True Leaders are called to do many things–including sacrificially giving time, talent, and money to others. You can’t do it all, and you can’t give to every person or cause.
But you can strategically choose to be generous to the people and organizations that have personal significance in your life. Giving keeps the focus off yourself, and it helps limit personal greediness and self-preservation.
During this season, Lee Ellis and FreedomStar Media are especially grateful for several organizations and their work, and he enthusiastically supports them by donating a portion of his time and sales proceeds. Click here to learn more about them.
What do you support, and why do you choose to be a generous leader? Thanks for sharing!
How do spot authenticity in other people? This 90-second interview with author Bill George shares his thoughts on the attributes that he seeks when evaluating authenticity in others.
Do you agree with his comments? Please share your perspective.
On Veteran’s Day, Lee had a great conversation with Chris Fabry on “Chris Fabry Live” Talk Radio.
All leaders are faced with the opportunity to embrace of free yourself from bitterness. Hear his intimate thoughts on this topic as well as the top lessons learned that has helped guide his life and work.
Are you facing an opportunity to live with long-term bitterness? And if you’re overcome offenses and bitterness, how did you do it? Please share your wisdom –
Editor’s Note: As we celebrate Veterans Day 2013, we asked Lee Ellis to share his thoughts on the importance of this observance and why its critical to keep them in our thoughts and prayers on a regular basis –
“Often when I speak to large groups, I’ll ask for a show of hands of those who have a veteran in their immediate family—as parent, spouse, sibling, or child. I’m amazed to see the hands of 60-80 % of the audience go up.
The truth is that most of us are closely connected to a veteran, and we appreciate what they have done and are doing. This week, I stopped to reflect on the rigorous training, the deployments, and the service that our veterans have endured to protect our freedoms. I’m so grateful and in awe of their sacrifices and just as much for their families who have also sacrificed so much along the way.
I still cannot fully comprehend the pain and suffering my family went through when my aircraft went down and pain of not knowing for sure if I was dead or alive. Then when they found out I was a POW, they endured more than five the years of knowing I was in a far-away communist prison camp but not knowing what torture and deprivation I might be suffering.
Many of our veterans are still carrying a heavy load of pain and suffering, and we need to honor them and all who have served. Please take time out this weekend to reflect on their sacrifices, and where possible let them know of your gratitude.
This short commercial below has no words, but you will get the message; we love and honor our vets—young and old.” LE
To successfully lead and develop a work team (or family, community, constituency, etc.), the first step is knowing yourself and courageously facing the leadership challenges in your personal growth, being authentic, and shedding away layers of protection that keep you from growing.
This new infographic from human performance speaker and consultant, Lee Ellis, is an insightful way to identify areas that still need growth.
Click the link below to download a free copy of the Leadership Freedom Checklist, and please share your comments and thoughts as you review this new tool. Your comments are valuable!
As we celebrate Veterans Day this month, it made me think about this quote from General Douglas MacArthur. For the most part, U.S. citizens are very respectful and enthusiastic about honoring the sacrifices of our military veterans. But do veterans (and older leaders) offer more than old stories of past battles and successes?
Whether you’re a military veteran, a business veteran, an academic veteran, or a veteran in any sector of society, you sense the strong pressure that the world wants to cast off the old as irrelevant in our modern, youth-driven culture. Leaders today that once had influential power and influence are being replaced by seemingly younger, vibrant, more innovative next generation leaders that can do it better, faster, and smarter. Older leaders inevitably begin looking over their shoulder wondering when they’re no longer needed.
“Here’s the challenge for you, older leader—renew your value by sharing your legacy of experiences, battles, successes, and failures.”
Here’s the challenge for you, older leader—renew your value by sharing your legacy of experiences, battles, successes, and failures. Otherwise, future generations are doomed to repeat what you’ve already learned in your personal and professional life.
Here are three unchanging principles that will renew leadership value for yourself and others –
1. Preparation – Share it and Use it
Think of times in your past when you’ve been most successful. It was likely a time when you created a plan, took the necessary training, and worked hard to fulfill the steps to make it a reality. These experiences created a unique set of training principles that would be invaluable to next generation leaders. Elevate your value by helping prepare them to take your place. Teach them the ethics, character, and tactics of great leadership.
