s “invested quite a bit of money in getting it (Leading with Honor) done very professionally.” He said he’s learned marketing over the last five years and “decided I am going to enjoy it.” He’s hired a former co-worker at Crown Ministries toward that end. He also intends to do more major motivational speeches as “a way of getting the message out about the principles and get interest stirred up in the book.”