Alternately, you also have to use these skills to plan ahead for your own future. Fall back on your own wisdom and training, and choose to prepare now where you want to be in five to ten years. Otherwise, someone may choose for you.
“Fall back on your own wisdom and training, and choose to prepare now where you want to be in five to ten years. Otherwise, someone may choose for you.”
2. Commitment is Foundational
If you’re a child, spouse, or parent (I think that’s all of us), you know that commitment is critical to the important things in life such as relationships. Likewise in the area of work, as a young leader you soon realized that need to look for an easy way out when a situation got really difficult. If you didn’t choose to stay committed to the goal, you would’ve given up. Your seasoned values and character kept you daily engaged in the battle. Next generation leaders may not have a clue what they will face in their professional futures, but you can help equip them with the right perspective, tactics, and attitude to successfully commit and stay the course.
“…as a young leader you soon realized that need to look for an easy way out when a situation got really difficult. If you didn’t choose to stay committed to the goal, you would’ve given up.”
And, you should keep those skills on hand for your own future. The types of battles may change in your twilight years, but your experience will provide the level of resilience you need to confidently move forward.
3. Live and Lead with Honor
To live and lead with honor sets one apart in every area of life. Honor is about integrity, decency, principle, morality, character, nobility, respect, dignity, and high values; see one of my interview videos below for my personal definition of honor. In the Bible, the Apostle Paul said, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”* If you think on these things, you’re more likely to live as an honorable person.
But, an older leader like you can tell a next generation leader that it’s not as easy as it sounds.Fear is always lurking around the corner, and it will take you out. Just look at the dis-honorable behavior we see in our culture, and it comes from greed which is a manifestation of fear.
The antidote to fear for all leaders is courage—leaning into the pain of your fear to do what you know is right even when it doesn’t feel natural of safe. Your continued growth in courage will inspire everyone around you. If there was ever a time our country needs courage, it’s now. We need courageous leaders and citizens of all ages. You can play a powerful role—take the courage challenge**.
LE
*Source: The Holy Bible, the Book of Philippians, Chapter 4 Verse 8 (New International Version translation)
**Join Lee Ellis’ “Courage Challenge” movement and get free resources. Learn more at www.LeadingWithHonor.com.
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Lee Ellis is founder and president of Leadership Freedom® LLC, a leadership and team development consulting company. He consults with Fortune 500 senior executives in the areas of hiring, teambuilding, leadership and human performance development, and succession planning. He is also a speaker and the author of the award-winning book, Leading With Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton, in which he shares his experiences as a Vietnam POW and highlights leadership lessons learned in the camps. For more information, please visit www.leadingwithhonor.com.
Got any fellow leaders that aggressively try to dominate a conversation, meeting, event, or project? Maybe your dominating personality is a 5-year old at home! No names necessary—we all deal with this issue in life and work.
Maybe, a subtle Courage Challenge card will help consider a better way to communicate with others. Learn more at www.FreedomStarMedia.com/Courage!
Hear Lee’s latest interview on one of the top-rated talk radio programs in Alaska, The Glen Biegel Show, as he and Glen talk about character-based leadership and decision-making.
One of the most important points that Lee says in the interview is that all leaders are tempted to make unethical decisions, but we must decide in advance what our character-based decision is before we’re in the midst of the decision-making process.
In other words, make the decision before you’re faced with the unethical temptation! Anyone else agree? Please share your comments.
In case you missed this article earlier this year in Forbes Magazine on Hewlett-Packard CEO, Meg Whitman, it’s an interesting read. Gotta love the style of this former CEO that helped build the online behemoth, eBay.
This quote from the article talks about her transition into HP – “So the new HP attitude starts at the front door of its low-slung Palo Alto headquarters. Whitman dumped the barbed wire and locked gates that once separated executive parking spaces from the general lot. ‘We should enter the building the same way everyone else does,’ she says. Once inside, Whitman works from a small, sand-colored cubicle. (Her predecessors’ somber office has been turned into a conference room.) Whitman has a swim cap tacked to one partition, a picture of her mom on another. A Thomas Jefferson biography tops the heap of books next to her computer.”
Read and share what you like most about her leadership perspective…
True Leaders are called to do many things–including sacrificially giving time, talent, and money to others. You can’t do it all, and you can’t give to every person or cause. 
Leading with Honor® - Leadership Lessons Learned 